The concept of fairness
Public-school defenders might be learning not to get their hopes up in this season of John Birch’s revenge.
They lost on referring the big new school law to the ballot. But now there is talk, at least, of a better idea, albeit perhaps even harder to execute. So, keep hope alive, if at your peril. The organization fighting the governor’s school-voucher law—called CAPES (Citizens for Arkansas Public Education and Students)—encountered close-doesn’t-count failure on its petition drive. But the group’s spokesman came away talking of switching gears to apply what’s been learned to seek signatures for a ballot initiative to place a proposed amendment to the state Constitution on the November 2024 ballot.
The idea seems to be an amendment that would be focused, principled and positive. It would be designed not to gut the act called LEARNS, which has good sections, but to improve on the governor’s message to impose competition to equalize and enhance opportunities for all parents and children.
The spokesman talked of constitutional phrasing requiring that any private school accepting per-pupil state money through vouchers also provide transportation services and meet the special needs of all students including those with disabilities.
A provision authorizing state regulators to set reasonable distances for bus or van routes—of not less than an established minimum—would seem to be necessary.
If there is to be competition between kinds of schools for our children’s educations, how could anyone object to its being fair? How could anyone choose to discriminate against kids impaired in their opportunity to get a voucher because they are disabled or lacking independent transportation?
Those questions were posed mostly as rhetorical devices. But they’re real and in fact have been answered by the state’s ruling Republicans. You simply vote “no” if you’re a Republican in the state Legislature, which is what happened on Rep. Jim Wooten’s sensible bill requiring transportation services from voucher-accepters in the recent legislative session.
Sarah Sanders demanded the “no” votes because she wants plenty of private schools and church schools to open up and spring up for vouchers. That probably wouldn’t happen if private schools had to do all the things traditional public schools have long had to do. She would have less to crow about to enhance her national profile, which is an aim of her governorship.
Such an amendment is a pipe dream that will make no difference, the tough political operatives say. The issue would remain vouchers versus no-vouchers, and an amendment to inconvenience private schools would be seen more as a tactic than a principle, they say.
I defer to their toughness and savvy. I simply note that fairness is a noble concept and that Sanders and her allies would be forced by such an initiative to reveal to the state’s voting public the truth.
That truth is that the current voucher push is not about making all elements of education better through fair competition. It’s about luring parents and kids away from public schools because of disdain for public education. It’s about not inconveniencing private schools with new burdens. It’s about keeping burdens unilaterally concentrated on the ones already disdained.
I’ve long argued that we affix too many amendments to our outdated Constitution, and that too many of those are too specific for constitutional law, which should be broadly conceptual. But it would be entirely a matter of broad concept to require that any institution receiving state taxpayer money to provide education to an Arkansas child must offer equal services and accept all children who wish to bring the taxpayer money to them.
Such an amendment would not stop the big teacher pay raises in LEARNS, nor would it harm any of the solid initiatives targeted to literacy. It would simply add competitive fairness.
If private schools ran from fairness, then that would be their freedom of choice, another fine concept. Money and effort—and hard-fought reforms—could be re-focused on making public schools better, not weaker.
Such a ballot initiative would not be easy. Advocates would again need to get their ballot title’s text approved by those finicky editors in Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office who delayed the signature-seeking launch. And they’d have to collect 36,000 more signatures than the 54,000 they could not quite gather for the referral effort.
They might be spared, though, the provision requiring that signatures come from 50 rather than 15 counties. Litigation is pending that argues rather logically that you can’t make a statute that violates a constitutional specific.
But, then, Arkansas is famously peculiar about constitutional specifics.
Alas, I fear the governor and her cohorts simply dream of a day when Friday Night Lights shine brighter in Arkansas because every team is a Pulaski Academy or a Shiloh Christian. They want to turn Arkansas into a transfer portal.
I meant that as a metaphor—high school football as a metaphor for all of schooling. But then it occurred to me it might also be literal.