2 panels accept study on education
Posted on Friday, August 29, 2008
The House and Senate education committees formally adopted Thursday the “adequacy study” for funding an adequate education in Arkansas public schools the next few years, adding written comments justifying each recommendation.
The committees also discussed a report to improve college retention and remediation in Arkansas and how to reduce premiums for teachers’ health insurance.
The recommendations were adopted Aug. 13, but Senate Chairman Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, said lawyers from the Bureau of Legislative Research and the attorney general’s office urged legislators to include written “findings” to bolster each recommendation.
Rationales for the recommendations were discussed previously but the lawyers said that the law requiring the study also requires the findings.
Argue said the recommendations weren’t changed. Legislators met more than a dozen times on the adequacy study during the past year.
Sen. Dave Bisbee, R-Rogers, called for a quick approval by the committees.
“I don’t think I can bear to hear this thing again,” Bisbee said. “I’d like to make a motion to adopt the report. As soon as we can.”
Argue said he had already promised that Rep. Bill Abernathy, D-Mena, could make the motion.
The study calls for increasing base per-student, or “foundation,” state and local public school funding by between 1. 3 percent and 2. 2 percent (or between $ 34 million and $ 59 million ) a year. It also recommends an unspecified additional amount to reimburse school districts for transportation costs because of diesel fuel price increases and to further study how to pay for teacher health insurance.
Per-student funding mostly pays for salaries. The rationale for the range of recommended percentage increases was:
“Evidence presented to the committee shows that current school-level salaries are sufficient to provide Arkansas children with an equal opportunity for an adequate education. The average teacher salary in Arkansas in 2006-07 was $ 44, 009, the second highest among surrounding states and the ninth highest among the 16 [Southern ] states. No evidence was presented to show that Arkansas had insufficient teacher salaries that would prevent the recruitment or retention of teachers.”
The percentages came from consumer price increases forecasts and other inflation factors predicted by national economic firms with which the state contracts.
Per-student funding amounts to $ 2. 66 billion in this fiscal year for the state’s 245 districts, which have 459, 000 students.
The study addressed funding for the fiscal years 2010 and 2011. It will be up to the Legislature in 2009 whether to accept the recommendations.
The law requiring the adequacy studies was passed in response to the Supreme Court’s 2002 Lake View school funding decision, which found public school funding in Arkansas to be inadequate and inequitable. The court last year ruled that additional funding and other changes have made the system constitutional.
Rep. Johnnie Roebuck, DArkadelphia, addressed the committees regarding the report by the state Task Force on Higher Education Remediation, Retention and Graduation Rates. That report was unveiled Aug. 15. It recommends another $ 95 million to keep more students in college and have more students graduate. It includes $ 37 million more in scholarships. But she said that the price tag is spread out over six years, from 2010 to 2015. Bisbee, a member of the task force, said the state has been “throwing away money” to the tune of $ 54 million a year to remediate college students who aren’t prepared to handle college-level courses. He said that’s because only 10 percent of the students who take remedial courses in only one subject area graduate and only 5 percent of those who take remedial work in two subjects graduate. The task force recommends colleges require students to take the ACT college entrance test again after taking remediation courses before moving on to other college courses.
“What we are doing is not working or we would not be 50 th,” Roebuck said.
Arkansas is 50 th among the states and the District of Columbia with 18. 2 percent of residents being college graduates.
House Education Committee Chairman Mike Kenney, RSiloam Springs, complained that tuition keeps going up, pricing “middle America and middle Arkansas” out of college. He said he was disappointed the task force didn’t look at that.
Roebuck said the Department of Higher Education is working on compiling a report of how colleges are spending their money.
The committees also looked at the rising cost of health insurance.
Unless more state money is put into the system, teachers ’ share of the health insurance premiums are expected to rise $ 25 million in 2010 and an additional $ 21 million in 2011.
Kenney recommended higher deductibles and co-payments for employees instead of more state dollars.
Argue said that high premiums don’t give people incentive to be teachers in Arkansas.
Richard Wilson, assistant director of the Bureau of Legislative Research, said a survey last year of former teachers indicated that 31 percent left the profession because of expensive insurance.
Rep. Rick Saunders, D-Hot Springs, said he was “very confused” and that the Legislature shouldn’t fund more insurance without first knowing whether the Supreme Court requires it as part of an adequate education.
Argue said the Supreme Court hasn’t given a definitive answer on that.
“We fund football,” Argue said, noting that football wasn’t required by the Supreme Court.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
