Applications for Arkansas’ school voucher program are now open, the state’s education department announced Tuesday.

This marks the fourth year of the program and the second year it’s been open to all Arkansas K-12 students after being phased in with increasing eligibility.

Created under an expansive , the Educational Freedom Account program permits state funding to be used for , such as private school tuition, homeschool curriculum, laptops, tutoring and educational therapies. Participating students could receive up to during the 2025-2026 school year. That will increase to $7,208 for the 2026-2027 academic year, according to education department spokesperson Kaelin Clay.

Student applications have historically opened in March or , except for the program’s first year when delayed implementation. As was the case , applications will be reviewed for funding priority within a series of three-week windows that ends June 1.

Applications are not processed strictly on a first-come, first-served basis, according to the . Instead, they’re prioritized based on categories during each three-week window.

The highest priority categories are returning EFA students, students with specialized needs and students attending a school with a “D” or “F” rating under the state’s .

More than 44,000 students are participating in the program this year, and could choose from nearly 170 private schools and over 2,500 approved vendors, according to . Applications for schools interested in participating in the program opened in February, Clay said.

“Every student has unique strengths and challenges, which is why offering multiple education pathways is essential,” Education Secretary Jacob Oliva said in the release. “By supporting the Education Freedom Account program, we are empowering parents to choose the learning environment that best fits their child’s needs, and the number of families enrolled proves the program’s success.”

Democrats and some rural Republican lawmakers have voiced concern about the growing cost of the program, which represents the largest increase to the governor’s for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The proposed budget includes more than $309 million for the program, $122 million more than last year’s budget. The amount matches what was ultimately spent on the program this year.

The budget also calls for setting aside another $70 million from surplus funding for anticipated program growth.

More information about the program and applications are available on the education department’s .

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew DeMillo for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

Over $120 billion in federal were expiring, leaving school leaders and tutoring providers uncertain whether programs would continue. The incoming administration was focused on slashing Department of Education spending, not issuing new grants. 

“We didn’t know if this administration would put anything into education,” said Loeb, a Stanford University professor who . “We were worried that all of the experimentation that had been going on and that access to tutoring would drop precipitously.” 

That didn’t happen.

When researchers, district leaders and tutoring providers convened earlier this month in Washington, it was clear that worries over tutoring being nothing more than a pandemic fad had turned to optimism. A growing number of states expect districts to integrate tutoring into the school day and have committed funding and staff to make it happen. Several require tutoring for students scoring below grade level and are vetting providers so districts don’t have to. And in a recent round of literacy , totaling $256 million, federal education officials signaled that access to tutoring should be a fixture in the nation’s schools. 

“High-dosage tutoring has evolved from a concept into a proven, evidence-based strategy and then into a reality for thousands of students in thousands of schools,” Kirsten Baesler, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, told attendees at the annual Accelerate conference. “It is a foundational strategy for improving student outcomes.” 

Even before the new federal grants were announced, a by Loeb’s team showed that nearly half of all states either offer tutoring grants or use their school finance formula to help districts pay for programs. 

Arkansas, which she described as “strategic and ambitious,” is one example. Its 2023 LEARNS Act created two tutoring programs.

One provides grants to . To measure the return on investment, the state’s now flags whether a student receives tutoring during the school day.

“If policymakers want results, they have to invest in the structures to get those results,” Amy Counts, director of curriculum projects at the state education agency, said during one of the Accelerate sessions. 

Another Arkansas initiative up to $1,500 to spend on tutoring if their children don’t meet reading standards. Initially, teachers weren’t fond of the idea that families received the extra money instead of schools.

“They didn’t push the program because of that. But we said, ‘If you help parents use that program, that benefits you,’ ” Counts said. The other challenge, she said. was that some parents of struggling readers wouldn’t spend the money “because they’ve never had to engage in securing services for their child.”

To Accelerate President Nakia Towns, the federal grants represent an important shift. 

“Look Mama, we made it,” she told attendees.

Accelerate received one of those 24 grants to work with the Oklahoma State Department of Education. They’ll test how factors like group size, the frequency of sessions and whether tutoring is delivered virtually or in person affects results. 

Seven of the awards went directly to state education agencies that are working to scale up tutoring programs, especially in rural areas. Loeb’s team, for example, will evaluate Arkansas’ efforts to , a virtual program. The study will also compare results when tutors are college students versus trained educators.

‘Important step forward’

Accelerate has launched some of that state-level activity through its , and this legislative session, CEO Kevin Huffman is tracking 12 tutoring-related bills in eight states. They include:

• A that would require high-impact tutoring for students with a reading or math “deficiency.”

• A to establish a competitive grant program for tutoring.

• An that would require for students scoring at the lowest levels in math and reading. The Senate passed the bill, but it’s still pending before a House education committee.

• A that would expand an existing program for elementary students through eighth grade.

“All of this feels like an important step forward,” Huffman told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. At the conference, he said “momentum is different” because states aren’t supporting tutoring just because they have one-time federal dollars to spend.

One policy expert recently questioned whether tutoring has produced “too little bang for too much buck.” In , Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said he hasn’t been able to “muster much enthusiasm” for tutoring and suggested that it has been an insufficient way to address the “disastrous aftermath of COVID-era school closures.”

Loeb agreed that while pandemic relief funds allowed states and districts to test different models, those early examples didn’t always produce gains. Some states and districts moved too fast, and implementation challenges, like infrequent sessions and high turnover of tutors, hindered students’ progress. Research shows that a mismatch between the material tutors cover and the curriculum in students’ regular classes can also contribute to poor results.

“Some of it worked, and some of it didn’t,” Loeb said. 

But during this month’s event, Antoinette Mitchell, state superintendent for the District of Columbia, said investments in tutoring have paid off. Her office, which oversees both the District of Columbia Public Schools and charters, contracts with CitySchools Collaborative, a nonprofit, to manage tutoring logistics. It handles scheduling and finds space for tutoring sessions so principals don’t have to. 

, more than 42% of DCPS students scored at the highest levels in reading, exceeding pre-pandemic results. In math, the percentage of students meeting expectations grew by over 4 percentage points, the largest jump since 2015. With one of the federal grants, CitySchools Collaborative will expand its work into Maryland and Virginia. 

More recent research findings, about the importance of offering tutoring and , have also allowed districts to learn from past mistakes. 

“You can actually do this at a decent scale,” Loeb said, “and give students this personalized attention.”

My own state, Arkansas, is preparing to implement a key piece of its 2024 , which is modeled after legislation in Mississippi. This summer will be the first in Arkansas when third-graders will be retained if they are not reading proficiently. As expected, parents and educators are on edge and questions abound. The prospect of thousands of students being held back is generating lots of attention and anxiety. 

But as Arkansas moves to implement its version of the Mississippi law and other states look to emulate it, policymakers would be wise to consider what the research says about retention. In short, like everything else in education, there is no panacea for increasing student learning. Retention in and of itself is not going to singlehandedly raise literacy rates. The key to success in Mississippi was the supports the state provided before and after students were retained. 

ČŃŸ±ČőČőŸ±ČőČőŸ±±è±èŸ±â€™s , passed in 2013, was a comprehensive K-3 reform law designed to ensure that all third graders read on grade level. Core elements included intensive professional development aligned with the science of reading, early identification of struggling readers, targeted intervention beginning well before grade three, deployment of state-funded literacy coaches and the retention of a small share of third graders who did not meet the reading benchmark.

As science of reading reforms expand nationwide and districts work to address pandemic-related learning losses, third-grade retention policies have become more common. As of 2024, have laws requiring promotion based on reading proficiency, and 13 additional states allow districts to retain students for this reason. Importantly, these laws typically are more generous in allowing exemptions than previous versions.

But while exemptions are often well-intentioned, suggests that, when broadly used, they can undermine policy effectiveness. Exemptions tend to reduce participation among the students who may benefit most from intensive intervention, including English learners who could benefit from extra help. The primary benefit of promotion-linked literacy policies is early detection paired with substantial supports, such as additional instruction, tutoring and coaching, before students reach third grade. So when exemptions are granted, they must be coupled with the same level of structured intervention Mississippi requires through individualized reading plans and intensive instruction.

Evidence from Mississippi helps clarify why retention alone is not the driver of literacy gains. In the first year of implementation, roughly 15% of the state’s third graders who scored below the promotion cutoff in the 2014-15 school year were retained, and among students just below the threshold, were held back. Yet fourth-grade scores began improving almost immediately, from 2013 to 2024, making Mississippi those children for reading and math gains during that time — well before retention could plausibly affect outcomes at scale. This timing strongly suggests that the gains were driven primarily by early identification, targeted intervention and intensive instructional support rather than by retention itself.

Importantly, Mississippi paired promotion decisions — whether retention or exemption — with structured, mandatory resources. Even students promoted via exemptions were required to have individualized reading plans, summer literacy programs and ongoing intervention. Survey and administrative evidence suggest that these promoted-but-still-supported students made meaningful reading gains, underscoring that the policy’s effectiveness hinged on the , not simply on whether students were retained.

Evidence from other states reinforces this point. In Florida, where third-grade retention has been studied extensively, outperformed exempted peers who did not two years later. This suggests that exemptions, when not paired with intensive intervention, can dilute policy effectiveness by allowing struggling readers to advance.

Survey evidence suggests that in part by the supplemental assistance provided to low-achieving students who were promoted via exemptions. By contrast, evidence from Florida shows that in reading two years later, indicating that exemptions were not consistently granted to those who would benefit most from promotion.

As Arkansas moves toward implementation, it would do well to consider not just ČŃŸ±ČőČőŸ±ČőČőŸ±±è±èŸ±â€™s experience, but also Indiana’s, which saw the rubber meet on the road on retention more recently. students are repeating third grade after failing the state test or qualifying for an exemption. State leaders had expected to retain more, but passing rates on the reading assessment jumped nearly 5 points last school year, to just over 87%. Officials said the progress stemmed in part from the expansion of a statewide program, the Indiana Literacy Cadre, that focuses educators’ attention on research-based instructional methods. Participation increased from 41 schools in 2022 to more than 550 in 2025, and schools in the Literacy Cadre saw a 7-point increase in passing rates, compared with gains of 3.6 points at other schools. 

Arkansas can hope for similar outcomes of this year’s state tests. There is cause for optimism – when it comes to not just retention but the resources that come before these critical decisions, is more expansive and students have access to more assistance both at school and home (through a $1,500 grant to families for literacy tutoring). Secretary Jacob Oliva, who leads the state Department of Education released in January to ensure families are aware of their students’ standing and students are receiving ample supports both before and after the testing window. 

Across studies, the evidence is consistent: retention mandates alone do not drive literacy gains in isolation. only when retention is part of a that intervenes early and intensively. ČŃŸ±ČőČőŸ±ČőČőŸ±±è±èŸ±â€™s experience demonstrates that it is the comprehensive series of interventions—  — that produces lasting improvement.

The revealed that of the 16 states that require districts to offer paid parental leave, only two — Arkansas and Delaware — give teachers their full wages up to 12 weeks. Six other states offer partial pay for up to three months.

Access to paid leave decreases postpartum depression and boosts the likelihood that employees will return to their jobs after having a child, according to the study. Multiple national medical organizations a minimum of 12 weeks of paid time off for new parents.

The number of large school districts offering paid parental leave has in the last three years, from 27 to 64. About 40 are located in states that don’t require the benefit. While this shows district-level progress, the lack of state mandates allows schools to refuse to take action, said Heather Peske, NCTQ president.

“What we know is that leaving it up to districts leaves too much to chance, and it leaves too many teachers high and dry,” she said. 

A 2024 by RAND Corp. found that 32% of teachers have access to paid parental leave, compared with 46% of similar working adults. Of those who received the benefit, 46% of teachers thought it was an adequate amount, compared with 78% of other adults.

The new report highlighted Arkansas as a , saying it’s a prime example of why states need to enact paid leave requirements. An optional program created in 2023 allowed the state and districts to evenly split the cost of substitutes who covered for teachers who were absent for up to 12 weeks. But only 10% of districts participated. 

Last year, lawmakers changed it to a mandatory, state-funded benefit that covered the full cost of long-term substitutes. The study said results of the new program are still unknown because it only took effect in August.

Washington state offers teachers the most time off: 12 to 16 weeks that can be extended to 18 in cases where pregnancy or birth complications arise. But the state offers only partial pay.

Maryland has a cap of $1,000 per week during parental leave, while Minnesota’s program covers between 55% and 90% of teachers’ salaries, depending on income level. In 2019, New Jersey increased its for eligible workers — including teachers — from 66% to 85% of their average wage. That change resulted in a 70% hike in program participation.

Seven states and the District of Columbia provide educators with full pay, but for a shorter amount of time, like six or eight weeks.

In , lawmakers debated in 2018 whether paid parental leave was the best use of limited state dollars, according to the study. Following months of advocacy, Delaware eventually created the nation’s first paid parental leave program for teachers, which NCTQ considers to be a model policy. It offered 12 weeks off, funded by an employee payroll contribution of less than 1%, and the state reimbursed districts for the cost of long-term substitutes. About 3% of teachers used the paid leave benefit in 2024.

“If states reimburse districts the cost of long-term substitutes, districts need only maintain normal operating costs by paying teachers’ salaries as usual,” the study said. “This policy ensures that educators receive their full pay during leave, while having minimal impact on the state’s overall budget.”

NCTQ also recommends that states extend paid parental leave to all teachers who become parents, including fathers and educators who foster or adopt children. About one-third of states that provide paid leave offer reduced benefits for non-birthing parents or none at all. 

“Research shows that when both parents have access to paid leave, families grow stronger, children are healthier and women experience greater career outcomes,” Peske said. “Ensuring leave benefits for all parents helps attract and retain talented teachers in the classroom.”

Tennessee families experienced a bottleneck earlier this year as they waited to submit applications for the state’s new program. In July, 166 parents that they had received a scholarship, only to alert them a few days later that the notification was a mistake. 

“It wasn’t the most ideal user experience,” said Heide Nesset, a senior fellow for the Beacon Center of Tennessee, a right-leaning think tank. But there was a “tight runway,” about three months, to get the program off the ground. 

With state leaders hoping to serve up to 70,000 students next year, they’re now . Proposals are due Friday.

But the rough start in Tennessee wasn’t an anomaly. All states with education savings accounts have struggled to some extent with ensuring smooth transactions for families, whether that’s paying a school on time or ordering a homeschool curriculum. Some say the solution lies in picking more than one company to handle the increasing demand and improve customer service.

“If it’s one contract, I think the vendor is inherently trying to ensure that the state department has a really fantastic experience,” said Nesset, who is also the vice president of

implementation at the Yes. Every Kid. Foundation, a school choice advocacy organization. “If you have more than one [vendor], then they start competing, and families have the opportunity to make choices.”

Tennessee’s current vendor is Student First Technologies, which won to run a smaller ESA program in three counties. Earlier this year, the state with the Indiana-based company to manage the new statewide program, despite its problems in other states. 

In West Virginia, where Student First still operates the Hope Scholarship program, an ESA, homeschool families complain that they can’t access the platform on their phones and that approvals and denials for purchases are inconsistent. Arkansas canceled its contract with Student First last fall after it failed to deliver a “fully operational” system on time. The company paid the state . 

‘Get what they need’

Eighteen states now have at least one ESA program. With a new federal tax credit scholarship system beginning in 2027, the demand for organizations to manage them will surely grow. The trick is delivering a system that runs smoothly for families while ensuring that they’re using the money the way the state intended. 

In a , Michael Horn, cofounder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, a think tank, talked with Jamie Rosenberg, the founder of ClassWallet. Still the biggest player in the market, the Florida-based company manages nine ESA programs. 

Prior to platforms like his, states had two options, he explained. They either issued debit cards, which made it hard to ensure parents spent the money on allowable purchases, or expected them to pay up front and request reimbursement — a significant obstacle for families on a tight budget.

ESA vendors, he said, give families the “agency to get what they need but also the ease of knowing that what they’re doing and what they’re buying [complies with] program rules.”

Adding more than one vendor to the mix could make the companies work harder to reach lower-income and minority families who are less likely to use the programs, said Lisa Snell, a senior fellow at Stand Together Trust, which funds school choice initiatives.

“Family outreach and satisfaction become the goal rather than the government as the customer to one vendor,” she said.

Texas had the option to choose multiple vendors for its new ESA program, which launches next fall. allows the comptroller’s office to contract with up to five companies. But officials opted against it and awarded a two-year, $26 million contract to New York-based Odyssey, which currently runs programs in four other states. 

Joe Connor, Odyssey’s CEO declined to comment on the state’s decision and referred ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ to the state comptroller’s office. The office did not respond, but Amar Kumar, CEO of KaiPod Learning, a large national network of microschools, said the state likely felt multiple vendors would further complicate the process.

“There was this huge question of the complexity of doing that,” he said. “How do you tell families which portal to go to or how will they decide who manages which part of the program?”

‘Send a quarterly check’

The vendor platforms include built-in tools to prevent misuse. Student First Technologies has an AI feature, , that reviews each expense, “assigns a confidence score” and flags anything that’s new or that the state hasn’t approved in the past. 

But Katie Switzer, a West Virginia parent using the state’s Hope Scholarship to homeschool her children, said it’s unreliable, sometimes approving purchases for some families and rejecting the same items for others. She thinks states should focus more on monitoring students’ academic progress than tracking every purchase. 

“It’s stupid in my opinion to micromanage down to like the $20 workbook level,” she said. “Honestly, I think it would be more cost effective to send a quarterly check to families.”

That’s unlikely with such programs constantly under the microscope, and critics, especially in Arizona, pointing to high-end purchases, like , as examples of misuse. The state education department says it takes steps to prevent fraud and has to the attorney general’s office that have . 

West Virginia officials said they’re pleased with Student First’s progress since October, when that delayed orders caused students to fall behind on lessons. Orders are now “generally” processed within two business days, said Assistant Treasurer Carrie Hodousek, and the company has added and trained staff to prepare for peak order times.

Providers like Kaipod have their own concerns. School founders in the network have sometimes gone to the brink of eviction from their leased space because of late tuition payments, said CEO Kumar. 

“There should be a predictable schedule, but sometimes it can take weeks extra to get paid,” he said. “If you’re running a small business and you owe rent, you owe payroll and your state payment is delayed, that creates a huge amount of stress for founders.”

For now, rebidding contracts for vendors is the strongest form of accountability, he said.

“They ought to not feel safe once they’ve won a contract,” he said.

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. 

That stopped me in my tracks. She had seen me on my , where I explore science and technology — and for which I was recently nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Children’s Personality. Zoey had realized her teacher was also a scientist, guiding students through hands-on, real-world science, technology, engineering and mathematics challenges and helping to break down complex topics like microchips, circuits and semiconductors. For Zoey, the possibilities multiplied, with doors to her future opening simultaneously. 

Women engineers are rare. Women scientists are rare. And women of color in those roles are even rarer. , and women of color account for less than 10%. 

Yet across Arkansas and the country, the teacher workforce does not reflect the diversity of America’s classrooms. About . Having even reduces the chance of a Black student dropping out by nearly 40%. Nationally, according to a report released in early December, about 40% of teacher preparation programs aren’t producing graduating classes that are as diverse as their state’s educator workforce. I am a Black teacher, with about 76.5% of my school’s population students of color.

For Zoey to see me as both her teacher and a scientist wasn’t just encouraging — it was expanding what she believes she can be. If education leaders want more students to see themselves as future teachers, engineers, and scientists, they must prioritize attracting and holding onto teachers of color in education. Diversity in teaching and STEM is not just about who stands at the front of the classroom, but about who students believe they can become. Here are some ideas about how to make this happen:

Start recruitment early through real-world science experiences.

When my students watch me test circuits, build models or record for my PBS show, they begin to see what a scientist looks like in action. I bring STEM to life through explorations like mini solar cars and electricity. These moments make science feel reachable. Schools can expand this sort of work by hosting STEM discovery weeks, funding afterschool clubs and highlighting diverse scientists. Early exposure is the first step to diversifying who enters the field.

Invest in future teachers by nurturing leadership in the classroom.

Representation begins with visibility, and teaching must be seen as a form of leadership. When I see a student helping a classmate, I say, “You just taught that.” For example, during a circuits lesson, one student finished his project early and helped a classmate whose lightbulb wouldn’t turn on; he realized that the switch was not connected to the wire and showed his friend how to fix it. Moments like that illustrate to students that teaching is influential. I also give my students chances to lead mini-lessons or guide small groups. Schools could build on this by offering “Teacher for a Day” programs and electives that teach aspiring educators about child development, lesson planning and what it means to lead a classroom. These types of experiences plant early seeds for a more diverse generation of educators.

Connect students with local professionals who look like them.

When students meet people who share their background doing meaningful work, it changes what they believe is possible. The look on my students’ faces when they see a woman of color leading a tech project or teaching in a lab says it all, and I often play episodes of Chip Kids for them because seeing a familiar face on the screen doing science projects makes that representation feel real. Districts could partner with universities, nonprofits and businesses to create mentorship programs and speaker networks. When classrooms open their doors to diverse professionals, students gain both knowledge and belonging.

That morning meeting moment is one I will never forget. Zoey did not just share a dream — she saw herself in me. Because of that, her world of possibilities grew bigger. 

If schools are serious about preparing students for college, career and life, they must be equally serious about teacher diversity. Education leaders must invest in recruitment pipelines and ensure that all children can look at their teacher and think, “That could be me someday.” Representation is the spark that ignites a lifetime of possibility.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Arkansas Department of Agriculture announced a farm-to-table program Thursday for Arkansas schools that will provide meals to students using ingredients raised or grown in-state.

Called the Arkansas Plate Initiative, it will start as a pilot program in five schools in 2026, a from Sanders’ office said.

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“Arkansas students deserve access to healthy, nutritious foods at school, and the Arkansas Plate Initiative shows meaningful progress in our effort to improve child nutrition and support our farmers and producers across the state,” Sanders said in the release. “Not only will this program give students access to fresh, locally sourced products, but it will also teach them about Arkansas’ largest industry and what it takes to keep it.”

Starting in January, the program will feature “monthly ‘Arkansas Plate Days,’” with school cafeterias serving meals using Arkansas-grown foodstuffs such as poultry and rice, and fruits and vegetables.

Participating schools will also “receive educational materials, promotional signage, and ‘Meet the Farmer’ profiles to help students discover more about where their food comes from and learn the importance of supporting Arkansas agriculture,” according to the release.

The program appears to be similar to the federally-funded Farm to School and Local Food Purchase Assistance programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The latter program also helps local schools purchase locally-sourced ingredients for school meals. It faced sweeping cutbacks in the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term, despite support from state agriculture commissioners,

The Arkansas Department of Agriculture did not respond to questions regarding the new initiatives’ relation to federal school meal programs nor about how the initiative would be funded.

The new initiative is the latest in a series of nutrition-related moves made by the Sanders administration and state legislators this year. After signing the bipartisan Act 123 of 2025, which provides free school breakfasts to all Arkansas students, earlier this year, Sanders also that the Department of Corrections would provide produce harvested by incarcerated individuals to the Marion School District for breakfasts and lunches.

The announcement also comes at a time of precarity for Arkansas’ agriculture industry, which is heavily reliant on commodity farming. Commodity farmers are facing some of the worst market conditions in years as prices for commodities drop and the costs of producing continue to rise.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Ten Commandments posters be removed from Lakeside School District, two days after he permitted the Garland County district to be added to a lawsuit challenging a new state law requiring the displays.

Following passage of this spring, public schools are now required to “prominently” display a “historical representation” of the Ten Commandments in classrooms and libraries. The posters must be donated or bought with funds from voluntary contributions. The law also requires them to be displayed in public colleges and universities and other public buildings maintained by taxpayer funds.

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Seven Northwest Arkansas families of various religious and nonreligious backgrounds in June challenging the constitutionality of the statute. The families allege the state law violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and its Free Exercise Clause, which guarantees that “Congress shall make no law 
 prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].”

Supporters of the law have argued the tenets have historical significance because they influenced the country’s founders in creating the nation’s laws and legal system.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks in August that blocked implementation of the statute in four districts — Bentonville, Fayetteville, Siloam Springs and Springdale.

Brooks later allowed the Conway School District as a defendant and district families as plaintiffs. He also Ten Commandments posters be removed from the district’s schools and a temporary restraining order against the district into a preliminary injunction.

A temporary restraining order temporarily halts an action and may be issued immediately, without informing all parties and without holding a hearing. It’s intended to last until a court holds a hearing on whether to grant a preliminary injunction, according to .

After Brooks Wednesday to add Lakeside School District as a defendant and Christine Benson and her minor child as plaintiffs in the case, attorneys for the plaintiffs filed a for a temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction on Thursday.

Brooks granted the temporary restraining order Friday and held the preliminary injunction in abeyance. He also temporarily blocked Lakeside from complying with the law and ordered the district to remove Ten Commandments displays from its schools by 5 p.m. Monday.

“A temporary restraining order should issue as to Lakeside School District No. 9,” Brooks wrote in Friday’s . “Lakeside Plaintiffs are identically situated to the original Plaintiffs: They advance the same legal arguments, assert the same constitutional injuries, and request the same relief.”

Defendants and the attorney general’s office, which intervened in the case, have until Nov. 3 to submit briefs to address why the existing preliminary injunction should not be modified to include Lakeside School District as a defendant, according to Friday’s order.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

A recent college graduate from Kansas, Phipps chose the district, which is about 45 miles east of Denver, because of an unusual job perk: housing for school staff. The district-owned apartments offer monthly rent starting at $200. Phipps, who still lives in the apartments with his wife and infant son, said it’s a main reason he’s remained in the district.

Affordable educator housing has existed for decades, especially in remote school districts like Byers. But teachers are increasingly getting priced out of the communities they work in — causing them to seek employment elsewhere or avoid jobs in high-priced metro areas. To combat this issue, nonprofits and school districts across the nation — in states including Colorado, Arkansas, California, New Mexico and Kansas — are pursuing teacher housing projects to improve educator retention.

For example, rent for a one-bedroom apartment at a for San Francisco Unified staff starts at $1,183 per month, in a district where this year is $79,468 and similar rentals go for around $3,000 or more. First-year Kansas City educators who make a $48,150 can pay $600 to $900 a month to share a duplex with other teachers. Nearby monthly rents start at $1,000. San Francisco tenants are selected through a lottery system, but many other housing projects prioritize new teachers and have waiting lists.

Between 2019 and 2025, housing costs increased by roughly 50% on average, outpacing the average 24% growth in entry-level teacher salaries, according to a .

“Until all teachers can reliably afford basic necessities like housing, the challenges of attracting and retaining a diverse, high-quality teacher workforce will likely persist,” the report said.

‘I don’t have much turnover’

Phipps interviewed with multiple Colorado districts, including one that paid more than what Byers was offering. But he liked the high school social studies job in Byers the most because of the school community and low-cost housing. Rental units are scarce in the district, with monthly payments starting around $1,400 — a high price tag for Phipps’ $50,738 salary. Having a boss who was also his landlord wasn’t an issue, he said.

“The demand and prices of housing — especially rent — is very high out here,” he said. “I don’t know if I would have moved out to Colorado without this teacher housing. I didn’t know what was going to be do-able with my teacher salary straight out of college.”

The Byers school district has owned staff housing since the 1960s. It has 10 apartments and two houses — all occupied, with a waiting list. Superintendent Tom Trudell said the rent pays for occasional renovations or repairs. Housing has always been part of the district’s strategy to attract and retain teachers, he said, and it allows them to save money to eventually buy a house of their own.

“There’s a kind of a bond that builds between [me and my tenants], because if they’re quality employees, they’re typically not going anywhere,” he said. “So I don’t have much turnover.”

In the Vilas School District in southeastern Colorado, Superintendent Abby Pettinger is the landlord for 11 rental homes that house eight single school staff members and one family with children. Two units are vacant. The homes have become outdated because the district lacks money for repairs and remodels.

“It’s really hard to be somebody’s landlord and be their boss,” she said. “We wanted [the units] to be an asset for our staff, but I wish that we could be at a point that it could be self-sustaining. We’re not at that point.”

Some teacher housing complexes are owned and managed by local nonprofits rather than the school district. That’s the case for Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs. An organization called We Fortify is raising $6 million for that consist of 325-square-foot tiny homes. Rent will start at $825 per month. 

Construction has already begun, and teachers will begin to move in next summer, said district spokesperson Christine O’Brien. 

“We did poll all of our staff before we 
 started designing the idea for the village,” she said. “We could have filled five villages with just our initial interest.”

District plans don’t always come through

Of the 12 teacher housing developments in California, seven have popped up in just the last three years, according to a from the Center for Cities and School at the University of California-Berkeley.

“Generally, recruitment has become more and more challenging, so districts are motivated to look for other ways to enhance their ability to recruit staff,” said Sara Hinkley, the center’s program manager. “High costs of housing have become pretty entrenched. And then most states are experiencing declining enrollment, which means there are more properties available.”

The Santa Clara Unified School District was the first in the state to complete a teacher housing project, in 2002. This year, three developments for multiple school districts opened in Silicon Valley, in , and . Educators in Mountain View and Palo Alto were offered free rent as an incentive to move in.

Building affordable teacher housing can be a rocky process, especially if schools or nonprofits run into problems with city zoning laws, insufficient funding or a lack of community support. It to build modern, five-story apartment buildings for San Francisco Unified teachers because of housing density concerns and other issues. And once the lottery opened, some teacher applications .

In 2021, California’s Oakland Unified School District for future teacher housing. The apartments have yet to be built. The project hasn’t received enough funding, and union members have to focus first on raising wages.

“We’ve definitely seen districts realize that what they want to do isn’t going to be financially feasible,” Hinkley said. “They may get as far as choosing a parcel of land, coming up with an idea of what they want to build and [find out] that they are going to have to charge rent that’s way too high in order to make the project work.”

Rural schools in New Mexico have access to , but larger districts like Sante Fe Public Schools don’t qualify. In recent years, the in funding for a 40-unit housing complex project, but that was well below the needed $15 million. Now, Santa Fe is trying to fund it through a .

An initiative in Bentonville, Arkansas, stalled last year when a rezoning request to turn school district property into 40 cottages for low-income staff. The Bentonville School District had next to its high school to the Excellerate Foundation, a local nonprofit that was funding the $35 million housing project. 

Superintendent Debbie Jones said she thought it was the end of a project she had worked on since 2021, when Bentonville began to lose newly hired educators who couldn’t afford to live in the district. But then the foundation included the teacher housing plans in a that’s slated to open in 2026. Two-bedroom cottages will cost $1,000 a month.

“It’s actually better than our original plan because they have built in a 3,000-square-foot child care center that we will run and it serves the families in that neighborhood,” she said.

Giving new teachers a boost with education and a home

The housing projects for the Bentonville and Harrison school districts have guidelines to allow low-income young staffers like new teachers or paraprofessionals to qualify. Residents also have a time limit for staying in the housing. For Bentonville, educators have to move out after five years. In the Harrison district, the maximum is three years.

In both, residents are required to participate in financial management classes that are designed to help them prepare to move out. In Bentonville, staffers can pay an extra $500 a month in rent as part of a program that will give tenants $50,000 toward their next house.

Kelly Davis, president of the Bentonville Education Association, said young teachers in the district are getting excited for the development to open because monthly rent costs anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000.

“When I came to the district back in 2003, I couldn’t afford to live here. I still don’t live in Bentonville,” he said. “They are trying very hard to make sure that the lowest-paid people in the district have a place to live, so that they don’t have to leave the community.”

Kansas City has a similar housing project that not only provides financial education, but helps college graduates get their first teaching job.

In 2020, Trinity Davis left her post as assistant superintendent of Kansas City Public Schools and founded to increase the number of local Black educators. A by the University of Missouri-Kansas City reported the metro area had more than 53,000 Black students but fewer than 1,200 Black teachers.

Teachers Like Me recruits recent college graduates by securing them a job in one of eight partner Kansas City school districts while also providing low-cost housing. School districts pay the organization $15,000 for every educator they receive through the process. The nonprofit has three homes and is in the process of building seven more to create a duplex neighborhood. 

“Suburban districts that don’t have any teachers of color are coming to us to say, ‘Hey, can you help us recruit some Black teachers?’” Davis said. “I have an elementary school where the fourth-grade, fifth-grade and sixth-grade teachers are all Teachers Like Me [participants]. They’re like a family and they live together.”

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Arkansas Department of Education announced Tuesday that 4,200 educators qualified for bonuses under the Learns Merit Teacher Incentive Fund Program, which launched in 2023 as part of a major education reform bill. Roughly 3,000 educators received checks during the program’s first year.

“It’s neat to see how surprised [teachers] are, because they think that everybody’s working just as hard as they are, and that all the students are learning as much as their students,” said Jacob Oliva, Arkansas’ secretary of education. “It’s a special moment to really celebrate some of the best of the best.”

This year’s from the state is meant to incentivize, recruit and retain high-performing educators while reducing staff shortages, according to the department. But the state’s largest teachers union says too many educators are left out of the running for the annual salary boost.

To be eligible, educators have to meet a complex , including having three years of experience and either spending 70% of their time in the classroom or working as a librarian or school counselor.

Classroom teachers have to demonstrate growth in their students’ state test results and be ranked as effective or higher in the Arkansas Teacher Excellence and Support System, based on district of factors like quality of instruction, classroom environment and student engagement.

Educators who don’t have student state assessment data — such as those specializing in subjects not tested, like fine arts — have to be rated highly effective. 

Finally, qualifying teachers must rank in the top 25% of student growth scores, based on a three-year average of English language arts, math or science state tests; teach in a critical shortage area; or mentor college students to become teachers.

Bonus amounts depend on which criteria educators meet. A teacher can receive $9,000 for ranking in the top 1% in student growth, while a counselor could receive $1,500 for working in a geographic shortage area. Bonuses can reach $10,000.

But April Reisma, president of the Arkansas Education Association, said many high-performing teachers are left out. 

“I’m a special education teacher. One time in my life I’ve had a student that hit ‘exceeding’ on that test,” she said. “I’ve been a great teacher, and I’ve consistently got [highly effective] on my test evaluations, but I may or may not get that bonus, depending on whether or not my kids had a great day. It’s all based on a test at the end of the year for that growth. The results of one test are not an accurate indicator of how a student is performing.”

The that created the merit pay program also eliminated bonuses for national board certified teachers, a recognition that educators can receive after meeting rigorous standards. Reisma said certified teachers used to receive annual bonuses of $10,000, but those dwindled to $2,500 by the end of last year.

Lawmakers and state officials have said the bonus program’s many qualifications were intended to reward, retain and recruit educators who have a significant impact, such as producing outstanding student growth, teaching in short-staffed schools and mentoring future teachers.

“The program is designed to target those specific things, and from my perspective, has done a good job of providing significant additional compensation in those areas, and is likely to improve recruitment and retention across all three of those areas,” said Josh McGee, a professor with the University of Arkansas Office for Education Policy. The university is partnering with the state to implement the program.

The effectiveness of performance-based pay has varied over the years, with lacking in impact and producing positive results.

While Arkansas’ program is state-funded, the federal government has awarded to school districts for nearly two decades. , , and , have implemented performance pay programs over the years with mixed results.

Federal funding for teacher incentives was with the Trump administration’s efforts to scrap diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The university will conduct research on the Arkansas program’s effectiveness in the coming years. McGee said an initial analysis will most likely take place in the fall, but an overall study won’t happen for a few years.

Even with her expertise, she still appreciates the support she gets through a University of Arkansas-run network. With funding from a federal grant, 250 participants from across the state work on increasing and for delays in speech, motor or social skills. 

“We try to catch those things early,” said Eichler. The network helped her become nationally accredited and now she’s one of the top-ranked providers in Arkansas. “The better we get, the better our kids get. It’s a win-win for our state.”

But President Donald Trump now wants to eliminate the funding that paid for that network and similar projects nationwide. Launched in 2014 during the Obama administration, were intended to expand pre-K for 4-year-olds from low-income families. During his first term, Trump significantly the grants into what Katharine Stevens, an early-childhood policy expert, described as a “conservative-friendly” effort to promote parent choice and put decisions about improving early learning in the hands of states.

The funds benefit kids from birth to age 5, not just pre-K students. That’s why it’s hard for her to understand Trump’s reason for eliminating them. 

“I sympathize with people who are feeling like the federal government has just grown way out of control,” said Stevens, founder and president of the Center on Child and Family Policy, a right-leaning early childhood think tank. But the grants, she said, have delivered “a lot of bang for the buck” by making it easier for parents to find high-quality programs. “Just doesn’t make sense to end it.” 

Despite his first-term goal of allowing states to take the lead, Trump wants to cut the program because it doesn’t increase the supply of preschool slots. The would save $539 million. Rachel Greszler, a senior research fellow at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, whose has guided much of the president’s second term, said the funding falls short because child care and early education programs don’t meet the demand. 

“These taxpayer dollars have primarily gone towards the planning and administrative side of preschool — things like ‘identifying needs’ and ‘engaging stakeholders,’ ” she said. “What’s needed most is more child care providers and more slots for children.”

The grant program might result in or incentive payments for providers, but doesn’t necessarily bring new teachers into the field, she said.  

In an earlier , the Trump administration pinned its objections on former President Joe Biden’s use of the “unproductive funds” to “push [diversity, equity and inclusion] on to toddlers.” As an example, a brief paragraph points to Minnesota, which listed DEI buzzwords like “racial equity” and “intersectionality” as for the grant in 2021. 

But many of the grants have gone to red states like Alabama, Florida and Idaho that have used the money to keep parents in the workforce and of early care and education programs, including Head Start.

Last October, 10 states and the District of Columbia received a , totaling $87 million over three years. One grantee, Kansas, is set to receive $21 million. In keeping with the to reduce regulations, the to speed up the fingerprinting process for staff and streamline applications for extra funding.

Minnesota intends to use its $24 million to support , family engagement efforts and salaries for early-childhood mental health professionals. The goals that the administration labeled DEI are not for classroom activities, said Anna Kurth, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Education, but to help children from low-income families gain access to services. 

As Congress debates next year’s budget, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, ranking Democrat on the and a former preschool teacher, said she hopes the grants continue. 

“President Trump talks a lot about parental choice, and here he is pushing to ax investments to expand families’ child care and pre-K options,” she said in a statement to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “Congress has got to reject these cuts, and I’ll be doing everything I can to ensure we do.”

It’s unclear whether Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who chairs the committee, agrees with the president’s budget plan. But in announcing a Preschool Development Grant in 2023, she said it would “build an educational foundation for Maine children that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.”

‘Shore it up’

Parents have before their children become old enough for school, including long waitlists for good programs and costs that are often out of reach. Providers face their own financial obstacles. They’re compared to those in professions requiring similar training, and over 40% depend on and other public assistance programs to get by.

Stanford University’s , which has captured the impact of the pandemic on families and the workforce, shows that the percentage of early education providers struggling to afford at least one basic need increased in 2022 and was still high in 2024. 

Eliminating the grants won’t solve those problems, said Philip Fisher, who directs the Stanford Center on Early Childhood and founded the survey.

“If you think about a market that’s teetering on the edge of collapse, resources that go into that market are going to help shore it up,” he said. “This may not directly put money into the pockets of providers or parents to pay for care, but it creates a more efficient system and enhances quality — a huge issue for a lot of parents.”

States have used the funds to address some of those challenges and to encourage early education leaders from school districts, child care centers and faith-based programs to tackle them together.

With a for 4-year-olds already in place, used its roughly $48 million in federal grants to coach child care providers, help teachers get bachelor’s degrees and improve transitions for kids into kindergarten.

The University of Arkansas spent the it received in 2023 to improve quality in rural areas, like Eichler’s town of Romance, about 45 miles north of Little Rock. 

“Large centers just aren’t viable in some of our communities,” said Kathy Pillow-Price, director of Early Care and Education Projects at the university. “Family child care providers really support us and our workforce.” 

‘Private and faith-based’

With advocates concerned about the future of Head Start, which the administration initially proposed to eliminate, the fate of the Preschool Development Grants has received less attention. 

Trump’s budget, released May 30, preserves Head Start — rejecting, for now, a Project 2025 to end it. The document didn’t specifically cite Preschool Development Grants, but it called for shifting more child care funding toward . Trump’s Jan. 29 on school choice echoed that theme by calling for families to use their child care subsidies for“private and faith-based options.”

But experts say the grants have already met those expectations. As in Arkansas, Idaho used its funds to support the growth of licensed in “child care deserts,” like rural areas. Leaders also offered providers training in business practices. 

Christian and other religious early-childhood programs have been among those benefiting from the federal money. According to a , “faith-based entities” were among the new partners in 2019 participating in state and local efforts to improve services. 

The grant program has been a boon to member schools by supporting quality improvements and training opportunities for staff, said Althea Penn, director of early education for the Association of Christian Schools International. 

Stevens, with the Center on Child and Family Policy, remembers how the goals of the program from primarily expanding pre-K during the Obama years to encouraging states to identify their own priorities under Trump. 

“We need state-level innovation,” she said. “That is the entire purpose of these grants.”

Consider the Grinch, agonizing over what to wear to the Whoville Christmas Party while masking deep-seated anxiety about socializing with those who once rejected him. Or Bruce Banner, the Hulk, whose green skin manifests his rage and pain, transforming him into a destructive force that mirrors the internal battles many of us face. These common tales with ostracized beings encourage us to hold hands and dance metaphorically with what we do not understand.

It is for everyone’s benefit when students bear witness to tales of resilience in the face of ignorance. Students need to understand what it means to be
 green. 

I teach Frankenstein, a novel about a creature abandoned and misunderstood. Over time, popular culture has leaned into “greenifying” the monster, a color choice that raises an interesting question: Does the green hue signify his villainy, marking him as an unnatural horror? Or does it symbolize his status as an outcast, someone more misunderstood than monstrous? Who is the real monster: the creature, a grotesque replica of man, or the creator who neglects his own Adam, ashamed of what he has made? 

My high school students discuss the complexity of true villainy and examine the ripple effects of both empathy and neglect. Through this lens, the creature exists as a symbolic “other” in society upon his rejection, his green skin becoming a visual cue for alienation. My students begin to consider the ripple effect of compassion — or lack thereof.

I want my students to remember these tales and see the “green” as an opportunity — not to vilify those who are different, but to understand them. The state standards for my Arkansas high schoolers require us to examine characterization, the impact of setting on a character’s development, and the thematic lessons found in these struggles. These are common ELA standards across most states, and they naturally lend themselves to discussions about character flaws and the ability to overcome adversity regardless of one’s background or setbacks. 

I relish this task, often prompting students to reflect on their own trials — times they have felt misunderstood or out of place — so they can connect more deeply with the characters’ turmoil and triumphs. Every day in my classroom, I must remember this too: Uniqueness is to be cherished. A world filled with people who look, think, and live differently is not just a good world, it’s a better one, despite all attempts to stifle the humanity hidden beneath. 

The misunderstood characters in history and literature, green or otherwise, are often the change-makers, pushing forward social progress and widening the acceptable use instructions for being human. My teachers praised the Susan B. Anthonys, the Rosa Parks, the Elie Wiesels for existing in spaces of “different” and pushing against the status quo. 

These figures weren’t just rebels; they were visionaries whose very existence challenged the world to be better. While their skin doesn’t shine emerald in the sun, their differences make them stand out in their respective stories, forcing society to confront its own limitations, expanding our collective capacity for empathy. 

As a child, I loved stories like Charlotte’s Web, The Lorax, and Matilda, where characters overcome bleak societal adversity, their victories rooted not in brute strength but in the quiet, persistent force of understanding: Wilbur is spared because of Fern’s unwavering belief that his life has value. Matilda, dismissed as insignificant, finds empowerment through the kindness and intellect of a good teacher. These narratives teach that empathy isn’t just a virtue—it’s a catalyst for transformation. 

When my students read about Dr. Frankenstein’s creature or discuss real-world figures who were cast aside, they begin to see how otherness isn’t a curse but often a call to change the world — and empathy begins to bloom. Through these tales of the “other,” students learn how to embrace their differences.

Just as the “Wicked Witch” has a story worth hearing, teachers and students cannot shy away from narratives of otherness out of fear. Moving toward understanding the “green” in others helps dismantle the walls of misunderstanding and build a future rooted in compassion, not the harsh divisions that too often define our landscape. It is important now, more than ever, to work hard to see the goodness in others despite our differences. After all, what is truly “wicked” about being green?

Last September, the CEO of a company handling online payments for West Virginia’s private school choice program promised not to seek additional business until he fixed technical glitches that led to a huge backlog of orders.

“Student First Technologies has assured us that they will not pursue contracts with additional states until the issues and challenges we’re experiencing here in West Virginia are resolved. That’s a commitment,” said former Treasurer Riley Moore. His comments came during a board meeting devoted to the state’s Hope Scholarship, an education savings account program that pays for private school tuition and homeschooling.

Well into the current school year, over 3,000 orders were unfulfilled, forcing parents to pay out of pocket for books, tech equipment and services that the state promised to provide. Some families couldn’t even download Theodore, the company’s payment platform. 

Four months later, some parents using the Hope Scholarship say not much has changed. They still complain of poor customer service and purchases that are approved for some families, but not others.

“From a parent perspective, performance has not improved significantly,” said Katie Switzer, a mother of five who shared concerns with the state last summer. 

In January, others posted complaints on Google’s webstore, where parents can access the payment platform. “Please go back to last year’s system. I still cannot access 
 TheoPay,” one parent wrote. Another said, “I’ve scanned the cart at least 100 times and the same sentence pops up every time, ‘Something unexpected happened, please resubmit your cart.’ ”

Despite its promise to West Virginia, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ has learned that the Indiana-based company has been pushing to expand. In late fall, Student First submitted an unsuccessful proposal to handle expenditures for .

Now the company could be in the running to manage a statewide ESA program in Tennessee, a prize that would mark a turnaround for a newer player in what has become a . Student First already manages for about 2,000 students in the Memphis, Nashville and Chattanooga areas. passed last month would take the program statewide, where it would serve roughly 20,000 students. 

The potential for growth, however, raises questions over whether Student First, which lost a $15 million contract to run Arkansas’ ESA program because it failed to deliver on its promises, can meet the demand. 

‘Evolving very quickly’

The Tennessee governor’s office won’t say for sure whether it plans to hold a competitive bidding process. Elizabeth Lane Johnson, the governor’s press secretary, told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Tuesday that the state Board of Education will first have to write rules for the expanded program. 

She added that officials have “met with a number of experienced vendors to learn how other states have implemented universal school choice programs successfully.” 

Last November, Lee met with , a leader in the industry, at a conference in Oklahoma City, The Tennessean reported. But Mark Duran, Student First’s CEO, said the situation in Tennessee is “still unfolding” and that he hopes to continue serving the state. 

Some observers say it would be unusual for the education department not to open the process up to other bids.

“The technology is evolving very quickly,” said Jim Blew, a former U.S. Department of Education official and ESA advocate who later advised ClassWallet. “I would be really surprised if they don’t open it up to a new competition. They’re scaling up; they’re going universal.”

If get their way, red states won’t be the only ones with universal voucher programs. They’ve reintroduced a bill in Congress to create a nationwide tax credit scholarship program. And while details have yet to emerge, President Donald Trump directed the Department of Education to use grant funds to prioritize private school choice.

“We have millions of students right now who live under some sort of school choice program,” KellyAnne Conway, a counselor to the president in his first term, said . “We know it’s effective.” 

The West Virginia treasurer’s office did not answer questions about whether Student First has caught up with its backlog of orders. But Duran told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ â€œa lot has changed” since last fall. 

That’s when Arkansas fined Student First over $500,000 because of delays in delivering a “fully operational” platform. In an canceling the contract, Education Secretary Jacob Oliva told Duran that processing delays meant that students, families and vendors were receiving “service below the standard to which they were entitled.” At the same time, homeschooling parents in West Virginia couldn’t order curriculum, equipment and school supplies for their kids because of problems with the company’s payment system. 

A hold-up in funding can be a major setback for small businesses trying to establish themselves in the market. 

When Student First still operated in Arkansas, Lauren McDaniel-Carter waited seven weeks after the school year started before her microschool ACRES received payments totaling about $23,000. All but three of the 26 students she serves at her home in northeast Arkansas participated in the state’s Education Freedom Account program. She had to take out a $50,000 loan to run the school and pay her small staff. 

‘Larger and more numerous’

The state replaced Student First with , which held the contract during the program’s first year.

Duran, Student First’s CEO, did not respond to specific questions about the status of orders in West Virginia, but said his team seeks to “constantly improve our operations.” 

“Momentum remains strong,” he said. “We’ve grown and are ready for even more growth.” 

The company now has over 35 staff members and recently hired Andrew Nelms, formerly with school choice advocacy group Yes. Every Kid, as its new head of government affairs. Other include a vice president of operations, a software engineer and a “customer success” director. 

The additional personnel, Duran said, will allow the company to “support larger and more numerous programs across the country.” 

An entrepreneur, Duran grew up in northern Michigan where his mother taught him while building a large network of homeschooling families. The flexibility, he said, allowed him to spend time with his dad, a homebuilder, and sparked his business career.

He got his start in the private school choice sector in Indiana when he teamed up with a friend who built a software platform for managing donations to tax credit scholarship programs. 

Indiana “education freedom policy folks” encouraged them to break into the ESA market, he said. He was further inspired after attending a 2020 ExcelinEd conference in Florida, where he mingled with voucher advocates who saw the pandemic’s disruption as an opportunity to expand private school choice. 

“We saw a bigger picture,” he said. Among lawmakers there was a “big push to unlock more money 
 to send to families through these different programs.” 

A dozen state leaders, all from Republican-led states, wrote to Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s education secretary nominee, last week asking her to push for greater state control over federal education funds and to avoid issuing guidance they say is “not anchored in law.”

In the Jan. 28 letter, shared exclusively with ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, they also want McMahon, former head of World Wrestling Entertainment, to send large buckets of funding for schools, like Title I money for low-income students, as a block grant. But they stopped short of stating support for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education — President Donald Trump’s top education policy goal. 

“By prioritizing state leadership and flexibility, the Trump administration can unleash the full potential of America’s schools and students,” they wrote. “Please defer to state and local decision-making as much as possible.”

The letter outlines conservative chiefs’ priorities as Trump takes aggressive steps to reshape the federal role in education. He frequently to “send education back to the states” and is expected to issue an executive order before the end of the month that would call on Congress to close the department.

The memo offers specifics that have been lacking in many discussions over how the relationship between the federal government and the states might change. But some experts wonder if the freedom GOP leaders seek will leave high-need students without services currently provided under law. Madi Biedermann, a department spokeswoman, confirmed they’d received the letter, but said officials wouldn’t share it with McMahon until she’s confirmed. 

The 12 leaders who penned the letter, both elected and appointed, are from Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. 

Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters was not among them, despite the fact that he has been the most vocal about and at one point, threatened to . 

The proposals should provide additional talking points for committee members during McMahon’s confirmation hearing Feb. 13. While it would require congressional approval, the chiefs want to see the of funding under the Every Student Succeeds Act — like Title I and Title III for English learners — consolidated into a single block grant for “maximum flexibility.” 

They want to design their own formulas for distributing the money to districts so they can address the needs of rural areas, for example, and state-specific learning initiatives. In the meantime, they want the new secretary to grant as many waivers as possible from the accountability requirements of the law so they can “present new ideas” for how to spend the money.

‘Dilute the protections’

Rebecca Sibilia, executive director of EdFund, a research and policy organization, said she wasn’t surprised that the chiefs didn’t advocate eliminating the education department outright. Many of their states on federal funds and spend less state money on schools. The department, she said, is doing those states “a great service.”

While some state leaders might view the federal requirements as “overly burdensome,” she said their push for more control could come at the expense of students who require extra help, like those in poverty, English learners and homeless students. 

“Once you start blending all of those titles together you start to really dilute the protections that are going to individual students,” she said. 

The letter doesn’t mention the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which under , would move to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“IDEA oversight is giving some people pause,” she said. “That piece of legislation is very specific to education.”

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, say they have “serious concerns” about any attempts to shutter the department. On Thursday, they to Acting Education Secretary Denise Carter asking for more transparency on how the department plans to continue running programs it oversees, like financial aid and afterschool programs.

“We will not stand by and allow the impact that dismantling the Department of Education would have on the nation’s students, parents, borrowers, educators and communities,” they wrote.

In their letter, the state chiefs pushed back on the department’s practice of using “dear colleague” letters to enforce its priorities, which they said have often been “treated as legally binding policy.” Guidance from the department, they said, should merely be a suggestion “so as not to force behavior change.”  

During the Obama administration, for example, Republicans fought guidance that said students should be able to use bathrooms that match their and another that said districts could risk civil rights investigations if Black and Hispanic students were . 

On Wednesday, the Education Department issued stating that it would no longer enforce the Biden administration’s Title IX rule, which extended protections to LGBTQ students, and that any investigations based on the 2024 rule would be “reevaluated.” 

Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he hopes Trump honors the chiefs’ request, but noted the “chaos” that has marked Trump’s first few weeks in office. Trump’s efforts to freeze federal funding have been . And even some have questioned Elon Musk’s authority to gain access to government payment systems and disable an agency that provides foreign aid.

“The ‘pen and phone’ approach, to quote Obama, whipsaws state leaders across administrations and is lousy federal governance,” he said. “My worry is less about the secretary nominee and more about the ‘move fast and break things’ approach we’ve seen so far in many other dimensions of this young administration.”

One thing is clear from the stories that populate this year’s list: Many of America’s schools are still grappling with the academic struggles that followed the pandemic – as well as the end of federal relief funds, which expired this fall. Student enrollments have yet to recover and many districts are facing – or will soon face – tough decisions about closures.

Meanwhile, some educators are testing innovative ways of teaching math, reading and science, hoping to gain back some of the academic ground lost since the COVID shutdowns. Technology is also playing a pivotal role in this post-pandemic world, with communities weighing the impact of cellphones and artificial intelligence on student learning and mental health.

November’s election – which featured debates over school choice, Christianity in public schools and the fate of the Department of Education – also made headlines here at ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. And, as calls for cracking down on immigration grew even louder, we dug deep into the hurdles facing immigrant students and schools. 

Here’s a roundup of our most memorable and impactful stories of the year:

Exclusive: Thousands of Schools at Risk of Closing Due to Enrollment Loss

By Linda Jacobson

Long before districts close schools, enrollment loss takes a toll on staff and families, from combined classes to the loss of afterschool programs. This exclusive analysis by Linda Jacobson, based on Brookings Institution research, found that more than 4,400 schools lost at least one-fifth of their students during the pandemic — more than double the number during the pre-COVID period. The detailed look shows how the crisis is playing out at the school level and which districts face tough decisions about closures and cuts. 

Unwelcome to America’: Hundreds of U.S. High Schools Wrongfully Refused Entry to Older, Immigrant Student

By Jo Napolitano

ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s 16-month-long undercover investigation of school enrollment practices for older immigrant students revealed rampant refusals of teens who had a legal right to attend, shutting a door critical to success in America. Senior reporter Jo Napolitano called 630 high schools in every state and D.C. to test whether they would enroll a 19-year-old Venezuelan newcomer who had limited English language skills and whose education was interrupted after ninth grade. “Hector Guerrero” was turned down more than 300 times, including 204 denials in the 35 states and D.C., where high school attendance goes up to at least age 20. ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s investigation revealed pervasive hostility and suspicion toward these students in a particularly xenophobic era and a deeply arbitrary process determining their access to K-12 education.

Interactive: Which School Districts Do the Best Job of Teaching Kids to Read?

By Chad Aldeman

It’s not news that low-income fourth graders are years behind their higher-income peers in reading. But poverty is not destiny, and some schools and districts hugely outperform expectations. Working with Eamonn Fitzmaurice, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s art and technology director, contributor Chad Aldeman set out to find districts that are beating the odds and successfully teaching kids to read. From Steubenville City, Ohio, to Worcester County, Maryland, and across the country, click on their interactive map to find the highfliers in your state. 

Whistleblower: L.A. Schools’ Chatbot Misused Student Data as Tech Company Crumbled

by Mark Keierleber

In early June, a former top software engineer at ed tech startup, AllHere, warned Los Angeles district officials and others about student data privacy risks associated with the company’s AI chatbot “Ed.” The LA Unified School District had agreed to pay AllHere $6 million for the chatbot and the spring rollout of Ed was highly publicized, with L.A. schools chief Alberto Carvalho calling the chatbot’s student knowledge powers “unprecedented in American public education.” But, as Mark Keierleber reported, red flags soon began to emerge. The company financially imploded and its founder Joanna Smith-Griffin left the company. In November, federal prosecutors indicted her, accusing of defrauding investors of $10 million.

America’s Most Popular Autism Therapy May Not Work — and May Cause Serious Harms

by Beth Hawkins

Today, a child’s new autism diagnosis is frequently followed by a referral to a variation of an intervention called applied behavior analysis, or ABA, and four decades of pressure from parents and advocates has created a sprawling treatment industry. Yet, even as providers and lobbyists jockey to strengthen ABA’s dominance, autistic adults and researchers increasingly say there’s alarmingly little proof it’s effective — and mounting evidence it’s traumatizing. In an exclusive investigation, Beth Hawkins spoke with families, teachers and scholars about the growing controversy surrounding autism’s “gold standard” treatment. 

A Cautionary AI Tale: Why IBM’s Dazzling Watson Supercomputer Made a Lousy Tutor

by Greg Toppo

In 2011, IBM’s Watson supercomputer crushed Jeopardy! champions, raising hopes that it could help create a powerful tutoring system that would rival human teachers. But the visionary at the head of the effort watched as the project fizzled, the victim of AI’s inability to hold students’ attention. As new educational AI contenders like Khanmigo emerge, what lessons can they learn from the past? ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Greg Toppo took a look at how IBM’s failed effort tempers today’s shiny AI promises.

State-by-State, How Segregation Legally Continues 7 Decades Post Brown v. Board

by Marianna McMurdock

Seventy years after the Supreme Court outlawed separating public school children by race, Marianna McMurdock sought to answer a pivotal question: How are some of the most coveted public schools in the U.S. able to legally exclude all but the most privileged families? Last spring, she spoke with researchers at the nonprofits Available to All and Bellwether, which published a report that examined the troubling laws, loopholes and trends that are undermining the legacy of Brown v. Board in each state. The researchers called for urgent legal reform to offset the impact that one’s home address has on enrollment, particularly as many districts have started considering closures.

Being ‘Bad at Math’ Is a Pervasive Concept. Can it Be Banished From Schools?

by Jo Napolitano

Are you bad at math? If you are, it’s likely that self-fulfilling seed got planted early. Many math education leaders are trying to uproot that thinking, arguing that any student can master the subject with the right accommodations and tutoring. Changing the bad-at-math mindset in U.S. schools, however, will not be easy, others warn. “We use math as a means to sort kids by who gets to be at the top and who gets to be at the bottom,” one math equity advocate told Jo Napolitano. 

Hope Rises in Pine Bluff: Saving Schools in America’s Fastest-Shrinking City

by ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Staff

Pine Bluff, Arkansas, earned the unwelcome distinction in the 2020 census of being America’s fastest-shrinking city, losing over 12% of its population in one decade. Amid this exodus of families, students and taxpayers, its school district had to navigate school closures, budget pressures and a state takeover. Throughout last winter, members of ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s newsroom embedded in Pine Bluff to report on the region’s trajectory. Here are some of the powerful stories they came back with: 

Kids, Screen Time & Despair: An Expert in the Economics of Happiness Echoes Psychologists’ Warnings About Tech

By Kevin Mahnken

A prominent economist has joined the growing chorus of experts warning against the dangers posed to youth mental health by screens and social media, reported Kevin Mahnken. New papers released by Dartmouth College professor Danny Blanchflower, a leading expert in the burgeoning field of happiness economics, suggest that the huge increase in screen time over the last decade has made the young more likely to despair than the middle-aged. 

Why Is a Grading System Touted as More Accurate, Equitable So Hard to Implement?

By Amanda Geduld

As educators push for more transparency in grading policies post-pandemic, some are turning to standards-based grading. When done correctly, it separates academic mastery from behavior and more accurately reflects what students know. But misunderstandings of the model, a lack of proper training, and a rush to adopt it often leads to messy implementation. Associate professor Laura Link told Amanda Geduld that as schools look to fix learning gaps, “standards-based grading is one that seems like it can be a quickly adopted effort. But it could backfire — and does backfire — very easily.”

Texas Seeks to Inject Bible Stories into Elementary School Reading Program

by Linda Jacobson

Last May, a sweeping redesign of Texas’ elementary school curriculum that used Bible stories to teach reading was unveiled. At the time, state education Commissioner Mike Morath described the changes as a shift toward a “classical model of education.” But the revisions raised questions about potential religious indoctrination and bias. Nevertheless, in November, the Texas Board of Education approved the new curriculum in a close vote. Linda Jacobson followed the story closely.

The Political War Over the Department of Education Is Only Beginning

By Kevin Mahnken 

Fresh from their November victories, Republicans are already working to help President-elect Donald Trump achieve his promise of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. But research suggests that, while perceptions of the agency are mixed, the public is unlikely to back a sweeping course of elimination. “Saying you’ll get rid of it reads generically as being anti-education,” one political scientist told Kevin Mahnken. “That strikes me as a very heavy albatross to hang around your neck come the midterms.” 

18 Years, $2 Billion: Inside New Orleans’ Biggest School Recovery Effort in History

By Beth Hawkins

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed 110 New Orleans schools. Displaced families could not return until there were classrooms to welcome their kids, but no one had ever tried to rebuild an entire school system. While many of the buildings were moldering even before the storm, federal funds couldn’t be used to build something better. Some of the schools had landmark status and were of great historical significance. Eighteen years and $2 billion later, Beth Hawkins took a look at seven schools that illustrate how the district accomplished the task.

As Ryan Walters’ Right-Wing Star Rose, Critics Say Oklahoma Ed Dept. Fell Apart

By Linda Jacobson

Oklahoma state education chief Republican Ryan Walters has acted as a one-man publicity machine, a performance that’s earned him venomous foes and ardent fans who follow him with a near-religious fervor. But one casualty of his approach might be a functioning state education bureaucracy. Even Republican lawmakers have grown impatient, calling for a probe into how Walters handles state and federal funds. As Rep. Tammy West, a GOP incumbent running for re-election, told reporter Linda Jacobson, “Regardless of party, citizens want transparency, accountability and communication.”

AI ‘Companions’ Are Patient, Funny, Upbeat — and Probably Rewiring Kids Brains

By Greg Toppo

A college student relies on ChatGPT to help him make life decisions, including whether to break up with his girlfriend. Is this a future we feel good about? While AI bots and companions like ChatGPT, Replika and Snapchat’s MyAI, can offer support, comfort and advice, experts are beginning to warn of potential risks. ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Greg Toppo talks to researchers and policy experts about what we should be doing to help make them safer.

Indiana Looks to Swiss Experts to Create Thousands of Student Apprenticeships

By Patrick O’Donnell

Indiana officials have turned to experts at the Swiss version of MIT for help in becoming a national career training leader by making apprenticeships available to thousands of high school students across the state. Indiana is the latest state to work with ETH Zurich — where Albert Einstein once studied — to develop ways to break down barriers between educators and businesses so that career training can be a large part of a reinvented high school experience, reported Patrick O’Donnell. 

Investigation: Nearly 1,000 Native Children Died in Federal Boarding Schools

By Marianna McMurdock 

Nearly 1,000 Native American children died while forced to attend government-affiliated boarding schools, according to a report published last summer by the Interior Department. The children are buried in 74 unmarked and marked graves, reported Marianna McMurdock, as tribes assess repatriation of remains. Nearly 19,000 children were estimated to be kidnapped, often at gunpoint, and enrolled in the schools with the aim of assimilation. “We [were] never called by our name, we were all called by our numbers,” said one survivor. 

The Nation’s Biggest Charter School System Is Under Fire in Los Angeles

By Ben Chapman 

The nation’s largest experiment with charter schools is no longer growing. These days, Los Angeles charter operators say they are just trying to survive. With tough new policies governing co-locations, falling enrollment, and a hostile district school board, charter leaders say they’ve never faced stronger headwinds, reported Ben Chapman. With enrollment plummeting across the district, some charter networks have recently announced closures while others have stopped submitting proposals for new campuses. “Now, particularly in L.A., our focus is not on growing,” said Joanna Belcher, chief impact officer for KIPP SoCal. 

Florida Students Seize on Parental Rights to Stop Educators from Hitting Kids

By Mark Keierleber 

Late last year, Florida senior Brooklynn Daniels was called to the principal’s office and spanked with a wooden paddle “that was thick like a chapter book.” Like in many enclaves that dot the Florida panhandle, Liberty County permits corporal punishment as a form of student discipline. But her flogging, the honors student said, went much further: She alleged sexual assault and filed a police report, reported Mark Keierleber. Daniels joined a student-led movement to change Florida law that has latched onto the GOP-led parental rights movement. 

Interactive: See How Student Achievement Gaps Are Growing in Your State

By Chad Aldeman

In 2012, then-President Barack Obama freed states from the accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind in exchange for reforms related to standards, assessments and teacher evaluations. That relaxing of school and district accountability pressures corresponded with a decline in student performance across the country that is still being felt — achievement gaps are growing across subjects and all across the country. To illustrate these alarming discrepancies, contributor Chad Aldeman and Eamonn Fitzmaurice, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s art and technology director, created an interactive tool that enables you to see what’s happening with student performance in your state.

Left Powerless: Non-English–Speaking Parents Denied Vital Translation Services

by Amanda Geduld

Flouting federal laws, K-12 public schools routinely fail to provide qualified interpreters to non-English-speaking families. Parents must instead rely on Google translate, their own kid or a bilingual staff member who isn’t a trained interpreter for issues as simple as their child’s absence for a day or as complex and intimidating as a special education meeting or a school disciplinary hearing. The problem is pervasive and vastly underreported, experts told Amanda Geduld. School leaders say they are trying their best, but lack the money and staffing to meet the need. 

Failed West Virginia Microschool Fuels State Probe and Some Soul-Searching

By Linda Jacobson

The West Virginia treasurer’s investigation into a microschool, funded with education savings accounts, offers a glimpse into an emerging market that has mushroomed since the pandemic. When the program shut down after a few months, parents were left demanding their money back and scrambling to find other arrangements for their children. The example, experts say, shows that it takes more than good intentions to provide a quality education program. As one parent told Linda Jacobson, “I should have seen the red flags.”

In the Rush to Covid Recovery, Did We Forget About Our Youngest Learners?

by Lauren Camera

The country’s youngest elementary school students suffered steep academic setbacks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic – just like students in older grades. But new research shows that they aren’t catching back up to pre-pandemic levels in reading and math the way older students are. And when it comes to math, many are falling even further behind. “We were shocked when we first saw the data,” Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, told Lauren Camera.

This article was updated on Friday, Nov. 1, 2024 at 4:40 p.m. with comments from the governor’s spokesperson.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders former Little Rock Christian Academy administrator Gary Arnold to the State Board of Education on Friday.

“What I love most about Gary is his passion for education, his belief that every student can learn and his relentless commitment and pursuit of his faith,” Sanders said in a press conference announcing the appointment.

Arnold is an advocate for school choice and was a member of the “rules and regulations task force” the state used to implement the wide-ranging , Sanders said.

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“Through Gary’s careful stewardship, the first school year with Arkansas LEARNS was a huge success, and the second year is shaping up to be even better,” Sanders said.

LEARNS created the Education Freedom Account program, a taxpayer-funded school voucher system that will be available to all Arkansas students in the 2025-26 school year; are participating in the program this year.

Sanders said Arnold will represent the interests of EFA participants during his term on the board, which will expire in 2027. He succeeds Steve Sutton, who stepped down from the board in the middle of his seven-year term.

“The Governor wanted to find the right, experienced addition to the Board of Education who could help put every student on the pathway to success, and that’s exactly what Gary will do,” Sanders’ communications director, Sam Dubke, said when asked why the governor took nearly 11 months to appoint Sutton’s successor.

Arnold is Sanders’ third appointee to the , after and last year. Former Republican state lawmaker Bragg co-authored the LEARNS Act, and Keener participated in a LEARNS work group focused on early childhood education, which is her area of expertise.

The LEARNS Act also raised the state’s minimum annual teacher salary to $50,000 and required literacy screenings for K-12 students.

Arnold praised these and other aspects of the LEARNS Act and said he was honored to accept the appointment and “the responsibility of joining this team.”

He likened working in education to author Mark Twain’s experience as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River in his memoir Life on the Mississippi, which Arnold said he recently reread.

“The most important function and job of the boat pilot is to learn the river, Old Man River, because it changes every day,” Arnold said. “One day the currents will be this way, one day there will be a tree or shoal that wasn’t there before
 Life in the schools changes every day. We just have to learn the river and have that growth mindset.”

Sanders said both Arnold and Education Secretary Jacob Oliva “think deeply and critically about how we can fix the areas of our school system that are broken.”

Arnold was head of school at Little Rock Christian Academy from 2007 to 2023. He is now the Director of Head of School Certification at The Council on Educational Standards and Accountability and the founder of the consulting company NextEd. Both organizations serve Christian schools.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Sen. Breanne Davis, a Russellville Republican to Arkansas’ Senate District 25, was a lead sponsor of the LEARNS Act last year, and her Democratic opponent is using it against her.

The made significant changes to the state education system — chief among them, a school voucher program that has provided Arkansans with what supporters have coined “school choice.” Proponents say the Education Freedom Account program provides financial assistance to students who are struggling in public school and gives parents the option of putting children in private schools or homeschool. Opponents take issue with public dollars being used for private institutions.

Davis’ opponent, , told the Advocate that the LEARNS Act has “been a major setback for public schools, as it has effectively transferred wealth to private institutions.”

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Davis, who entered the Senate in 2018 after winning a special election, was a lead sponsor of the education bill. Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva during committee meetings and fielded questions from her colleagues .

Davis consistently defended components of the and the process in which it was presented, which some lawmakers said was rushed and without much feedback from educators. In a legislative committee meeting last February, Davis said the bill was a historic investment in the state’s education system.

“We believe that every child should have access to a quality education that fits their educational journey,” she said at the time. “We will no longer be defenders of the status quo. We have been failing our children for far too long.”

Justice, a former educator and current stay-at-home mom, said she thought Davis’ “actions should speak for themselves.”

“The additional requirements and oversight on public schools, compared to the lack thereof for privatized options, along with the replacement of key state figures, raise concerns about the true intentions of this bill,” Justice, 39, said. “It appears to prioritize the interests of the wealthy over those of the general public.”

If elected, Justice said she would work on reforms to the LEARNS Act.

Davis did not respond to multiple interview requests for this article.

Other issues

While the LEARNS Act seems to be a prominent point that differentiates Davis and Justice, the candidates have other intrinsic differences in their campaigns to represent Pope and Conway counties.

As a Republican, Davis is included in a strong party supermajority in the state Senate, House of Representatives and the governor’s office. She stands for “pro-gun, pro-life, pro-freedom [and] pro-constitution” policies, according to her website.

Further, Davis’ website notes her support for economic growth, educational choices and less government involvement in everyday life.

Justice referred to Arkansas’ Republican party supermajority as a “dilemma,” and she vowed to focus on food security, equitable job opportunities, increased government transparency and a balance of power if she were elected in November.

“Bills that could help the average person are often voted down or not even brought for consideration, while legislation that caters to special interests of the controlling party is passed, even when it goes against public sentiment,” Justice said in a written statement to the Advocate.

Since 2018, Davis has sponsored a variety of bills ranging from implementing standards for , to the creation of which prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities who need an organ transplant.

Davis has also supported and amendments to through the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

The Republican Party of Arkansas did not respond to an inquiry about Davis’ campaign.

Grant Tennille, chair of the Democratic Party of Arkansas stands behind Justice’s campaign.

“We are energized by candidates like Michelle Justice running in places that have been staunchly conservative for a very long time, and for standing up to politicians who sold out our public schools and want to control our lives,” Tennille said in a statement. “Incumbent MAGA Republican Breanne Davis voted to send the tax dollars of every voter in Senate District 25 to unaccountable private schools and she lied in committee about getting real raises for hourly school staff. She does not deserve reelection, and we are grateful to Michelle for giving voters a choice for a better Arkansas.”

According to , Davis has raised about $20,000 for the general election.

She ran unopposed in the primary and raised nearly $89,000, collecting donations from the state Republican Party; the Huck PAC, former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s political action committee; and “Team SHS,” Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ political action committee.

Justice is listed as a “paper filer” in the secretary of state’s campaign finance database, meaning she has filed no digital campaign disclosure forms, and no reports have been submitted for the general election.

Though possible for a low-budget campaign, a spokesperson from the Arkansas Ethics Commission — which oversees the campaign finance reports — said it was uncommon for a state campaign to not exceed a $500 donation trigger to require a report.

“I refuse to accept donations from wealthy special interests or corporations, as I believe that our democracy should be owned by the people, not the powerful,” Justice said. “While some may seek to bankroll their campaigns or leverage their financial status for political gain, I have made a conscious decision to fund my own campaign.”

Justice is a mother of three. She has a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics and a master’s degree in education from Arkansas Tech University.

Davis has four children — one of whom made her the only lawmaker in Arkansas history to give birth while in office — and previously served on the Russellville School Board of Education. Davis has a bachelor’s degree in speech communication and political science from Ouachita Baptist University.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Two years ago, Katie Switzer for a new school choice program that grants homeschooling families in West Virginia up to $4,900 annually to educate their children.

She was on the winning side when opponents sued to stop the program. But now, she says, the story of the Hope Scholarship has entered a frustrating new chapter. 

Glitches in a new online purchasing system mean she can’t spend funds to order headsets for her three children in online classes. Her kindergartner received the wrong laptop and she spent weeks trying to get a refund. Her kids are among thousands whose learning has been disrupted this school year because orders for curriculum and supplies are backed up. Families have been forced to wait or spend their own money and ask the state for reimbursement. 

“We fought so hard to get this program,” said Switzer, a mother of five and founder of a that has become a forum for dozens of families frustrated with the payment system. “Now we have a number of parents that haven’t received what they ordered.”

In April, the West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office, which runs the Hope Scholarship, awarded a to Indiana-based Student First Technologies to manage purchases and payments to education providers, replacing a non-profit the state contracted with last year. But the system has struggled to keep up as enrollment in the education savings account program jumped from about last year to over 10,000. In late September, almost 3,000 of the 9,000 orders submitted through the company’s platform had not been processed, according to the state. By Thursday, the system had gotten that number down to 1,600 out of 11,300 — or roughly 14% of orders.

Last week, the treasurer’s office held a forum to allow parents to voice their concerns. But Switzer said the meeting was short on hard information.

“I’m like, ‘We want answers; we don’t just want to yell at you,’ ” she said.

Student First’s problems aren’t limited to West Virginia. In a Sept. 16 letter, Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva told CEO Mark Duran that his company failed to meet deadlines, including one for delivering a “fully operational” purchasing platform for homeschool families participating in the state’s Education Freedom Account program. He followed up with a second Tuesday, canceling the company’s contract as of Dec. 31 and requiring Student First to pay an estimated $563,000 in damages. 

On Wednesday, the state also posted a  for another vendor.

“The failure of Student First to perform its obligations under the contract requires the agency to procure a new contract that, based on the circumstances, will increase the cost to operate the same program,” Oliva wrote.

Student First officials have not returned phone calls or emails for this article.

As Republican-led states continue to adopt and expand ESAs, they are building centralized  systems for homeschooling parents to buy curriculum, services and supplies. Controversy surrounding ESAs has largely focused on isolated cases of fraud, including funds for “ghost students” in Arizona and extravagant parent-purchased items and . But school choice advocates argue that one of the biggest threats to the programs is poor customer service, including online platforms that malfunction or block orders for items that should be allowable. 

Parents are complaining about “long approval wait times and issues with getting invoices paid,” said Mike McShane, director of national research at EdChoice, an advocacy group. “It is tough to say whether it is the platforms or the states that are causing the problems. I imagine if you ask the platforms they’ll blame the states, and if you ask the states they’ll blame the platforms.”

The West Virginia treasurer’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Last year, McShane states not to skimp on the “slow, laborious and dull work” of implementation. He called the difficulties “teething pains” as states open programs to more families.

‘Through the roof’

Under ESAs, parents can use their accounts to pay for tuition at private schools, or to fund homeschooling expenses or a mixture of in-person and online learning.

Recent data from and other shows that homeschooling rates remain above pre-pandemic levels. In the 2022-23 school year, nearly 6% of students were homeschooled, compared with 2.8% in 2019. ESAs “will potentially expand homeschooling practice even more.” 

While it’s relatively simple to use ESA funds to pay tuition to a private school, advocates say Student First probably didn’t anticipate the flurry of activity from homeschooling families who often place dozens of orders for curriculum and supplies.

“The demand for these programs has been through the roof,” McShane said. “So scaling up the tech and infrastructure is going to take time.”

Critics, however, argue that such “middleman” vendors are not only causing headaches for families, but raising the costs of running the programs themselves. Iowa, for example, upped its contract with Odyssey, a similar payment company, to reflect additional charges for on purchases.

Josh Cowen, a Michigan State University professor and leading voucher opponent, said it’s typical for states to contract with third-party providers to manage publicly funded programs. But Cowen, who recently published about some of the wealthy donors behind the school choice movement, pointed to a “chronic problem” with vendors running ESA programs, especially as the list of allowable items grows.

“I think that the burden should be even higher on states authorizing vendors to explain why we need them and why they’re worth the cost,” he said. 

Arkansas, where the ESA program provides $6,800 per student, awarded a to Student First in April, replacing ClassWallet, the largest company in the sector, with contracts in 11 states. 

The program began in 2023-24, but this is the first year some homeschoolers can participate, including the children of first responders, servicemembers and those in failing schools.

“Not all homeschool families are eligible this year, and it’s really a good thing” given the processing delays, said Lisa Crook, director of Education Alliance, a network of Arkansas homeschooling families. Parents are calling her for answers, but she said the state is reimbursing expenses as fast as it can. “It has been frustrating, but I don’t feel like they have turned a blind eye to us or anything.”

The West Virginia treasurer’s office has also created some temporary workarounds. In a Sept. 23 email, the state said it would reimburse families that had to pay up front for expensive items like school uniforms and musical instruments. But advocates note that not all families can afford to pay for items out of pocket and wait for reimbursements.

In addition to the backlog of orders, Student First’s “TheoPay” platform, for now, only works as an extension to Chrome — a violation of its the program to work across multiple browsers and be mobile-friendly. 

Switzer said parents who lack Chrome or home internet service have come to her house to place orders. 

“This is a high-poverty state,” she said. “Parents can’t use their phones [to place orders] or they can’t use the local library computer to order stuff because you can’t install the Chrome extension on a library computer.”

As director of education partnerships and strategy at the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy, a right-leaning think tank, Tiffany Hoben is an advocate for ESAs. 

She also has an 11-year-old son on a Hope Scholarship. She uses the funds to purchase science, math, and reading materials from different vendors and to pay for tutors. Student First’s website promises “frictionless technology.” But the system is blocking orders for some parents while green-lighting purchases from other families for identical items.

“It’s hard for families,” she said. “It’s like, ‘Well, dang it, I should be able to have this because it’s on the list.’ ”

‘In the dark’

Most states with ESA programs have had some challenges with their payment systems. But in Arizona, which contracts with ClassWallet, many of the kinks have been worked out, said Kathy Visser, who runs a Facebook group for ESA parents. If there are delays with approvals, it’s usually due to a backlog at the state level or because officials have changed the rules about what’s allowed. 

“For the most part, if you contact ClassWallet with an issue, they’re very responsive,” she said. “And if it’s their fault that you had an issue, it’s quickly resolved.”

She worries that problems with vendors in other states will bolster critics’ arguments that ESA’s drain state resources.  

“They’ll say, ‘Look, you can’t even manage the programs,’ ” she said. “They want to make sure parents quit using it. If parents get fed up, then the program fails.”

Hoben, with Cardinal Institute, said in the rush to get West Virginia’s purchasing system in place, families have been kept “in the dark” about why their orders aren’t being processed. 

“Other states,” she said, “are watching us out of the corner of their eye, like ‘God do we even want to mess with this?’ ” 

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin filed a Monday against Google, YouTube and their parent companies, accusing the digital behemoths of intentionally targeting children with addictive and harmful content.

The complaint, filed in Phillips County Circuit Court, is the latest in state officials’ ongoing efforts to regulate social media’s impact on minors, such as a 2023 currently .

Griffin’s 40-page suit alleges that YouTube “amplifies harmful material, doses users with dopamine hits, and drives youth engagement and advertising revenue” through its many programs, including the youth-oriented YouTube Kids. The platform takes advantage of the “undeveloped capacity for self-regulation” in minors’ still-developing brains, making them “particularly vulnerable to chasing the stimuli of social media, e.g. YouTube notifications and ‘likes,’” the complaint states.

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“YouTube’s addictive power over Arkansas youth is devastating and has resulted in the State of Arkansas being forced to pour millions of dollars into expanding mental health and other services for young people living here,” the complaint states.

Griffin emphasized during a news conference Monday morning that he meant to discuss addiction “in a clinical way, not in a colloquial way.”

“We’re not talking about it in the loose way that you may say, ‘That food is so good I’m addicted to it.’ 
 It is something more sinister than that,” Griffin said.

Google is the managing member of YouTube. The other two defendants are Google’s parent company, XXVI Holdings, and its parent company, Alphabet Inc.

In addition to a jury trial and monetary damages, Griffin asks the court to order the defendants “to disgorge and forfeit all profits” that resulted from their alleged misdeeds and “to fund prevention education and treatment for excessive and problematic use of social media.”

Griffin’s complaint accuses the defendants of violating the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which generates fines of up to $10,000 per violation.

“Defendants led users and the parents of young users to believe their social media platforms were safe for use by young people, including through the release of the YouTube Kids product,” the complaint states.

The complaint also accuses the companies of unjust enrichment for “monetiz[ing] the screen time of Arkansas’ citizens” and of being a public nuisance under state law for creating “a mental health crisis.”

Other state action

Since taking office last year, Griffin and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders have both attributed mental health problems among children, such as depression, body dysmorphia and suicidal ideation, to frequent social media use.

Sanders and Education Secretary Jacob Oliva have limiting students’ use of cell phones in schools, and lawmakers have to school districts for the resources to lock up students’ devices during class time.

Earlier this month, Griffin and 41 other attorneys general signed a letter to federal lawmakers asking them to on “all algorithm-driven social media platforms” citing the risk of addiction.

Griffin is the sole plaintiff in Monday’s complaint against YouTube. He told reporters that “the lack of progress and the pace” of lawsuits with multiple attorneys general as plaintiffs frustrates him and he hopes for a quick resolution.

He is also the sole plaintiff in a March 2023 lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, in Cleburne County Circuit Court. Similarly to Monday’s lawsuit, last year’s complaint accuses the defendants of targeting minors with harmful content, profiting from engagement with said content and deceiving users into believing the platform is safe.

A circuit judge denied TikTok’s motion to dismiss the case in May, and the case is set to go to trial in September 2025, according to court documents.

When asked why his office has filed its complaints in different counties statewide, Griffin said he had “individual reasons” for doing so, but revealing them “would not be smart in litigation.”

The 2023 social media age verification law, , would require parental permission for minors to access certain websites, but YouTube is one of the exceptions.

Attorneys for NetChoice, the nonprofit trade association for large tech companies that brought the lawsuit, said the law was not narrowly tailored. U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks agreed in his order issuing a preliminary injunction, while acknowledging the importance of protecting minors online.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

DUMAS — The Dumas School District’s steep enrollment decline is feeding local residents’ frustration with district leadership and raising fears they will lose their schools.

The district, which serves parts of Desha, Drew and Lincoln counties, counted 838 students as of Aug. 30, according to data provided by Superintendent Camille Sterrett. That’s a 13% drop from last school year and an 18% drop since 2021.

Dwindling enrollment also means lost revenue — more than $7,000 per student, according to the superintendent — to a district already struggling financially.

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“If [the district] loses students at the exponential rate it’s losing them, we will not have a school system in five years,” local physician Dr. Sarah Franklin told the school board at its June 25 meeting.

Franklin is among the many local residents alarmed at the precipitous enrollment decline — which outpaces the city’s population decline — and what it portends for the future of the district and its students.

“Do you see that there’s a problem?” Franklin’s husband, AJ Franklin, asked district leadership at the June meeting. “Or do y’all just say, ‘Well, every day of the week, this is just going to happen [and] inevitably Dumas is going to fade to nothing?’”

“We all see that problem, and that problem is discussed at school board meetings,” Board President Alan Minor replied.

Dumas residents’ fears are shared by families in small districts across Arkansas that face consolidation or state takeover when they can’t find a way to survive.

Arkansas’ rural schools struggle with a myriad of challenges, including attracting and retaining educators to regions with fewer economic opportunities and lower wages than more populous communities. Declining populations complicate district finances because most funding comes from the local tax base and per-student state funding.

Dumas and the state’s southeast region have seen steady population declines for years, U.S. Census data shows, but changes in state law have also made it easier for parents to move their children to private schools and other public school districts.

While some former Dumas students have gone to private schools or been homeschooled thanks to the school voucher program created through the of 2023, several have transferred to other public school districts bordering Dumas, including DeWitt, McGehee and Star City.

The LEARNS Act mostly eliminated a cap on public school transfers, which made it easier for families to put their children in school districts in which they do not live, Sterrett said.

According to data from each district obtained via the state’s Freedom of Information Act, DeWitt, McGehee and Star City enrollment numbers are similar or slightly higher than Dumas, but none saw a triple-digit enrollment drop in one year in the past three school years, as Dumas did. Star City has gained students every year for the past three years.

Enrollment declines also have made the Dumas district more racially segregated as white and Hispanic students have left while Black students remain, said Kitty Greenup, who was a paraprofessional in the district for 27 years before retiring this year. Greenup was appointed to the school board in July.

The district’s student population was 68% Black, 17% white and 13% Hispanic as of 2023. The remaining 2% were Asian, Native American and multiracial students, according to . As of Aug. 30, the district’s students were 75% Black and 23% white with Hispanic students in both populations, according to enrollment data.

“[There’s been] not only white flight, but we’ve had brain drain as well, where it seems like everybody who could get out of the district did,” Greenup said. “This has been going on in earnest for probably the last five years.”

In handed out at the June meeting in response to pre-submitted questions, Sterrett and the board said they have “absolutely no control” over parents’ decisions to send their children elsewhere.

Such responses have not quelled public concern, especially in the wake of recent layoffs aimed at addressing funding shortfalls.

’A matter of time’

, the school board approved cutting 19% of district employees, closing its K-2 school (Central Elementary) and consolidating all elementary grades into Reed Elementary, which previously housed only grades 3-5.

The and school closure were recommended by Norman Hill, who until June 30 was interim director of the Southeast Arkansas Education Service Cooperative. The state Department of Education tapped him last year to review the Dumas district’s finances.

A comparison of the district’s active contracts for the and school years shows a reduction of 39 positions, including 22 teachers, five paraprofessionals, four custodians and four food service workers.

Staff cuts saved the district $1.2 million in salaries and fringe benefits, Hill said, and closing the lower elementary school saved about $150,000. He also said some of the positions had already been vacant due to resignations and retirements.

Both elementary schools earned an “F” ranking from the state education department . The middle and high schools received a “D.”

The school closure, employee cuts and poor rankings have prompted many Dumas residents to vent their frustration during board meetings and voice distrust of Sterrett, who became superintendent in July 2022.

Sterrett has defended the cuts and said they had been building for at least a decade.

“There should have been a change years ago,” she said in June.

The cuts allowed the district to keep what remains of a $2 million private trust fund to use as needed, Hill said. Without the layoffs and school closure, the district would have drained the remaining $1.2 million from the fund, part of a deceased Dumas couple’s , and had no operating funds left by the end of the school year, he said.

“If we hadn’t made the cuts, it would have been a matter of time before the state shut [the district] down because they didn’t have the money,” Hill said.

Hill told the public at the Aug. 27 school board meeting that the trust fund was the sole reason the district did not close last year.

Concerned citizen Lonzell Dodds said this was news to him.

“I don’t know why that’s been so hard to answer,” he said.

‘Blank check’ concerns

, the board authorized Sterrett to transfer an unspecified amount of money from the district’s building fund and the private trust fund into the — the fund that covers district operations, debt service and teacher salaries — in order to balance district revenues and expenditures.

Audience members voiced discomfort with the board’s unanimous vote. The need for financial solvency doesn’t mean boards should give administrators “a blank check,” Dr. Franklin said.

Asked if the district has ever been audited other than by the annual required review by Arkansas Legislative Audit, Sterrett said, “We do what’s required.”

Allison Chambers, who taught high school science before resigning in May, stormed out of the meeting and later said she was upset that Sterrett and the board showed “absolutely no interest” in the public’s concerns.

“They seemed to be more worried about controlling their narrative and what they wanted you to believe about this district than actually speaking truths,” Chambers said.

sent by education department fiscal services employee Jason Miller noted a “steady decline” in the district’s various funds since 2021. The district’s building fund and net legal balance dropped by $1.8 million and $1.5 million, respectively, from June 2021 to June 2024, according to the email. Meanwhile, the student population fell by more than 200 students.

“Looks like they have been making transfers to simply operate,” Miller wrote.

Sterrett’s “blank check” closed a roughly $1.16 million hole in the district’s budget, created when it spent that much more than it received last year, according to Hill. The superintendent transferred more than $357,000 from the building fund and about $800,000 from the trust fund to shore up the net legal fund balance, he said this month.

More cuts?

The LEARNS Act — which raised the state’s minimum teacher pay to $50,000 a year and guaranteed minimum $2,000 raises to those already earning above that — added to the Dumas district’s financial strain in the 2023-24 school year, Hill said.

The state helped districts pay for the salary increases, but it still wasn’t enough to stave off Dumas’ layoffs and other spending cuts, he said.

The Department of Education gave the Dumas district $1,075,667 for teacher salaries and benefits for the 2023-24 school year. Districts will receive the same amount for the 2024-25 school year the year prior.

Hill said these amounts were based on the number of teachers in each district and their salaries before the mandatory raises: the less experienced a district’s teachers were, the more money the state provided to meet the increases.

Dumas was among the minority of districts that received more than $1 million, and Hill said this was because it had more early-career teachers.

The LEARNS financial aid didn’t alleviate the district’s financial struggles last year, Hill said, but it should this year because the money now supplements fewer teachers’ salaries, allowing the declining state and local tax revenue to go toward operating expenses instead of salaries.

The district’s financial situation remains precarious but will become clearer as this school year progresses, Hill said.

“It’s going to depend on two things: whether our figures were correct and whether they end up losing any more students 
 If they keep losing students, they’ll have to make more cuts,” Hill said.

The layoffs and other financial cuts came as a shock to employees and parents, Hill said, because the district didn’t take the incremental steps needed to counter declining revenue and rising expenses during the eight-year tenure of Sterrett’s predecessor.

Sterrett and the board have attributed the loss of students and consequent drop in per-pupil funds to the as a whole.

Community members say the enrollment drop has outpaced the regional one and the comparison is not fair.

U.S. Census data shows Desha County, where Dumas is the largest city, lost 12.4% of its population between 2010 and 2020, and Dumas lost 15% of its residents, leaving the city population just over 4,000.

Population declines tend to come with , which further discourage people from moving to the area.

Former school nurse Isierene Brown said Dumas citizens to draw people in.

’Too much division’

All the explanations have done little to cool long-simmering discontent or lessen the disconnect felt by employees and parents, who cited a litany of complaints.

“I’m still just reeling that I’ve given 25 years of my life to this district and they can do me like this,” said Brown, who was three years away from qualifying for retirement benefits when the district laid her off.

Chambers and former high school English teacher Jala Patterson, who resigned in March, both said the district should have supported them enough to keep them from resigning.

They said the district does not conduct monthly safety drills, which , and administrators do not observe teachers’ job performances. They also cited faulty intercom systems that jeopardize faculty and student safety.

Patterson noted the district failed to provide enough textbooks for an Advanced Placement class until the school year was almost over.

“We’re so concerned with raising test scores, but lacking essential resources,” Patterson wrote in to Arthur Tucker, executive director of curriculum and instruction. “…Please. Please help me help my students.”

District leadership has “just written all of the kids off,” Chambers said.

“When I started [teaching there], I was told, ‘Most of these aren’t going to college, so don’t expect a lot,’” she said. “Instead of ensuring that kids are getting an education so that they can be productive members of society, with or without a degree, they are being dumbed down.”

The way the school board handles public comments at its meetings also feeds the dissatisfaction.

Are’Osha Bynum, a mother of a kindergartener, told Minor after the August meeting that the board’s responses to public comment come off as “shutting down and having an attitude” and positioning themselves as “against us instead of trying to help us.”

The school board requires audience questions to be submitted in advance. Some audience members responded negatively in June when Minor asked for public comment to be limited.

“We can do that, but if you want to get to the bottom of this and get this thing back on the right track, I think you need to listen,” Dodds said.

From the second row of the audience, Brown added, “If you don’t want to listen, get off the board.”

Dr. Franklin said frustrations with district leadership led her family to remove their children from the district and homeschool them.

Dodds, Patterson and others have said Sterrett and the board don’t seem to understand the gravity of the district’s problems.

Minor said frustrated meeting attendees don’t seem to understand that “not everyone can get their way.”

“There’s too much division and not enough communication,” Minor said after the August meeting.

Sterrett declined an in-person interview about issues raised by others. She also did not answer an emailed list of questions.

Dumas resident Onie Norman agreed that the area’s overall decline is concerning, but unlike Brown, she said she believes Sterrett has done her job as best she can and the school district isn’t responsible for retaining city residents.

“They’re disappointed [in the district], but they don’t stay and try to help improve it,” Norman said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

With more than $680,000 in grant funding available this year for Arkansas schools and the launch of a volunteer program to help students complete new graduation requirements, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has brightened its spotlight on conservation education.

Both efforts help to build long-term support for conservation, which is one of the parameters the commission uses to measure its success, spokesperson Randy Zellers said.

“Right now there are boys and girls who want to know more about the outdoors, but their schools may not have the resources available to truly devote toward anything outside of core curriculum,” Zellers said. “These grants and volunteer opportunities give them the means to expand their educational offerings and capture the interest of some of those students.”

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The $682,472 in available funding comes from boating and wildlife fines collected in fiscal year 2024 and any unspent money from schools in previous years. The funds stay within the county where the fines were collected and the .

The variance tends to correlate to the public recreation opportunities offered in each county, Zellers said.

Arkansas County, which includes Stuttgart, a renowned duck hunting destination, accrued the most fines at $36,170, according to the Game and Fish Commission. The next highest amount, $26,563, was collected in White County where bass, crappie, bream and catfish are popular catches in Bald Knob Lake.

“However, increased opportunity doesn’t always lead to an increase in wildlife violations or fine money collected,” Zellers said. “One egregious incident with a poacher being caught with multiple violations at once may result in thousands of dollars in fines on its own.”

In the coming weeks, applications for grants will be available through the , which is part of the Arkansas Department of Economic Development. Grants can be used to fund programs such as and .

The money can also be spent on projects like butterfly habitats and field trips to nature centers, hatcheries or wildlife management areas.

“The experience may vary from student to student, but teamwork, leadership and long-term commitment are all traits developed through conservation education opportunities,” Zellers said.

Approximately $537,000 was . Approved items included bee houses and hummingbird feeders for a pollinator garden at Dewitt Elementary school, construction materials for an outdoor classroom at a Bradley County school and animal skins, track and skull replicas in Franklin County.

Current applications are open through Oct. 3.

Volunteer program

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission also recently announced a new volunteer program aimed at helping high schools students complete 75 hours of community service hours, which is now a graduation requirement under the .

Along with many other changes the sweeping education law brought upon Arkansas schools last year, the LEARNS Act implemented a community service requirement for all students, unless they secure a waiver. Reasons for obtaining a waiver could include major illness, homelessness or if the student is a primary contributor to their household income.

, Arkansas Department of Education Deputy Commissioner Stacy Smith said the new graduation requirement would help students build pride in and connection to their communities.

Each district is allowed to define what community service can include, though the policy must be posted to the district website, require an adult to sign off on the student’s community service hours and include preparation, action and reflection components required for a student to receive credit.

The Arkansas Game and Fish program opens the door to students who are “interested in giving back to conservation as well as their community,” according to a press release. School district officials will need to to register for opportunities before students can participate.

“We’re trying to offer a variety of experiences so students can find something they can enjoy doing and feel like they contributed once the work is done,” said Leah Hughes, the commission’s volunteer program coordinator. “Having worked at many of our events myself, I can tell you that it can be so fun and fulfilling that you might have a hard time stopping at those minimum hours required.”

Volunteer opportunities will give students a peek into the everyday tasks of those who work for the commission with activities such as trail cleanups, fishing derbies and archery tournaments.

“Conservation education is paramount to the [commission’s] mission of conserving and enhancing wildlife and their habitats while promoting sustainable use, public understanding and support,” Zellers said. “It’s not just about hunting and fishing, but about all aspects of conservation, responsible water usage, understanding our role in the world around us and how what we do affects everything downstream from us.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Seven of these bills, including the , have become law.

My research team has been monitoring and documenting the effects of the salary changes introduced by the Arkansas LEARNS Act. As the program completes its first year, one lesson is becoming clear: Successful implementation requires the support and buy-in of school districts. Salary schedules that merely satisfy the minimal requirements of such legislation might not produce the desired results.

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Signed into law in March 2023, the LEARNS Act represents one of the most significant changes to teacher compensation in any state in decades. It raised Arkansas’s minimum teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000, guaranteed raises of at least $2,000 and removed the requirement that districts follow state-mandated minimum salaries for different levels of experience and education. This gave districts the flexibility to move away from traditional salary schedules based on seniority and experience.

As other states, such as Missouri, consider similar changes, Arkansas can offer lessons to be learned.

In a , we documented how Arkansas school districts adjusted to the new legislation. The LEARNS Act notably increased funding for rural and high-poverty districts, leading to a more equitable distribution of starting teacher pay. As a result, teaching positions in high-needs areas have become just as attractive in terms of salary as those in higher-income regions. This is a very positive result, as it can help attract new teachers to places where there are severe staffing challenges.

However, in the first year of implementation, most school districts made only the minimum salary schedule adjustments required by the LEARNS Act, leading, in some cases, to all teachers earning the same compensation regardless of experience or level of education. Currently, 55% of districts in the state do not offer seniority benefits to teachers, and there will be no clarity on the possibility of raises going forward unless districts approve further changes to their flat salary schedules.

Although teachers will certainly earn significantly more than they would have under the pre-LEARNS schedules, the lack of differentiation in salary by level of experience risks leaving , as they won’t receive raises throughout their careers. Veteran teacher pay is also among superintendents and principals we surveyed, as is uncertainty about future funding.

Like all education funding in Arkansas, the LEARNS Act must be reapproved every two years. Without a permanent funding source, superintendents — especially in smaller districts — are hesitant to deviate from the minimum teacher salaries by adding raises to their budgets. 

One superintendent said, “Until there’s a consistent funding flow for the new salaries, I am refraining from making any commitments on the salary schedule.”

Superintendents and principals in our survey also reported difficulty in budgeting for desired salary changes and uncertainty about which would be most effective for recruiting and retaining teachers.

Although it is too early to assess the long-term impact of the Arkansas LEARNS Act, the lack of clarity around its implementation and funding have limited the law’s . Our analysis shows that while some positive trends emerged, such as increased placement of new teachers in geographic shortage areas, broader impacts on retention and mobility were limited in this first year of implementation, 

The LEARNS Act has the potential to improve teacher recruitment and retention. However, without increased state support and guidance to districts, Arkansas may miss an opportunity to implement innovative strategies with the potential for greater impact. State leaders and policymakers should address funding uncertainties and offer districts assistance with teacher compensation plans, enabling them to make desired changes to their salary schedules and adopt more creative approaches.

Public school districts across Arkansas are expected to be able to lock up students’ cell phones during school hours, with the state Department of Education distributing $7 million to pay for pouches or lockers.

The Arkansas Legislative Council will take up the restricted reserve fund request Friday after the Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review subcommittee approved it Monday on a voice vote with some dissent.

“This initiative seeks to foster a phone-free environment, enabling an evaluation of its impact on student learning, engagement, and overall student health,” Department of Education Chief Fiscal Officer Greg Rogers wrote to Department of Finance and Administration Secretary Jim Hudson requesting the funds.

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The phone restriction initiative is part of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Education Secretary Jacob Oliva announced in July. The program will also provide grant funding for telehealth mental health services and support for locating mental health providers and navigating insurance matters, .

Cell phone policies at Arkansas schools vary among districts and individual classrooms. While some teachers collect phones at the start of instructional time, others allow students to access their devices after completing assignments.

The $7 million allocation is an estimate of the cost of the locking devices based on the number of students in the roughly 180 school districts that have applied to participate in the pilot program, said Courtney Salas-Ford, the education department’s chief of staff.

School districts rather than the state would be responsible for replacing the devices, but metal lockers and magnetically-sealed cloth pouches “have a very long life expectancy,” Salas-Ford said.

The pouches from , a California-based company with the goal of creating “phone-free spaces,” can be locked and unlocked by separate unlocking devices kept under the supervision of adults while students keep the pouches with them at all times. , the De Queen School District approved the use of the pouches for middle school and junior high students as part of its participation in the pilot program.

Sanders has repeatedly advocated for reducing social media use among teenagers, citing concerns about depression and suicide rates.

“Our country has been experimenting with unregulated smartphone use for more than a decade, and unfortunately the results have been absolutely devastating for our young people,” Sanders said at at Bentonville’s Ardis Ann Middle School.

Bentonville West High School piloted a program last year that required cell phones to be silenced and stored during class. Bentonville School District Director of Communications Leslee Wright said in July that the initiative was a “remarkable success,” with 86% of staff reporting a positive impact. Administrators also recorded a 57% reduction in verbal or physical aggression offenses and a 51% reduction in drug-related offenses, she said.

YONDR CEO Graham Dugoni attended the press conference, which marked the start of the pilot program a month after it was announced.

“One of the things he said that really stuck with me [is] this isn’t about taking anything away,” Sanders said. “This is about giving students the freedom to enjoy a phone-free education.”

As part of the pilot program, the University of Arkansas’ Office for Education Policy will examine how students’ mental health may be impacted by reduced access to cell phones and social media. A smaller group of districts from the pilot program will participate in the UA study.

In May, Sanders sent a copy of Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, to all state and territorial governors in America, as well as Arkansas legislators. According to the July press release, she expressed support for four main goals: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, phone-free schools, and more outdoor play and childhood independence.

Proposals to reduce smartphone use have been gaining traction across the country, including in , , .

that Sanders championed would have been the first in the nation to require minors to receive parental permission before signing up for a social media account. A federal judge last August, hours before it was set to take effect.

Arkansas lawmakers might introduce legislation in January requiring all districts to lock up students’ phones during the school day, House Speaker Pro Tempore Jon Eubanks, R-Paris, said during Monday’s PEER meeting.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Fueled by federal pandemic funds and an ultra-tight labor market, teacher pay in the United States has climbed steadily over the last few years. According to the National Education Association’s , the average American teacher pulled in nearly $72,000 during the 2023–24 school year. 

The startling upward movement — a 3.1 percent increase from the previous year, and than average pay in 2012–13 — reflects the lengths school districts and states are going to keep educators in the profession as post-COVID burnout tempts many to quit. But lawmakers and education leaders alike await evidence that the higher expenditures will yield  real-world benefits. 

A recent study from Arkansas offers reason to think it will. 

Released as a working paper this spring, shows that the LEARNS Act, a law passed last year that substantially increased starting teacher salaries, has channeled badly needed dollars to teachers in rural and financially struggling districts. While effects on teacher retention have been slight thus far, researchers believe that higher pay may gradually lead to lower turnover among the state’s K–12 workforce.

Gema Zamarro, an economist at the University of Arkansas and one of the lead authors of the paper, said it was “a positive trend in and of itself” that the legislation helped rebalance the fiscal reality in favor of more disadvantaged schools.

“The LEARNS Act notably increased funding for rural and high-poverty districts, mitigating the negative association between starting salaries and district poverty rates,” Zamarro wrote in an email. Those districts “can now better compete with more urban, richer districts in recruitment of beginning teachers to their districts,” she added.

While still provisional, the findings could prove encouraging to states as they navigate an unpredictable hiring environment. After remaining relatively stable through the first few years of COVID, teacher quit rates in 2022. States have adjusted their budgets accordingly: A tracker indicates that legislators in nine states passed bills to boost teacher salaries last year.

Among them was Arkansas, which had earned a reputation for some of the lowest pay and worst academic performance in the country. The LEARNS Act, passed under the direction of newly elected Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, included a massive influx of new spending that bumped the starting salary for new teachers to $50,000 — essentially lifting the compensation floor from 48th in the United States to fourth. Beyond that, the legislation granted all Arkansas instructors a raise of at least $2,000 and eliminated the minimum salary schedule, allowing district leaders more scope to set pay as they think best.

Zamarro and her colleagues at the University of Arkansas gathered data from 230 of the state’s 234 school districts, as well as nine of its 12 charter school operators, to study changes over the 2023–24 school year, when the law first came into effect.

Across the state, lifting each district’s minimum teacher salary up to $50,000 cost an average of $8,486 per teacher. But the increases were naturally larger in districts that had previously paid teachers less. In particular, rural districts lifted salaries by roughly $2,350 more than their urban counterparts. Economically struggling districts also spent more of the new funds per teacher: A 10-point increase in their proportion of poor students (from 5 percent of a given district’s students to 15 percent, for example) was correlated with an average increase in starting teacher salaries of $962. 

In practice, the bigger raises for high-needs areas helped even out historical inequalities in K–12 resources. While average starting pay for teachers before the LEARNS Act was about $2,400 lower in rural districts than in urban ones, that difference was narrowed to just $48 in the year following enactment. 

The state fully funding these salary increases has resulted in this component of the LEARNS Act being a very progressive education finance reform.

Andrew Camp, University of Arkansas

Andrew Camp, one of Zamarro’s co-authors, noted in an email that the $181 million cost of the compensation shakeup was borne entirely by the state, making it a huge transfer of funds to some of the most disadvantaged communities in Arkansas.

“I think this is an aspect of the LEARNS Act that is especially undersold,” Camp wrote. “The state fully funding these salary increases has resulted in this component of the LEARNS Act being a very progressive education finance reform.”

Leveling the playing field

While the legislation effectively leveled the playing field in starting teacher salaries between different kinds of districts, its influence on teachers’ career choices was more muted during its first year of implementation.

Following the passage of the LEARNS Act, the proportion of Arkansas teachers leaving the profession was 3.4 percentage points lower than over the same period in the prior school year, 2022–2023, when national data pointed to a sizable jump in resignations. Compared with the average from 2016 to 2023, the proportion of teachers quitting was 1.4 points lower — still a statistically significant decrease, though smaller.  

The question of teacher retention is especially acute in Arkansas because of the large number of districts that faced challenges in attracting qualified teachers even before the pandemic. Between 2013 and 2016, the number of candidates enrolled in any of the state’s teacher preparation programs . Stubborn shortages have necessitated the widespread use of waivers to allow instructors to teach subjects and grade levels for which they lack certifications; the fraction of Arkansas teachers receiving such a waiver has crept up to as high as 9 percent in recent years, over double the national average.

But over the last school year, the study finds, new teachers were 2.6 percentage points more likely to take a job in a geographic shortage area than they were in 2022–23. Compared with a longer-running average of the last seven years before the passage of the LEARNS Act, the difference was still positive (1.2 points), though not statistically significant.

Both Zamarro and Camp argued that the reform’s still-modest effects on the local labor force may increase with time. Sanders only signed it last March, after many teachers had already made up their minds about whether they would sign on for the following year. Even through the end of that summer, against other provisions in the law raised some doubts over whether the raises would even be paid out. 

“In that sense, I think that the fact that we observe some emerging results already is a promising sign,” Zamarro wrote. “It is possible that we will observe more positive effects in the future as districts and teachers have more time to adapt to the new legislation.”

Yet others wonder if the uniformity of the pay increase may backfire. 

Because of how it was written, most of the rewards from the LEARNS Act are earmarked for early-career teachers making the least money. Given the notably high quit rates for younger educators — from the National Center for Education Statistics has found that about 10 percent exit the profession after their first year, and 17 quit within their first five years — that may be sensible.

But lifting the floor without an accompanying move to raise the ceiling will also have the effect of flattening pay differences between novices and veterans. Last year, one-third of the districts in the state adjusted their salary schedules . Some even reduced the maximum level of their salary schedules, saying they needed o know more about the state’s intentions for funding the LEARNS Act before developing their own long-term plans. One unspoken question is whether districts will eventually be asked to shoulder more of the financial burden themselves.

Christopher Candelaria, an education professor at Vanderbilt University, has previously studied the effects of school funding infusions. He said the potential trade-offs of structuring pay increases this way could only be known with more years of study.

Have we just equalized the salary schedule across the board, and across the range of experience — and if so, what implications might that have for teachers who want to stay in the profession?

Christopher Candelaria, Vanderbilt University

“Have we just equalized the salary schedule across the board, and across the range of experience — and if so, what implications might that have for teachers who want to stay in the profession?” he mused. If greater experience, and potentially greater skill, is not met with greater rewards, Candelaria continued , “we might see more teachers exit the profession.”

]]> /zero2eight/music-zoo-gives-preschoolers-an-up-close-and-personal-experience-of-music-making/ Wed, 07 Aug 2024 13:49:41 +0000 https://the74million.org/?p=9821 When University of Arkansas student Jackson Joyce took his saxophone to the Jean Tyson Child Development Center one late spring afternoon, he wasn’t sure what he was getting into. As part of a new program in the Department of Music, Joyce was one of the student musicians participating in the department’s inaugural “Music Zoo,” which offers interactive music sessions to the center’s pre-K students.

“Kids interrupt a lot,” Joyce says with a laugh. “And they ask the most random questions that have nothing to do with music. Their curiosity isn’t limited to whatever you’re trying to talk about. They somehow found a way to connect dinosaurs with saxophones. Then I would have to try to redirect the conversation from dinosaurs or ‘Bluey’ to music.

“We tried to teach them how the saxophone works—the reed, the mouthpiece, the keys. My favorite part was when they came up to the saxophone and peered down into the bell, reaching their little hands in to see what was down there. But they were more interested in the weird noises we could make.”

Joyce says he had thought the 4- and 5-year-olds might be impressed with his lightning fast runs on the scales. They were universally blasé about that, but when the sax players made multiphonic train horn sounds, or honked like geese, the class was enrapt.

Transforming from Student to Teacher

What Joyce learned about acknowledging the children’s curiosity while moving forward with class material is familiar territory to teachers everywhere, and such awareness was part of Dr. Daniel Abrahams’ motivation for creating the Music Zoo program. Abrahams is associate professor and coordinator of Music Education at the University of Arkansas/Fayetteville.

“Our Intro to Music Education course is the first Music Education class the students take,” Abrahams says. “We talk about what it means to be a teacher, what schools are for, why we teach, and I thought this would be a good way for them to work with some kids right off the bat and see if they like it. Nobody wants to spend three or four years in college and realize at the very end, ‘You know, I don’t actually like working with kids.’

“To have this experience at the beginning of their journey really helped solidify their ideas of what it meant to be a teacher. These are all pandemic students whose last two years of high school were pretty much on their computers in lockdown. I had students who had never worked with kids before and had no idea whether they were going to like it. After the experience, they were saying, ‘I love this. I know I’ve made the right choice in what I’ve decided to do with my life.’”

The Jean Tyson Child Development Center is located on the Fayetteville campus, so it wasn’t too much of a schlep for the musicians to take their instruments over, from violins and cellos to the woodwinds—flute, clarinet and saxophone. The percussionists were crowd favorites, possibly because they brought a variety of small hand drums and invited the little ones to play along. The saxophone was also popular (see “train horn and honking geese” above).

Best of all were the tuba and the baritone sax, both of which were taller than many of the preschoolers. Seizing the moment, the teachers turned those demonstrations into a brief foray into math concepts: “Let’s guess if you’ll be bigger than the tuba.”

Because this is the University of Arkansas (Go Razorbacks!) and many of the kids are children of faculty members or staff, they were familiar with the school’s marching band and were jazzed to make the connection between the students demonstrating their flutes, tubas and drums with the uniformed marchers they saw at football games. Instant stardom for the musicians.

On a more serious note, Abrahams said he had been discussing the idea of music aptitude with his students throughout the semester, based on the work of music learning researcher who wrote about music development in infants and young children.

“We talked about what influenced them to become musicians and the idea that you ever know what might influence a student into wanting to be involved in music,” Abrahams says. “Children have a musical aptitude from birth that stabilizes around the age of 9, and any musical experience they have will help them have a richer musical life later. That one morning of sitting and learning about the flute or the clarinet and hearing them played might inspire that student to want to play an instrument when they get a little older.

“The students took the assignment quite seriously,” he says, “because they felt they were influencing the next generation of musicians. The experience was transformational in the ways the students began to see themselves as teachers.”

A Rich Resource

The musicians researched to be au courant with music for the preschool set and came prepared to play the theme songs for Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues, YouTube’s Bluey, and the classic Baby Shark (doo-doo-ti-doo). The vocalists sang the 4- and 5-year-olds’ songs they’d learned especially for them and the children reciprocated by teaching the college kids some of their preschool tunes— in 4/4 time.

The greatest number of requests were for the University of Arkansas Fight Song, which Abrahams’ students knew by heart because most are in the marching band. In recognizing the theme songs from a few notes the musicians played, the children didn’t know that they were demonstrating Gordon’s theories, but they were. By recognizing or remembering a tune, they were thinking music, which Gordon called “,” the foundation of musicianship.

The musicians were especially impressed by the questions the preschoolers asked about their instruments, Abrahams says. The little kids were blown away by the tuning pegs on the stringed instruments getting higher the tighter the peg was turned and predicted that they would get lower if the peg was looser (Hello, ).

The success of the initial Music Zoo program has earned it a permanent place in the Intro to Music Education curriculum, Abrahams says, with an additional, unexpected benefit.

“The child development center is starving for people to come in and do learning activities with their children and they’re right here on campus” he says. “This great resource just fell into our laps. It’s a partnership that not only provides a valuable first teaching experience for our students but is also fostering positive interactions with the child care staff and our local community.”

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