‘Ill-time plan’ for provisional teachers, falls flat

This week another sad chapter in the lame-duck administration of Governor Asa Hutchinson played out quickly and tragically down in Little Rock.

Former day-care owner, legislator and now the Education Czar Johnny Key, formerly of Mountain Home, floated a “hairbrained” idea as the mounting outcry of not having enough teachers for the fall school term roars on.

Key, like Hutchinson, is still smarting from the backlash by classroom teachers all over Arkansas on a state with a $1.6 billion dollar budget surplus could not find the time or the money to talk about substantial raises for classroom teachers.

Arkansas is last in the region, yes, even behind Mississippi in entry-level pay for classroom teachers.

Not only did Key and his minions in the State Department of Education not have enough or sufficient data to back up this wild, last second “fix” for not enough school teachers — they also apparently made their usually friendly legislative pals a little hot under the collar.

One in particular, state Rep. Jeff Wardlaw of Hermitage — who has bowed and scraped to every single whim of the Hutchinson administration since being elected as a Democrat to a second term in the House and immediately switching, solidly I must say, to goose-step along unwaveringly with the Republican Party — was angry.

Wardlaw barked at Key and other minions of the State Department of Education in attendance, about “why they (Department of Ed folks) didn’t bring this idea up, when we (the legislature) were down here in a Special Session.”

Wardlaw apparently doesn’t see anything wrong with “temporarily allowing or licensing” a wanna-be teacher before college graduation or certification, if it means helping out the rural schools of Arkansas.

But school officials on hand said the provisional licensing or allowing a non-certified teacher in the schools to teach — even on a temporary basis — was a bad, bad idea.

And then one of the great mysteries of the teaching salary game in Arkansas came to public light.

Most superintendents and principals said the way to hang on to a really good classroom teacher (who might be poached by another district or an out of state school district) was to give them a title as an administrator and of course, a pittance of a raise.

Thus, making a good fundamental third grade teacher into a Reading Specialist or crowning them with the moniker as an English as a Second Language supervisor. This paper title, bestowed upon by the superintendent or school board, is just that — a paper title. Be the added duties over just the other third grade teachers in his/her building or even in the entire school district.

Toss in a little raise for taking on a tiny fraction of administrative duties — mostly grant writing — and the third-grade teacher can still have a classroom full of kids, a little administrative bump in pay and be rather firmly, hopefully, held in place and off the teacher marketplace.

And in some semblances, be taken out of the rank of classroom teacher for pay and salary purposes and made into an administrator.

Sounds like that should be eyeopening for most of the rank and file of state Representatives and state Senators.

There are not hard and fast statistics for the General Assembly, but veteran observers have noted there are fewer and fewer educators than in recent years.

The same could be said for lawyers.

So, when the dust settled over the move by the Education Department to make this end run around the lack of a teacher program, nothing was done.

Nothing but another plane ride or two for our ambitious governor as he keeps getting the frequent flyer miles on his jaunt to be on the 2024 Presidential Election ballot for the Republican nomination.

Emperor Nero, it was said, fiddled while Rome burned.

Asa’s been flying on a presidential jet stream all the while leaving the teacher pay conundrum to the next administration.

And maybe that is a presidential thing after all — leave a mess for others to clean up and solve.