Week 26: LEARNS Is Now Law

Before I get into the Wrap-up and the latest on LEARNS, I want to pay homage to one of our school district’s greatest supporters who has passed away, Buddy Bean. Mr. Bean was a Bearcat supporter for a long time and without him, our Ballfields at Union Bank Park would not exist. He assisted the district in other initiatives and improvements and has been honored by the Mena School Board for his benevolence. On behalf of our board members, administration, and staff, our prayers are with his family at this time.

Happy Friday!

No matter how eventful Week 26 has been, nothing is more impactful that your daily effort to reach students and ensure their learning! Thank you for all the effort this week because it mattered most. I know there is more happening now as spring approaches because our discipline referrals have seen a slight uptick. We are still way ahead of our goal but the gap between this year and last year is a bit narrower. The approach of springtime always makes kids more rambunctious but we should see discipline slow down again after Spring Break. So, let us keep our focus and do what is right for our students.

Our elementaries are putting more ideas into action to address attendance and literacy with positive results already showing. I look forward to sharing the latest numbers after their efforts have more time to make an impact.

The Evolution of LEARNS

On Tuesday this week, House of Representatives amendments to SB294 were approved by the Senate Education Committee and passed by the Senate to become Act 237. LEARNS is now the law that schools will work under if they accept any public funds to educate students. The primary amendments were those concerns I wrote about in last week’s Wrap-up dealing with Teacher Fair Dismissal and salary schedules. School districts will build some kind of salary schedule and the right to a board hearing is back in the law for employee termination or non-renewal.

We are inching closer and closer to the clarity of what this law will mean for educators and students but there is still much uncertainty. There is still no appropriation recommendation for the adequacy of school funding, which is our foundation funding. Last week, I wrote that the amount of $8,129 per pupil was mentioned and that anything close to that would be great. This week I have learned that we may only get an increase of two percent, or $148 per student.

Educational administrators are emphasizing to lawmakers the expenses that have increased for school districts and are not adequately funded such as the increased district cost for employee insurance increasing to $300 per month, per employee, when last year it was $199. We also have to supplement therapy services on a yearly basis because Medicaid does not cover 100 percent of what is prescribed to our students. During this session, there was testimony that Medicaid did pay 100 percent but that is completely untrue. While I was Superintendent at Horatio, we used district funds to cover gaps each year ranging between $14K to $16K. This year the Mena School District will be supplementing over $35K for therapies. We do not know exactly how much yet but our budget is already exhausted and this is an expense we cannot modify to make ends meet.

Our maintenance and operations expenses are always above what is funded and the new requirements in LEARNS for early childhood are still a concern due to the staffing needs it will require. We also must provide a pay increase for our classified staff.

All of our planning for next year’s budget is in limbo and we are only guessing until the legislature comes out with a solid amount of foundation funding. We are carefully watching SB149 to amend the foundation funding amount for the 2023-2024 school year to be $8,195 and for the 2024-2025 school year $8,370. In addition, the bill would increase the base classified hourly wage to $15.00. The Senate Education Committee voted to table this bill, however.

Not all is bleak. There have been more bills filed that favor public education and level the playing field for us. For example,

* SB369 – Senator Dotson – This bill sets forth a process for students to receive weighted credit for career education courses and converts the graduation requirement of a computer science course to a career education course.

* HB1205 –Representative Wooten – This bill would require any school, whether public or private, that receives public funds to provide transportation to any attending student within thirty-five (35) miles.

* HB1206 – Representative Carr – This bill would provide that any student who resides in Arkansas but is not attending a public school or a student who resides outside of Arkansas and transfers into an Arkansas district would be excluded from being calculated in the schools rating for two (2) years after starting to attend a public school in Arkansas. The sponsor pulled the bill to allow for additional amendments.

* HB1238 – Representative Cozart – This bill includes adjustments to the Enhanced Transportation funding amounts for each district for the upcoming biennium. This bill has passed in House Education Committee and House floor and has been transmitted to the Senate Education Committee. This bill has passed in both Chambers and has been transmitted to the Governor.

* HB1345 – Representative Tosh – The bill increases the tax deduction provided to teachers for purchases for their classrooms from $500 to $750.

* HB1516 – Representative Lundstrum – This bill allows a district to enter Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with businesses for the business to provide a subject matter expert to assist in the teaching of that subject matter.

* HB1540 – Representative Vaught – This bill requires any student who withdraws from public school for one (1) year or more to take a placement exam to determine what grade the student will be placed in if the student returns to public school.

* HB1539 – Representative Vaught – This bill repeals the requirement for districts to enroll expelled students in a digital course. We would still use our Second Chance program at Mena but expulsion would be a more serious consequence compared to what it is now.

* HB1538 – Representative Vaught – This bill prohibits districts from requiring more than thirty-six (36) hours of annual professional development.

Closing

There are many more education bills filed and I encourage you to read more about these bills that will impact all our lives in some way. Use the Arkansas Legislature page to track what is happening on the chamber floors and in the committee rooms. I hope our Civics teachers are using this time to show the legislative process to our students, too. I understand that there is opposition prepared to file lawsuits in the very near future; so, this appears to be shaping up into another historical period of time for Arkansas.

I have closed the Thought Exchange about LEARNS as a bill. Use this link to see the final results. I have also created a new Thought Exchange to get your predictions of what this new law will do for our community. Please participate.

All while this is going on, our students continue to grow and our staff continues to train and grow with them. Springtime means soccer, baseball, softball, track, FFA judging and leadership contests, drama presentations, band contests and concerts, and much more. All these things to help us remember our purpose and focus on our whole vision and mission.

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

Have a great weekend!