Week 22: The LEARNS Plan Release

Happy Friday!

Thank you for all you have done this week to help us accomplish our district goals! Of course, with school being closed four days last week, not much changed. But, we are glad to have had another full week of school for the spring semester and take further steps toward a great outcome for the year. On the bright side of last week’s closure, our absenteeism went down another two-tenths of a percent.

In this week’s Wrap-up, I will write about the LEARNS initiative, address a new student discipline initiative aimed at our district goal, and talk a little about emerging technology that we need to prepare our students for.

LEARNS

The biggest news of this week was the unveiling of our Governor’s educational reform plan called LEARNS. We have been introduced to the basic vision of the plan before and I shared that in every Wrap-up since its release in combination with a Thought Exchange for your thoughts and questions. I have shared your thoughts and the rankings with the legislators for our district and I am sure you have more thoughts and questions since the latest new information has come out. If you did not watch the press conference where the plan was announced and explained, you can watch it here.

The plan does appear very ambitious and promising if all initiatives can be carried out but, as the cliche goes, “the devil is in the details”. The bill has not been released to explain how each goal will be accomplished so all there is now is speculation. There are a lot of rumors flying around but I am waiting on the bill before trying to explain in a context such as this Wrap-up how the plan might impact our current system. I will say that the math does not work out in order to pay a base salary of $50,000 and keep the current salary structure. In Sanders’ press conference, I believe she quoted new spending to be $173M, which would not cover an increase of $14,000 to educators’ base salary that is currently in law. In the Week 18 Wrap-up, I wrote that ‘our cheese will be moved’, and the $50,000 number strongly suggests that.

At this time, the whole plan has to be researched by the Bureau of Legislative Research (BLR) to cross-reference current laws to determine how each one of the goals may be accomplished either through repeal or revision of the laws we work under. This will take some time so we should reserve judgment and opinion until the bill is released.

All educational reform is controversial. There is promising language in this plan but we do not know how it can be accomplished without major changes in the system we are used to. We all want things to be better but we do not want things to change and that is why reform is a struggle. We should all be patient in this process and politely ask questions to our legislators as this progresses. I also want to add that I and other superintendents are bringing awareness to our leaders that school support staff deserve the same attention in the effort to improve educator pay. With that said, I want to highlight the loan forgiveness part of the plan. That is a great incentive for classified staff to earn a degree and become an educator.

The Renew and Restore Project

A couple of Wrap-ups ago, I wrote that we were working on another initiative related to student discipline. The details have been ironed out and we have partnered with the Polk County Juvenile System to create the Mena Public Schools Renew and Restore Project. This is a restorative justice system for category four or misdemeanor offenses committed by our students that happen on our campuses or at school events.

Basically, we feel that major offenses by our students that result in law enforcement citations are not dealt with swiftly because of the overburdened justice system. We also feel that traditional consequences of a school are not influential enough to prevent further infractions. So, we have developed a way for students to experience true consequences in a way that restores their debt to our school and community along with ways to determine and deal with root cause issues. We feel that this plan is a great partnership with our legal system officials and a way we can support them and our community at large. A full description of the plan can be seen at this link.

Technology

If you have been paying attention to certain portions of the news, you have heard about specific artificial intelligence called ChatGPT. This is an AI that you can have a conversation with and it will use a programmed neural network. I will give you an example of what it does. I asked it the question, “How has the Arkansas LEARNS initiative been received by citizens of the state?” Here is the response I got:

I'm sorry, but as a language model AI, I don't have access to current information about the reception of the Arkansas LEARNS initiative. However, based on my training data, the implementation of education initiatives is often a controversial topic, and the reception of Arkansas LEARNS might have varied among different groups of people in the state. Some might have supported the initiative, while others might have criticized it. The effectiveness of the initiative and its impact on the education system in Arkansas would be the factors that would likely determine its overall reception.

That may not be all that impressive but consider the logic and how new the information is at this time. Here is another example of an assignment that was given to Tim Walston to interview a superintendent about facilities. I answered all of the questions with ChatGPT and only added a sentence to each response specific to Mena Schools. Be aware of this in your coursework. Nathan and his team are aware of ways to make sure actual student responses are what you are getting and they will soon be sharing those.

I bring this all up not only to make you aware but to focus on opportunities for our students to be future-ready. Right now, Kilroy Blockchain, the company that created FLO and has moved to Mena and NWA, is conducting a pilot virtual internship involving the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Three schools have been invited to join: Mena, El Dorado, and Farmington. The goal of the project is to create AI software that can recognize a dead chicken from a live one. This is not a far-fetched idea as demonstrated by this whitepaper from the National Library of Medicine.

I bring all of this up to encourage young people to take opportunities to learn these new technologies and understand how to apply them to solving problems.

Closing

It is Career & Technical Education (CTE) Month this month and I want to express how thankful this district is for the hard work of our CTE teachers demonstrated by such successful CTE programs. We have high participation and a commendable level of success in the competitions that have been taking place this spring. The competitions are just one way of bringing relevance to the career focus content our students receive in CTE courses. So much so that our legislators are proposing a law, Bill 1329, to create ways for students to earn core credit through CTE courses. Congratulations to those students and teachers for all they have achieved!

The LEARNS release will be all I provide about legislation this week. Seeing the complete bill for the plan is what is now on all educators’ minds.

Next week our basketball teams will be competing in the District Tournament hosted by Pottsville. Good luck to our Ladycats and Bearcats as they enter the post-season. Our junior high basketball season came to an end this week and we congratulate both teams and coaches for a great season.

You may vote on calendar options for next school year here. This form will also be sent out in an email to all employees.

At Mena Public Schools our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident.