Some hot-button topics were on the agenda at the Capitol Wednesday, and public school educators from across the state poured in to have their say.
Sticker name tags revealed teachers traveled to Little Rock from Ozark, Johnson County and Ola to chat up lawmakers about what might be coming their way when Gov. Sarah Sanders drops what’s she’s warned will be “the most far-reaching, bold, conservative education reform in America.”
The Two Rivers School District showed out with the biggest squad, 30 teachers strong, many in T-shirts with the district’s gator mascot. Among them were Two Rivers educators Justin Hudson and Ashlyn Gearhart, who said they showed up because they’re worried about their small district being able to pay the bills if students decide to opt in to the proposed voucher program that would let them take the majority of their per-student funding with them to a church, private or home school. The bills to keep the utilities on at school won’t be any lower, and teachers still need their paychecks, Hudson said.
“It’s going to put our school under such tremendous financial burden that it will fall in,” he said. “If they take their money with them, my pay goes with them. The light bill goes with them.”
Teaching is a second career for Hudson that he just recently began, and he said he doesn’t think it’s right for him to make the same salary as Gearhart, a 10-year classroom veteran who’s earned a masters degree. Under the Arkansas LEARNS plan, which has support from Republican legislators at the state Capitol but seemingly none of the Democrats, all teachers in Arkansas will start at $50,000 per year, but will not be eligible for raises for years of service or graduate degrees. So while $50K would be the minimum salary, it could also be the maximum under the LEARNS plan (though local districts with high property tax revenues can, do and surely would continue to exceed the state minimum salary level). The specifics of the bill remain unclear at this point as the bill remains the draft stage.
Democrats proposed their own bill last year to set a $50,000 teacher starting salary, but haven’t gotten very far. Their RAISE plan includes a $10,000 raise for every teacher and would not do away with step increases and higher pay for educators with graduate degrees. Democrats tried to get their teacher raise proposal on the agenda for the 2022 summer special legislative session, but then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he did not find enough support among the Republicans that make up a supermajority of the legislator to pass the raises.
Gearhart, who said she cries when she’s emotional and passionate about a subject, was red-faced and wiping her eyes after a poignant exchange with Sen. Bart Hester (R-Cave Springs). Hester and a half-dozen educators fell into conversation in the Capitol hallway outside the room where the Senate Education Committee was meeting. A voracious supporter of the conservative push to let parents use public money to pay for privatize education options, Hester suggested to the clutch of educators that public school administrators are misusing and hoarding the funding they’re getting from the state.
“You put your money and your time into what you value, and public schools are putting their money into admin,” Hester told them.
Brian ChilsonBlaming school boards and school administrators for misspending or pocketing public funds is an increasingly popular rally cry among Republican lawmakers as they push ahead in favor of Sanders’ education reform package, even as advocates of traditional public schools say they’re worried vouchers will increase segregation and inequity. Just minutes before Hester’s hallway exchange, Sen. Breanne Davis (R-Russellville) had said much the same thing to a capacity crowd at the Senate Education hearing as she led the successful push to table a proposal by Sen. Greg Leding (D-Fayetteville) to boost education support staff pay for bus drivers, cafeteria workers, para-professionals and custodians to $15 per hour, up from the current $11 minimum. A supporter of Sanders’ Arkansas LEARNS bill, Davis said she also wants to raise pay for support staff, but that Sanders’ forthcoming education reform package will do that.
A former Russellville School Board member, Davis suggested a big swindle is underway, with the money the state sends to schools to pay teachers and staff getting misspent and misdirected.
“It’s hard for me, after living through the last eight months, to trust that the money that we give schools will actually go as we intend or hope it will go,” Davis said, likely referring to the firestorm over teacher raises and the bad press that came when Arkansas Republican lawmakers passed tax cuts that largely benefit wealthier Arkansans last summer, even as they declined to raise teacher pay, which ranks 48th in the nation.
“The superintendents pushed it back on us and said we weren’t doing our job, when in fact we’re sending them a lot more money than most people are paying their teachers,” Davis said. “They’ve broken my trust many times in the past and we’ve lived it very vividly in the last eight months.”
It’s not clear yet whether pitting teachers and staff against administrators will be an effective strategy to distract and redirect opponents of Sanders’ universal school voucher plan. It’s not working on Two Rivers teachers Hudson and Gearhart, who said they and their co-workers had the support of their administrators to take Wednesday off work to come to the Capitol. The community was supportive too, they said.
“Parents and aids are covering our classes so we could be here,” Gearhart said.
