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The Arkansas Times and KUAR FM 89.

Hello again, everyone, and thanks very much for being with us.

Education, job training, the General Assembly.

With the legislature now sitting, we'll speak in a moment with a woman who's chairing the upper chamber's education committee about her sense of the session that has just begun.

But first, perhaps you've heard.

Arkansas has a new governor, the first woman to hold the job, and she takes it.

26 years after her father took it.

16 years after he left it.

In her two inaugural speeches last Tuesday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders outlined in somewhat greater detail the agenda that she will put before the legislature.

That agenda, that legislature, both solidly conservative.

The House has its first third term speaker.

The Senate, meantime, has a new president pro tem, the first from Cave Springs.

Senator Bart Hester joins us now.

Mr. President, thanks very much for coming in.

Hey, thanks for having me today.

You have and along with the speaker, have had a an opportunity to spend a little one on one or two on one time with our new governor.

Give us your sense of where she is headed.

I'll tell you, I have had some time with Governor Sanders and I'll tell you, she's confident, she's prepared and she's headed to do exactly what she's spent the last year or two telling the people of Arkansas where she was headed, education reform, criminal justice reform and tax reform.

Well, in terms of education, what what can you share with us that she may have shared with you?

Well, I'll tell you, the legislature has a significant part in that role where we have to believe where we're going.

And it's mostly based on parental empowerment and everything focused on the student.

And so anything that we feel like we're putting in this bill, it's going to be student driven, not not some institution driven.

Well, parental empowerment strikes fear in the hearts of a great many in the education establishment.

You know that.

Yeah.

As as destructive or corrosive on the traditional paradigm of public education in Arkansas or anywhere.

Well, that's right.

And I think that's unfounded fear from you can look all all parts of the country where that happens.

Really what we know is competition.

Competition raises everyone.

And at the end of the day, we know that if parents have the right to choose, education is going to get better for kids in Arkansas.

I have four kids, but maybe public school is best for one, private schools best for one, and homeschool is best for another.

And it shouldn't be based on where I live or my parent's income if I have choices or not.

An education.

Well, the governor, excuse me, has seemed to indicate and fairly strongly that parochial schools could be in the mix as well.

And that's likely to trigger some opposition on on First Amendment grounds.

Is the General Assembly prepared to go along with her in that or to that extent?

Oh, I think we are absolutely prepared to go along with that.

We want options regardless of what they are.

But look, if I think there also has to be accountability, if we're going to help a family or send some tax dollars for the family to homeschool in some way or to go to a private school in some way.

I think that those kids should also be held to some standards with testing.

And so nothing is free.

Like I said, anything is going to come with what is focused on the student.

If choice is good, then we're going to make sure that that student is learning and which means they're going to have to be tested or some some level of measuring.

Has this.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

No, just some level of measuring their success.

Has that been have you is that part of the administration's plan as you understand it, the accountability, the testing, the accountability and and some sort of measurables, whether that's testing or a different one?

I had a meeting with the new secretary, Jacob Oliva, my office this morning with about a dozen senators, bipartisan.

And I think when we left that meeting, even if you didn't agree with everything he said, members were very confident in how competent he was, how prepared he was, and that he is going to have accountability and measurables for students.

And in terms of the less populated portions of the state, particularly in the adult area, some portions of the Delta South, Arkansas, those areas that are losing population, the options for, say, charters or for other forms of formal education would seem to be something of a stretch.

Well, I will say, how do you how do you how do you plan to implement that?

Or how would that be?

Well, we need great high performing teachers.

And I'll tell you, what we know is we have some great high performing teachers in those schools.

We need more of them.

And I will tell you from from the governor's mouth tomorrow, we need to pay them.

We need to pay them more than we've been talking about paying them.

We've there's there's been stuff in the news for the past year.

Well, what we need to pay teachers, I would say, wouldn't surprise me if Governor Sanders doesn't want to do more than that.

She is she is committed to our teachers because she knows great teachers is going to produce successful kids.

pre-K.

Yes.

So that's that's part of the talking point.

We understand that we've got to have not just a talking point, but the bill.

And we've got to we've got to start investing in our students before they get to kindergarten, because we've got to teach them to read by third grade so they can read to learn after third grade.

Well, at the end of this session, will it be passed or will there be pre-K, at least the the availability of pre-K from Miller to Clay?

I hope so.

But I don't know exactly how that's going to go.

It's going to be such a big bill that does so much change in Arkansas.

It's going to take time.

And whether so much of that can be done day one or day 300, I don't know.

But we're going to pass a bill that's going to be implemented in stages is how I expect.

We just saw an hour that the new governor of Iowa laid out a plan yesterday where she said it would be implemented by 2026.

I don't know that we're going to do 2026 or 2024 or 2027, but it's kind of the same strategy.

You can't do it all overnight.

It'll be an implemented process.

Have you or others in the administration had a chance to speak with, say, the School Administrators Association, particularly those from rural areas?

Well, I just heard from New Secretary Jacob Oliva this morning that he met with many or most maybe it was at a meeting of our superintendents yesterday, and he said the meeting, he thought, went well.

He was very clear and direct as he's going to be, and he said he's going to desperately seek their feedback, but he's also going to be looking for measurables and accountability.

He said Governor Sanders said she's going to be the education governor.

For her to be able to do that, he has to do his job and superintendent have to do theirs while we are still on the subject of education.

Her executive orders day one regarding critical race theory or other, what some consider socially divisive concepts.

Are we going to get bogged down in that sort of social agenda in this session?

Oh, no, we're not going to get bogged down.

And I think it's because there's just massive support for the things that we're going to do.

I think the people of Arkansas elected Governor Sanders with a basic almost a supermajority, but they did that.

And she's always very clear about the things that she was going to do.

We're not looking to we want our kids to learn to read and write, do math and understand science and history.

We don't want them focused on these these other issues that, you know, the people of Arkansas don't want their students focused on when they're at school or even exposed to it, though, before now.

Well, we know they're not anymore.

Right.

So.

Well, the question, I guess, Senator, is are we addressing a problem that simply doesn't exist?

Well, it is a problem.

Even it.

Look, in every school district, you can find a teacher doing something you disagree with, Right?

So at the end of the day, this just clarifies it.

I mean, I go to I live in an area where Bentonville School District, Roger School District.

I have parents reach out to me routinely said this was just talk to my student.

Now, you can't you can't condemn an entire school district because one teacher is doing something you disagree with.

But yes, those things are happening.

It's not routine, but it is happening.

And Governor Sanders was just assuring parents that when your kids go to our schools, they're going to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.

Well, along that line, though, to follow up, if I may, when they contact you about these things or what what are these things?

What do they complain about?

Well, I don't want to talk specifically about it, but, you know, I can go back and look through some text and emails that I have a look.

They're concerned that they're teaching our kids different critical race theory.

Right.

I can I have videos of a teacher in northwest Arkansas doing that.

And at the end of the day, that's not something parents want.

But also, I don't want to focus on the one teacher when there's a thousand that are in there doing the right thing.

That's why I haven't made a big fuss about it.

I wasn't on the news talking about it, but you can't say it's not happening when it is happening.

Would would you share those videos with that audience?

Well, I don't think I want to share them with an audience, but I may share them with you again.

I'm not looking to disparage an entire school district based on what one person's doing.

Talking about phasing in things.

As with with pre-K Senator, it seems pretty obvious he's going to have to phase in tax reduction.

Income tax reduction?

At what pace can you share anything with us?

Well, we've got our first two priorities are education reform and then criminal justice reform when we understand what those costs are.

Then we will move to the income tax reform.

The reason those two, our number one focus is because we are focused on the number one resource of Arkansas, our children.

We're going to educate them and we're going to make sure they're safe.

Once we've done that, once we know that violent repeat offenders are walking our streets, that we've got plenty of beds for them.

Once we know our schools are going well, then we're going to talk about income taxes.

We're going to do income taxes.

We're going to cut income taxes in Arkansas.

But that discussion will come in third after the first two.

Well, let's start with criminal justice then.

Since you've brought that up, is it reform?

Is reform the right word when basically what we're talking about, is it not just adding more beds, building more prisons?

No, absolutely not.

There is true reform coming.

We want to talk about truth in sentencing in Arkansas.

But when someone opens their newspaper or opens their tablet in the morning and they see that some guys brutalized a child and they get 50 years, we say, okay, that seems maybe it's even not enough for most of us.

But if we if we told him he's only doing a sixth of the 50 years, that wouldn't be acceptable to the people of Arkansas.

When they hear when they see 50, they assume 50, not one sixth.

So we're going to we're going to change that when it says 50, it ought to say it ought to mean 50.

Well, but is that true reform, though?

I mean, it's just adding time or to making them serve longer sentences.

The bottom line on that still remains incarceration.

No, it doesn't mean incarceration.

But you know what?

We also understand when we put people in prison, most of them, and we agree after they serve their commitment to society, that they're going to come back out and we want to be productive citizens.

So if we want that and we've got to we've got to invest some dollars in in educating them and having them prepared when they come out of come out of prison to work back in society.

So that is something that's a true reform.

We're doing it pretty good right now.

We want to do much better to work on recidivism.

We want when they come out of prison, for them to have options.

Okay.

On to taxes now.

If we if we may, at what speed are we going to see reduction?

Is there any consensus at all among the legislative leadership and the executive?

There is consensus that we're going to do it and we're going to do it this session.

There is no other consensus as of this time.

I mean, I've saw some bills get filed, but I can tell you, I've talked with House leadership, Senate leadership.

We really are moving that that that argument will be after prisons and after schools.

Well, but it's coming.

It is absolutely coming without some meltdown of the overall economy.

We're going to cut taxes again for the people of Arkansas this session.

Well, is there how much concern is there on your part that a, if not necessarily a meltdown, but a sudden reversal?

We're prepared for that in Arkansas.

You know, we like I said, we have almost $3 billion in set asides and surplus money right now.

If there's a change, we're prepared for it.

But what we will do when we do cut taxes, we're going to do it in a responsible manner like we've been doing, maybe with some phase ins, not certain that's what we're going to do.

We could have an effective day one, but it will depend in 100 days how our economy's looking.

Well, and what's your sense of that right now?

I sense this.

Things are going strong.

I mean, I I read yesterday the stock market was roaring because we believe the inflation numbers are going to look better today.

I haven't heard how that went.

Well, they did were better, in fact.

So a so we're going to be continue to be confident.

All right.

Is there a timetable at all?

I'm going to nudge a little bit if I'm a timetable at all, any kind of consensus about I've heard some of your members say, you know, this fast and this much and other members say, wait, let's take it more slowly on the income tax.

Yes.

Well, look, I don't think we're going to take up income tax until the end of March, 1st of April.

And that's number one, because we don't know what our state's budget actually is going to be on.

The revenues from the time before til about April 15th.

So we're going to have a plan for it by then.

But once we know the actual revenues, whether we're 200 million up or 500 million up at that time or we're flat, so we're really not going to get real serious about that until the end of till the end of March.

Any any any appetite at all in your conference or for that matter, in the House conference?

If you have a good sense, I'm going to slow down and take an even more gradual approach than what the administration or what some in the general Assembly would want, and to take some of that money, that 3 billion that you're talking about and put it into, say, higher education or public school?

Yeah, I don't see us putting that money into higher education at this time, but it may be that we choose to put more into our public schools.

What we do know is our public schools are they do have a lot of money right now, but not a lot.

But they're getting a lot of money compared to the results we have.

If you look at other states that are funding less and getting better results, but the reality is no, as long as we're continuing to have budgets of two and three and $400 million in surplus, we need to be cutting what we're charging people in taxes.

It's not our job to overtax people and just have all this money as long as our budgets continue to have huge surpluses.

We need to continue to aggressively cut taxes.

And finally, this Senator, you know how to find Fayetteville.

Baseball season starts in about, what, five week?

Maybe.

Maybe a month?

That's right.

Real soon.

All right.

What is the Senate president pro tem?

A former catcher?

What's your prediction?

If I could, I would be buying tickets to the College World Series.

All right, now fight it out in Omaha.

That's right.

If I could buy tickets, I'd be buying them right now.

We're going to be there.

I plan to be there in a morning.

All right.

Senator Bart Hester, president pro tem of the Senate, thanks very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me today.

Thanks for coming back.

And we'll be right back.

And we are back.

It is an issue in every legislative session.

And in the past couple of decades, it has been an especially thorny issue.

Public education in Arkansas.

How much funding is enough?

Are our students making the progress they could be or should be?

And our changes or additional changes to the traditional public school paradigm?

Are those changes in order?

Joining us now, Senator Jane English of North Little Rock, chair of her chambers Education Committee.

Senator, as always, thanks for coming in.

For having me.

We are on the edge of a Senate.

Well, the legislative session now, what?

Education.

What's going to happen?

What are your priorities as chair?

What should be the administration's priorities?

Well, I think that we all realize that education is probably the most important thing we can do in the state.

It affects absolutely everything else we do, whether you're talking about Medicaid, talking about prisons.

No matter what your workforce, no matter what you're talking about, education is the first.

Well, schools are constitutionally mandated.

Right.

Exactly.

And I think that we have we all covered did a did a great deal of damage to some of our our hopes and our expectations.

But I think that at some point, we had an 80% goal for all of our students to be reading at grade level.

And obviously, Covid's kind of did get away with that.

We weren't at that before COVID, and we certainly aren't at that now.

So I think one of the things that is probably going to be a real important issue coming up is obviously literacy and trying to figure out a way to make sure that we are taking that kindergarten through third grade to make that the most important place in education.

We if kids can't read, people can't read, they do not really have a future.

And I think we have to think about the future for our workforce.

Because every kindergartner that comes in at some point in time is going to have to go out into the workforce, earn a living.

And we need to make sure that we have given all of them the foundational skills to be able to expand their learning as they leave high school and go on to whatever decades of life they're going to have ahead of them.

I want to come back to that in just a second, if I may, Madam Chair.

But first, let's stay with COVID because you brought it up.

It is possible to quantify the damage that COVID did this in terms of.

Well, we have, yes.

Yes, I think we've all seen that that.

But I think we are fortunate because we didn't close all the schools forever.

And I think we have maintained not just like we wouldn't want to have had, but we have not done as badly as as some other states.

I mean, this is a national problem.

This is not just an Arkansas problem.

It's how do we get everybody up to grade level is a national issue.

We're just here.

Okay.

Is there do you have a formula?

Is there a formula or a program that you would recommend advocate to make to make up some of that distance that was lost?

No, I we've got thousands of programs.

I'm not ever sure quite what the accountability is for all of these programs.

Spend a lot of money.

Every school has lots and lots of programs.

But at the end of the day, I'm not sure nobody has been able to show me that those programs all have worked.

Otherwise, we probably would be ahead of where we are right now, but we aren't.

So I'm not sure, but I would hope that we would use this time and effort to really, really focus in on our kindergarten through third grade to make sure that those kids all are reading at grade level by the time they leave.

The third grade.

And but that doesn't mean that we have to do away and not think about those students that are in the eighth and 10th and 12th grades, because they have to have a future and we have to find a way to bring them up to grade level.

Well, sure.

But sticking for a second with a K through third grade group, you are talking about a substantial number of youngsters who come from a home environment.

And that puts them at a tremendous disadvantage with their peers from more affluent upbringings.

More affluent.

Well, you know, surprisingly in the in some of the on the school report card, which I think is really interesting and I've spent a lot of time going through that report card, looking at our report cards across the state about the grades, about their where they were A through F or whatever the composition of their demographics, what their how many teachers they had, how what the turnover rate was and you'd be surprised at some of the places that you actually thought wouldn't do well at all have done very well.

And places that you thought might do very well, didn't do as well at all.

So in a school district, you can almost go through all the elementary schools, the middle schools, the high school, and look to see where those grades are.

And if you have an F student, I mean, an F elementary school, there's probably not going to be much chance that you're going to have a B or an A middle school or a high school.

If you have a a, B elementary school, there's a very good chance.

And some of that doesn't really make any difference what the the composition of the population is.

And in some of these schools, the demographics, the demographics, some of these schools, they the teachers and administrators have said this is the population we have to deal with and we're going to make it work.

And they have said no excuses and they've made it work.

So there are a number of those schools across the state that have done really very well with populations that you would think wouldn't do well at all.

You have 134 colleagues in both chambers and and some of them believe that the answer to that dilemma is two, is parental choice, school choice, I should say.

Do you anticipate a.

Well, there would appear to be a substantial body of opinion that believes we should expand school choice, parental choice in terms of, I think vouchers, where that's coming, is it not?

I think that's going to be on the agenda.

I have no idea what that looks like.

I have not I've not seen any legislation.

I have not been involved in that discussion.

So I don't know what that looks like.

Well, as a concept, though, there's a concept that's probably out there.

You know, we have school choice right now.

And right now you have schools that are advertising coming be part of my school.

And and I think that we talk about parental involvement or empowerment, I think is more more the word.

But I think one of the things that's really important, too, is is that parents are involved in their kids, their children's education.

More than just at the school board meetings, but also on a day to day basis.

Sure.

Because that really is critically important.

It's important for the community to be involved.

Well, but and we were talking just a second, though, about the how some students from disadvantaged backgrounds particularly can excel or at least succeed beyond expectations.

I think we have to assume, we have to say and I think you have to think that every child can learn that we have to provide the proper and appropriate opportunities and education for them to be able to.

You know, if you don't if you don't test a child, but one time when they start school and the next time when the school is finished at the end of the semester, then how do you know where you need to help them?

True you.

But while you're going to have does that not suggest that some schools, some groups of students anyway are going to require to get to where you want them to be, where everybody wants to be is going to take some some extra resources?

Yeah, it probably will.

Mm hmm.

And maybe that's where we ought to be spending a lot of our resources is to make sure that those first four years, kindergarten through third grade, are the most important, where all the resources are.

And sometimes even I've talked to some superintendents and we have more programs and more money.

It's it's just having that focus on each one of those children.

And I've been in schools where those things are happening and where I've visited classrooms and students are sounding out words.

They're sounding out letters, they're sound.

And, you know, which is really encouraging to me.

It's the way I grew up.

It's the way you grew up.

And it's kind of hard, I think, for us to think there's a different way or there has been a different way over time.

But you grew up with phonics.

You grew up learning how to sound out what, knowing what vowels were you you did that a IOU for as a little kid.

And that's that's the kind of thing we're we're trying to get back to the you mentioned a moment ago, Senator, that there are, in fact, schools that are more or less advertising, you know, come send you kids here.

You know, we're your kids are welcome here.

That strikes fear in the hearts of some superintendents.

It does.

But if you look here in the central Arkansas, here in North Little Rock and Jacksonville, everybody's got the sign out that says coming in and be part of our school system.

And so it's sometimes if you say it's a matter of I like the programs that they have there and that school district or I like the that whatever their football team, whatever the case may be, is a reason that some people are making that choices.

I would love to continue this conversation, Senator, and we will if you promise to come back.

I will probably do that.

I mean, probably I will be glad to do that.

All right, good.

Now that settles that.

Senator English, thanks very much for coming on board.

Thank you.

As always, we thank you for joining us.

See you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and KUAR FM 89.