State budget numbers and fiscal sessions and lawmakers swanning about in bad suits: It all feels quite bloodless and far removed from regular Arkansans’ day-to-day.
But teachers, grandmothers and other members of the Arkansas Coalition for Strong Families drove in from distant corners of the state Thursday morning to bring some life to the numbers on the spreadsheets. At a press conference in the echoey Capitol rotunda, a line of speakers noted that Arkansas’s desperate poverty rates and public education needs get short shrift in the proposed budget currently on the table.
With one in five Arkansas children living in poverty, the state should send more resources to families to ensure good nutrition, affordable childcare, special education and after-school programs, Daronda Elaine Williams of Prescott (Nevada County) said.
“We have the money, we just need to make the investment,” she said.
Marianna Mayor Ora Stevens said she wants lawmakers to shift priorities and put the social, emotional and physical wellbeing of the state’s children at the forefront.
The majority of the $109 million increase to this year’s state budget is eaten up by school vouchers instead. In Prescott, those vouchers are worth nothing because there’s not a private school anywhere nearby to spend them, Williams said.
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families is a member of the Strong Families coalition, and Advocates Executive Director Keesa Smith criticized the budget’s emphasis on school vouchers over other education issues we’ve all been talking about for years.
“That increase does not include pre-K, early childhood education and investment in childcare to ease the burden of working families,” Smith said.
While Gov. Sarah Sanders has given lip service to making Arkansas a safer place for women and babies, her budget doesn’t seem to point any new resources toward moving Arkansas out of its top spot as the state with the highest maternal mortality rate in the nation.
“In order to address behavioral health, maternal health, childcare, there should have been a greater increase in the Department of Ed’s budget and the Department of Human Services budget in order to really start making plans for those things that we’ve all been talking about over the past year,” Smith said. “I am not seeing that investment.”
