Governor’s education bill stirs questions, concerns

FARMINGTON — Even the supporters of the governor’s education bill asked questions and raised concerns Friday at forums in Northwest Arkansas, including a forum in Farmington.

On Friday, Feb. 24, both the Rogers-Lowell and Fayetteville chambers of commerce held their first forums between legislators and the public since the 144-page bill dropped last week. That evening the Arkansas Democratic Rural Caucus held a similar meeting at the Farmington Senior Activity and Wellness Center.

The governor unveiled the LEARNS Act proposal Monday, Feb. 20. The measure passed the Senate on Thursday and is pending in the House. The bill would increase the minimum starting salary for teachers to $50,000 a year and create a voucher program called Educational Freedom Accounts, that will allocate 90% of state per-student taxpayer funds for students to attend a private or home school. The bill would also repeal the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, which would make it easier for school districts to fire teachers for poor performance.

The Farmington event was both the best-attended and the most openly critical of the education proposal, with 80 people attending.

Kevin Shinn, Huntsville fire chief and a retired educator who worked in Huntsville schools for about 36 years, told the Farmington forum he questions how teacher pay raises proposed in the legislation will be paid for beyond two years. He said the bill provides for state funding to raise teacher’s pay up to $50,000 a year for two years. After that, he said, rural school districts will be left to fend for themselves.

“The salary money is the carrot that’s gotten everyone’s attention,” Shinn said. “But rural schools do not have the tax base to pick up the slack when the state steps down.”

Shinn said smaller, mostly rural school districts will have to make cuts.

“They’ll start cutting the athletic programs, cutting the arts programs, cutting the music programs,” he said.

Farmington forum panelist Jess Piper said she lived in Arkansas and attended Arkansas schools and universities before moving to Missouri. Missouri and other states, including Arizona, Iowa and Michigan, already adopted legislation similar to what is now being considered in Arkansas. “It hasn’t worked in any of those places,” Piper said. Piper said Missouri teachers were promised raises, but the promises were not kept.

“They lied,” she said. “It was all smoke and mirrors.”

Jim Lewis of Lincoln attended the forum and said the loss of tax money when students leave a district, as allowed in the bill, will lead to smaller districts being forced to consolidate. A former superintendent of the Lincoln Consolidated School District, Lewis said smaller districts can’t afford the loss of funding.

“If you had 40 students transfer out of the Lincoln School District that would cost the district about $260,000,” Lewis said. “That may not seem like a lot to a city district, but it’s a tremendous amount to a small district to have to make up. You still have to meet state standards for the number of teachers and the teacher-student ratio. You may have to cut programs and positions. You could cut things like the FFA [Future Farmers of America] program, cut coaching positions, cut transportation. It will make a large impact on the smaller schools.”