Components of proposed LEARNS Act/Senate Bill 294

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders this week introduced a 144-page, multi-part bill to overhaul public education. Some provisions deal with schools that earned D or F grades. Almost one-third or 338 of the state's 1,055 schools had Ds and Fs after the 2021-22 school year.

Arkansas children’s education freedom account program

• Starting in 2023-24, an account for a participating student will be comprised of funds — 90% of the prior year’s state foundation aid per traditional and charter school student, which is $7,413 this year — to pay for qualifying educational expenses.

• Eligible expenses can include private school tuition, fees, cost of testing, school uniforms, supplies and access to technology. The list of allowable expenses will expand over time.

• In 2023-24, students must meet certain eligibility qualifications to participate, such as a special education disability, homelessness, in foster care, child of active duty military personnel or attendee of a school that has a state-applied F letter grade.

• In 2024-25, eligibility for student participation would be expanded to children of military veterans, first responders and law enforcement personnel, or who were enrolled in a D or F-graded school the prior year.

• By 2025-26, all Arkansas students will be eligible to participate in the program in which parents will be able to direct payments to private schools and other service providers.

• A participating private school must meet state school accreditation requirements or requirements for membership in the Arkansas Nonpublic School Accrediting Association or have applied for that accreditation; employ only teachers who hold at least a bachelor’s degree or have equivalent documented experience; and the schools must comply with health and safety laws, including employee background checks.

• Each participating private school and participating service provider shall provide for each participating student to annually take a recognized, nationally normed assessment that is approved by the state Board of Education, which at a minimum measures literacy and math achievement, and is required for public school students.

• The state may contract with a vendor to manage the payment system and can withhold up to 5% of funds allocated to accounts for the administration of the program.

Minimum teacher compensation schedule

• The school board in each public school system shall pay full-time teachers a minimum base salary of $50,000.

• To be eligible for the new state funding to meet the $50,000 base — up from $36,000 — districts must require a 190-day teacher work year. The district shall not provide more rights to personnel than those provided under state law.

• For 2023-2024, each teacher shall be paid a salary that is at least $2,000 greater than their Sept. 1, 2022, salary.

Merit teacher incentive fund program

• Created to recognize and reward excellent teachers with annual bonuses of up to $10,000.

• Eligible teachers must demonstrate outstanding growth in student achievement based on a State Division of Elementary and Secondary Education model that incorporates student test scores, teacher service as mentors to aspiring teachers, or work in subject and geographical areas with critical teacher shortages.

• The distribution of the funds shall factor in the poverty level of the school and the performance rating of a school.

Repeal of teacher fair dismissal and public school employee fair hearing acts

• A superintendent may recommend termination or non-renewal of a teacher who is placed in intensive support status. The teacher must be notified in writing of the termination notice.

Paid maternity leave

• Up to 12 weeks of paid leave for education personnel with cost to be split by the state and the district/charter school.

Arkansas opportunity public school choice act

• The State Education Board shall not establish a numerical net maximum on numbers of school choice transfers into or from a public school district, unless required to do so by federal court orders.

School transformation contracts

• A public school district with a “D” or “F” rating or a school district classified by the state as in need of “Level 5 — intensive” support shall be exempt from sanctions and qualify for funding if the school board contracts with a partner to operate a public school district “transformation campus.”

• That partner could be the governing body of an open-enrollment public charter school or another entity approved by the State Board of Education.

• The partnering open-enrollment public charter school must have at least a “C” grade in the preceeding three years.

Arkansas high impact tutoring pilot program

• The Division of Elementary and Secondary Education will establish a tutoring program with student eligibility criteria, a list of vetted tutoring providers, and allowable uses for grant funding.

• School districts will provide a funding match to support the tutoring.

Third-grade retention

• By the start of the 2025-2026 school year, a public school student who has not met the third-grade reading standard, as defined by the state Education Board, and does not have a good-cause exemption, won’t be promoted to fourth grade.

• Exemptions are pupils who have been retained in the past, are not native English speakers, or have met criteria for special education.

• During the summer and school year the school shall provide to struggling third- and fourth-graders at least 90 minutes of literacy instruction, assign them to highly effective teachers, provide parents with read-at-home plans to help students, and/or provide literacy tutoring grants.

Literacy coaches and literacy tutoring grants

• Every kindergarten-through-third-grade teacher in a D or F-graded school will have access to a literacy coach to help build capacity for classroom instruction.

• $500 literacy tutoring grants will be provided to eligible students with priority given to those who have been retained in third grade.

• The Elementary and Secondary Education Division will set criteria for evaluating success of grant-funded tutors.

Indoctrination

• Steps required include the review of the rules, policies, materials and communications of the Department of Education to identify any items that may, purposely or otherwise, promote teaching that would indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as “Critical Race Theory” that conflict with the principle of equal protection under the law or encourage students to discriminate against someone based on characteristics protected by federal or state law.

School resource officers and safe schools

• Training and re-training requirements for school resource officers must include youth mental health.

• Training to public school staff would be expanded to include cyberbullying and human trafficking.

• Districts and schools are to take into account hiring of school safety experts before building a new school, make crisis response training available to school employees, support youth mental health, establish a behavioral threat assessment team, work with law enforcement, form district safety and security teams, train nurses and others on opioid overdoses and bleeding control, and establish communication systems with law enforcement, parents and others.

Early learning

• The Arkansas Board of Education would be charged with administering early childhood education, including rules on standards, licensing, funding and quality ratings to create a seamless early childhood education system.

• The Office of Early Childhood would be established within the Department of Education and be under the direction of the state’s education secretary.

State teacher education program

• A federal student loan repayment of $6,000 per year for a maximum of three years would be provided for a licensed teacher who graduated from a teacher preparation program after April 2004 and teaches in a subject or in a geographic area short of teachers.

• The Division of Higher Education may spend no more than $50,000 on the program.

Arkansas teacher academy and academy scholarship

• Eligible colleges and universities shall establish academies, including existing teacher preparation programs, to incentivize potential and enrolled attendees to be teachers and to commit to teaching in critical shortage areas.

• An eligible post-secondary institution shall provide to each academy attendee an annual scholarship up to the cost of tuition and fees.

High school career ready pathways to a diploma

• Beginning with the 2024-25 ninth-grade class, a public high school student shall have the option to earn a high school diploma through a career-ready pathway.

• The Division of Elementary and Secondary Education shall develop the pathway to include academic courses and career/technical courses aligned with high-wage, high-growth jobs.

• The career pathway diploma shall be given the same status as standard diploma.

Transportation modernization grant

• The Department of Education will develop application procedures that define rural and remote school districts and require how grant money would be used to improve access to public schools, open-enrollment charters and childcare centers.