Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times and KUARFM 89.

Well, hello and welcome to Arkansas Week.

I'm Dawn Scott.

Thanks for being here.

The Arkansas Supreme Court has agreed to expedite the appeal of a ruling that would keep the LEARNS Act from being implemented immediately.

A Pulaski County Circuit Judge ruled 2 weeks ago that the legislature did not follow proper procedure in enacting an emergency clause.

If that is allowed to stand, the Governor's education overhaul would likely take effect August 1st.

Which is the typical 90 day length of time for a new law to begin.

Joining me for an update on this is Antoinette Grajeda.

She is the senior reporter for the Arkansas Advocate.

She has covered this topic extensively and we are so glad to have you here.

Thanks for having me.

Well, let's just start with the Supreme Court's consideration.

It's it's not a ruling on the merits of this case.

It's just an agreement to take it up early.

So how soon could we get a ruling on the appeal?

Sure.

So as a part of yesterday's announcement.

They set kind of a calendar for when briefs can be expected and reply, reply with briefs.

So the first is due the July 28th and briefs will follow between then and August 18th.

Now they don't have to take that full amount of time.

So that's what we saw when we had the temporary restraining order earlier in the year, the same thing where the Supreme Court granted this expedited review and they actually did it within the span of about two weeks.

So we could see something within two weeks if it mirrors that, but.

Likely it's looking like a ruling will come after the law goes into effect on the first.

Yeah, because August 1st, just when it's about two weeks away.

Well, again, with just a few weeks away before it would would take effect.

What is the urgency here then?

Well, I haven't talked to state officials yet about like what their reasoning is behind this, but since this is what they did prior with this previous appeal to the state court, the Supreme Court, perhaps it's just following procedure again.

So that's that's that's a possibility.

You know, just kind of this is the way that we do this.

Also there's also in the background and we talked about this last time a petition referendum.

People are trying to get enough signatures so that they can get on the ballot a let people vote in 2024 on whether or not to repeal this law.

And so as a part of that case, yeah, citizens.

Oh gosh, citizens for Arkansas.

Public education and students, I think I got that right.

Yeah.

So if this gets on the ballot for 2024 where folks can vote on repealing the law, part of what the way the law is written is that the law in question will be paused.

So they have until the end of the month to get the signatures submitted and approved by the Secretary of State's office.

So if the law is not in effect until the first, then it could could.

Be paused again for the duration until the the ballot election in 2024.

So hypothetically it could take effect August 1st.

If Capes gets the needed signatures, it would put the law on abeyances the way that it's written, right?

Because initially when we asked the Attorney General's office for clarity on this, when this whole petition started, effort started.

He'd said that you know it won't be paused because if there's an emergency clause and it's already in effect, well, now we're questioning the emergency clause.

So there's a lot of dominoes and a lot of lot of dominoes play here.

Well, last week in a special meeting, the State Board of Education voted to take over the daytoday operations.

We discussed this last time as well of the Marvel Elaine district.

But before the judges ruling, the state had been pursuing A transformational contract.

This is so complex to me.

Would you explain what this means?

Sure, I'll, I'll try.

So again, this kind of goes back to those Domino's that we're looking at.

So they were pursuing this transformation contract, which is part of the LEARNS act and it allows a struggling school to partner with a third party in lieu of a state takeover.

And so they were doing that when this lawsuit happened.

And now that the law won't go into effect until the first, assuming all these things worked out the way we think they are.

That means you can't pursue that contract until the first.

So the reason they called this board meeting was to provide some clarity and about next steps for the district because they've really been in the state of limbo as there's been this back and forth on the lawsuit.

As Education Secretary Jacob Oliva pointed out, you know, there's a lot of things that have to happen before the start of school in August.

A lot of schools can start the week of the 14th.

So if you only have two weeks to make those plans, that's a very truncated amount of time.

And So what they did is the board voted to remove the limited authority boards of basically the school district.

Yes, the school board of the district and the Superintendent and appointed Aliva has the authority to appoint a new Superintendent.

And he said now we can take steps to prepare for the school year by hiring teachers, buying books, setting the calendar, things like that.

So it was really about doing that.

But the but the goal he said you know is once the law is in effect, this is still our intention is to pursue that contract.

And get that moving along.

Well, that was my next question.

Just what this does to these districts, to the teachers, to the students, to the administrators, right.

So there's been a lot of, a lot of questions, a lot of uncertainty at this meeting.

Official said about 190 students had already reenrolled.

We're not sure about the other students yet.

There's about 306 according to a Department of Education numbers for this last year that were enrolled.

But it is a lot of questions because also if you're a teacher, you know and you're worried about if you're going to have a job or not, you could have and some have said like, oh, well, these people are going to apply to other places.

And so then how are we going to hire folks for this?

Well, the legal challenge was brought by a group of parents and educators from the district as the state had been pursuing A transformational contract with an outside entity, the Friendship Education Foundation.

But we do have a clip from that meeting with the State Education Secretary, Jacob Oliva, as you mentioned, discussing the challenges of this situation.

The local board as well as Superintendent Katina Ray were removed.

So let's see this now the easy thing for us to do and recommended just close the district.

The challenging thing for us to do as an agency is to fight for what's right in this community and eliminate failure.

And that's what we're coming to you today to do, to say we still think if we make the right decision as a board, we can move forward with full implementation of a transformational contract to go into effect August 1st.

But we need authority as a state agency to start making decisions to get that contract and ready because we got to hire staff, we've got to order textbooks, we got to build out bus rides.

We've got to build out a master schedule.

There are things that we need to do.

My interest is for these children, what I like to remain in the district.

Of course, I've done everything as a Superintendent that I could do, and I want to say that publicly to try to make this work.

But it's been very difficult.

That's why I called.

I called and asked for help.

You know, you can really hear the emotion on so many levels.

What do you make of this?

The whole situation there has been very emotional for everybody involved.

I was there in April when they, the state board went to Marvel Lane to have their meeting and discuss what would happen with the school in the future.

And there's just a lot of moving parts.

It's it's more than just academics.

It's more just just you know, issues with fiscal, which they had previously some fiscal issues as well.

It's very much about this community and what the school's.

I mean to the community, there are two schools, it's a very small rural community and a lot of them have said, you know, this is the heart of our community and if these close, you know this, you know a lot, a lot of times you can see these these towns just disappear because there's nothing there anymore And and that is really part of the issue as well.

These tiny communities, these students, these families and the teachers who, you know, care deeply for them.

You know, the State Board of Education has meantime approved emergency rules to set up a voucher program for private schools, which is another facet to this.

Explain where we are there.

Sure.

Absolutely.

So even though there's this lawsuit ongoing, the Attorney General's office had said, you know, we can still take steps to prepare.

So one of the ways that they are preparing are these emergency rules that the board approved yesterday at its its regular meeting.

The rules were not made public prior to the meeting, but I would ask for a copy after and a lot of it mirrors the language in the LEARNS Act.

So it talks a lot about who's eligible in the first year because this will be phased in.

And so, you know, students with disabilities, foster children, students at schools with.

That have an F rating like Marvel, Elaine, they would be eligible.

So there's a lot of that in there.

And then there's also some expansion on things like an appeals process.

You know if you're not approved, you can appeal that as a student or school.

If you're school and you are terminated from the program, you can appeal that as well.

So it kind of leans out some of lays out some of those specifics.

Now they're temporary, these are they are emergency rules so that there's something in place when the law goes into effect on the 1st.

They also approved permanent rules for public release.

So there's going to be a public comment period where folks can provide feedback on these, on these rules.

And the Department of Education will bring those, feed that feedback with suggestions maybe for changes to the rules, to the board.

And they will again have an approval process.

And at that point those will take over these temporary rules that are that we have right now.

And of course these, I should say these temporary rules will go into effect immediately.

Pending approval by the legislature, the Arkansas Legislative Council will meet next week and consider this.

Well, this seems to be one of the more fiery portions of the of the LEARNS Act with, you know, private school family saying, hey, we pay, why should these other people, you know, get a free ride or per se?

I mean, obviously the state is paying, but by eligibility you mean those students go to a private school of their choice, free of charge.

Not necessarily, Not necessarily.

So the Educational freedom account will allow state funding up to $6600 per student, roughly 666.

Six hundred and yeah, 6600.

There you go, per student to for allowable educational expenses.

That includes private school tuition.

It doesn't have to be that necessarily.

So it's not a direct voucher in that.

Like here's my coupon, you have to let me, and it's that amount.

And there are varying degrees of varying amounts for how much tuition is across the state.

They started taking applications for the EFA program on June 20th and through Freedom of Information Act we requested some applications for that first week.

So between June 20th to 28th there were 60 private schools who had applied.

Most of them are Christian schools.

When we kind of mapped it out to see like where they were in comparison to say these F rated schools, there were a number of counties that still didn't have a private school linked to it even though they have these F rated schools like Jefferson County or Crittenden County.

But I say yes because applications are open until August 1st for both students and parents or students in schools.

Excuse me, I will say that the Department of Education has told me, you know, they want people to apply by the 31st, so you kind of.

Have that day to figure out, like if you've missed some documentation or things like that and then students can continue to apply after the first, but that'll be on a rolling basis and it's contingent upon if they're still funding for them.

They estimate that it'll cost $46 million in the first year to do this program.

And yesterday at the meeting, General Counsel had said that a little under 3300 kids have already applied, 1900 have.

Been accepted or been approved so far there is a cap in the first year of 1 1/2% of our current student population, which is roughly 7100.

And of course, this is opt in, not opt out.

So schools don't have to participate, students don't have to participate, but there will be a limit on who can participate.

Well, you know, the governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, appointed her first board member to the Board of Education, former Representative Ken Bragg, who is instrumental in writing the education legislation.

Does this, in your opinion, change the dynamics?

Of this situation.

Well, the governor said that you know because he has a background with school choice and helped so much writing this learns act that it will help with the implementation.

It'll help things run more smoothly.

As someone as as an author of the bill or someone who helped with it, I suspect that being on the board, it will provide them with some clarity in terms of like the intention of the law and the intention of things like that.

So that is.

What we might see All right, we have about 30 seconds.

Any final thoughts as we approach August 1st?

I'm just interested to keep watching and see what happens.

Like everybody else as a journalist, I'm excited to start having questions answered because a lot of times people reach out to us like, hey, what does this mean?

It's like we don't know yet.

And there's been a lot of like, will the slot pass?

What does it mean?

And having to say, well, they have to make the rules and they haven't done that yet.

So now we're starting to get in the rulemaking process and so.

It'll be good to kind of see how that happens.

More to come.

Certainly isn't going away.

We sure appreciate you.

Antoinette Grajeda, the senior reporter for the Arkansas Advocate.

Always appreciate your perspective.

Thanks so much.

Coming up, Donna Terrell speaks with the head of Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce on how it's working to attract job professionals to the region.

A campaign is underway offering people $10,000 if they move to Arkansas and are hired for certain categories of professional jobs.

It's being organized by the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce and comes as many employers are having a hard time filling certain positions.

Jay Cheshire.

The Chambers, President and CEO joins me now to talk about this.

How's the program going?

It is going extremely well as of just this morning.

We're now up to just less than 500 submitted resumes.

We have over 350 people that have referred folks into the program.

We have 47 partner companies who are considering all of these resumes.

So it is.

Going extremely well from the perspective of where we are at this point in the campaign sounds good to me.

So I I said earlier certain categories of professional jobs, So what type of jobs are we talking about?

So we actually did a survey of businesses in Central Arkansas in terms of a very difficult to find type professionals and and so we have focused our areas on those medium and above type professionals in IT and marketing and banking in law in.

Texture in engineering, those types of jobs, as well as some of those upper level jobs in advanced manufacturing.

OK, so it's being called Little Rock Love Connection.

That's a nice title and aims to draw not only people from outside of the area, but perhaps people who are from Arkansas to inspire them to come back.

So we did a.

A massive amount of research before we launched this, and one of the things that we wanted to do was to focus on people who already knew about Arkansas.

And so we're doing some social media mining in specific areas with specific professions.

To date, 33 different States and nine different countries we have applicants from and what we're trying to find is someone who already has a connection to Arkansas.

So we don't have to say why Arkansas, but we're saying, hey, you might ought to consider coming home and look at all of these wonderful opportunities.

So it's a it's a different type of campaign than any that we found in the country.

The community benefactor who originated this idea with the offer of $1,000,000 to help us fund it.

Recognized that we were going to be very surgical, very targeted at the types of folks that we were going after to try to people to either bring people back or to give them an opportunity to take a look for the first time.

The most recent report shows Arkansas's unemployment rate fell to 2.7%, which is an all time low.

I guess we could say that's a good thing, but is, is this combining to make it difficult to fill some job positions?

Absolutely.

In fact, in most of these programs across the country, they're trying to attract folks to come and work from home.

And the last thing we wanted to do was to attract folks to work from home.

And we have so many companies who need employees and and professionals at those levels that they're having a difficult time.

So with a record unemployment and opportunities, especially in the tech industry across the country where you've seen a lot of layoffs, we felt like this was a perfect time to go into the marketplace, try to attract.

Those folks again either to take a look at Arkansas for the first time or to come home.

So explain to me, let's say I I have no connection to Arkansas.

What's going to draw me here What what are you offering or telling potential candidates that will make them want to come outside of the $10,000.

So we're again mining social media so that we show up in your feed and and it's all about getting you to go to move to.

Lr.com and when we say Little Rock, it's the entire region, it's basically a 60 mile radius.

So we have companies that are actually attracting employees to Pine Bluff just like we do in Searcy and Conway and and in different places around the region.

So we're trying to get capture your attention through your social media to get you to click on that landing page, move to lr.com.

You can go there and see all of the wonderful things that we're talking about in terms of what's available, people who've actually moved.

Here from somewhere else and why, why they love Little Rock playing off the Love Little Rock campaign that we used to attract Amazon five or six years ago.

And so it still has legs in the market from the perspective of people remember it.

And so even if you're not from Arkansas and you see that we're we're trying to trigger, hey, I think I remember that I'll go and take a look.

It's upon getting to that website that you then have the opportunity to look at all of these 47 partner companies and the mirror.

Bit of opportunities that are available within them and then when when interested upload your resume and start the process.

Two things come to mind.

How do we compare in terms of job opportunities here compared to Northwest Arkansas where you know I mean it, there's a complete different vibe there and I'm wondering you know with what they need something like this or or does that area automatically attract people and why is it?

Little Rock and the surrounding areas as you said that 60 mile radius, why are we having to do this to get people to come here.

So interestingly enough Northwest Arkansas has a program where they're trying to attract folks, they're being targeted in terms of the geography.

Austin, TX and places like that where they're they're trying to attract folks to to Northwest Arkansas.

Tulsa is another great example of someone in our region who.

Who's doing the same thing through the Kaufman Foundation.

And so yes, we have a significant, for example, there are over 1000 vacancies for nurses alone in Central Arkansas.

That's a huge area anyway in terms of of nursing.

I mean they're having problems around the country, but go ahead with your.

And so when you look at those types of of vacancies and opportunities the companies have here, sometimes Arkansas seems to be a bit off the beaten path and unless we give people a reason to think about us.

I've often said people outside of Arkansas don't think badly of us unless we give them a reason to think about us.

They're just not thinking about us.

And so this is another example of trying to capture attention with folks who have at least a connection to Arkansas or have the opportunity to see it because they're being referred and seeing the opportunities to live here and the quality of life they can have in living in this in this region.

Well, I'm I, I carry the flag in terms of telling people to come here because it's a it's a wonderful.

Place to be this campaign runs through the end of the month.

How many people have applied at this point?

So at this point as of this morning just less than 500, I think it was 496 that have applied so far on the campaign.

And again the paid media runs through the end of this month.

The campaign doesn't finish at that moment in time because what happens is, Donna, if you were to go online and you were to upload your resume, we then take that that resume and we share it with the companies that have a position.

That is something that you're interested in.

They then start their process of talking with you about their interest in having you come and work for them.

So this process will continue on well into the late fall.

What we were trying to do was to capture people's attention in the summer so that if they have families and if they have children, we get them on the move during the summer as opposed to having to wait until the break of school, for example, at the end of the year.

That makes perfect sense.

Now I could win 501 as in.

Five O 1 Little Rock area code 5 O1 call me yeah I could win 501 dollars.

How do I do that?

If you are, if you refer a friend from out of state into this process, they upload their resume and they then get hired by one of these 47 partner companies and actually those companies are increasing every week.

But if if you get hired by one or that person gets hired by one of those companies and you're one of the first fifty that have referred and and had someone successfully go through the process.

We're going to pay you a $501.00 finders fee.

I'll take, as we say, a love connection fee.

I love that.

Great.

OK, so people can learn more about this online, they can go to www.move to lr.com.

And that's where all the information, that's where all the information is.

You can see videos, you can see a whole host of information.

We're excited about bringing people and families back to Arkansas or bringing them here for the first time and helping solve these companies problems and finding that type of of employee and helping people see why this is such a great place to live this whole region.

Is beautiful.

It's a wonderful quality of life, great education, great neighborhoods.

It's why people ought to look at the Little Rock region and grab that $10,000.

Amen.

That would be coming their way.

All right.

Jay Cheshire, thank you for being here.

A great program.

Little Rock Love Connection.

How about that?

All right.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And that was Donna Terrell.

As we close, we take time to remember longtime public servant Charlie Daniels, who died last Sunday at a Little Rock hospital.

He was 83 years old.

Over the span of about 3 decades, beginning in the 1980s, Daniels served as Arkansas's Secretary of State, State Auditor and Commissioner of lands.

He retired his political career in 2015.

A memorial was held Friday in the State Capitol Rotunda.

Thanks so much for joining us again.

I'm Dawn Scott for Arkansas Week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times and KUARFM 89.