Carroll County residents are organizing to gather signatures which would allow Arkansas voters to decide whether the controversial LEARNS Act, advocated by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders that passed the Arkansas Legislature by a large margin due to support from Republicans legislators, should be allowed to stand or be rescinded.
Supporters say that the 145-page legislation will allow parents more choice of what schools their children attend by providing up to $6,600 per year for vouchers to pay for private charter schools, including religious schools. It also included raising the pay of teachers to $50,000 per year while eliminating merit pay raises.
Opponents fear the LEARNS Act will defund public schools, possibly leading to the closure of some rural public schools while primarily helping wealthy people who already send their children to private schools.
“I’m fighting for our public schools, especially our smaller public schools,” said Suzie Bell, who is working with Citizens for Arkansas Public Education and Students. CAPES (arkcapes.com), is a non-partisan group gathering signatures to put the issue to a vote. “We are against the LEARNS Act. I absolutely support a teacher raise, but the local schools don’t have the money to increase salaries without cutting all kinds of other things. Some of these smaller schools can’t do it and are going to have to shut down. They have done away with merit pay.”
Bell also objects to the lack of accountability for charter schools because those don’t have to provide standardized testing reported to the state like public schools.
“They take the money from our public schools but there is no accountability to teach students up to standards,” Bell said. “If they decide a kid doesn’t belong at the private school they can kick them out but keep the taxpayers’ money for that student.”
Bell is helping organize people to carry the petitions in five counties – Carroll, Boone, Marion, Searcy and Van Buren – to help with the statewide effort to get signatures from a minimum of six percent of voters in the most recent gubernatorial election. They have about 30 days to collect the signatures.
Normally there would have been more time to get signatures but the Arkansas Attorney General twice rejected the title of the initiative. The first two times they had to wait ten days to submit a new title.
“On our third attempt we copied and pasted from LEARNS bill so he could not reject the title,” Bell said. “As a result, it is the longest title for an initiated petition in the history of Arkansas. We have until July 31 to have all these signatures turned in and certified. Some will be thrown out for minor technicalities. For example, if you sign your name Mike Jones but are registered as Michael Jones, your signature would be thrown out. So instead of getting 54,000 signatures, our goal is to get 90,000. Our assumption is the state will throw out as many signatures as they can. They want us to fail. They are very angry that we are doing this.”
Bell said Arkansas is one of the few states that allows public referendums or initiatives although the Arkansas Legislature has tried to take that right away in order to concentrate power in the hands of legislators.
“We believe this is so critical to public education that we want the Arkansas people to make the choice rather than a handful of legislators who crammed it down our throats,” Bell said. “I spent my whole career working in special education. None of the private or church schools have to take a child with special ed needs. All those children who already start life with challenges are going to be in public schools without funds to properly educate them. That is a really big one. I’m fighting for my kids.”
Educators across the state were not consulted about the LEARNS Act, which was promoted by Sanders and her appointee, Michael Oliva, who has been named commissioner of the Arkansas Department of Education Division of Elementary and Secondary Education. Oliva worked previously in education under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Sarah Sanders has this guy from Florida pushing these things,” Bell said. “He is not even an Arkansan. He is not even invested in our kids here. This is straight up rubber stamping what they did in Florida. They were not interested in any opposing views or any input from the public education employees in the state. The students from Central High School in Little Rock came up there to the Capitol to testify that the bill was going to hurt them. The legislators wouldn’t let the students talk. That was appalling.”
Bell said even if you support the LEARNS bill, you should be okay with letting the people make the choice rather than legislators.
“It is the children who will be affected,” she said. “This is something the Arkansas residents should have a say in.”
Bell said petition canvassers plan to get signatures at Brews downtown, at the Eureka Market on US 62, on the Berryville Square, and other locations. About 1,200 signatures are needed in Carroll County.
Sue Hubbard collected signatures at the Fourth of July celebration at Lake Leatherwood on July 2.
“I think it is important for everyone to have an opportunity to get an education,” Hubbard said. “By hurting public education, we are doing the people of the state a great disservice. I have a problem with the LEARNS Act because it is taking money from the public schools, which are very regulated, and giving it to organizations that don’t have to adhere to the same standards. It helps those with money because they get an extra $6,660 per child that doesn’t have to come out of that family’s budget. For someone who is poor, $6,600 isn’t going to be enough to get into a private school but they will have no choice but to go to the defunded public school.”
Enactment of the LEARNS Act has been temporarily blocked due to a ruling from Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herbert Wright who has said he will take a week or two to determine if the legislature properly followed procedures under the Arkansas Constitution when it passed the LEARNS Act’s emergency clause that allowed the legislation to take effect immediately.