Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, The Arkansas Times, and KU AR FM 89.

Welcome to the show.

I'm Dawn Scott.

Thanks for being here.

The nation has again been rattled by violence on a school campus, this time involving a professor being killed this week at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, allegedly by a graduate student.

While it was not a mass shooting, those on the campus initially feared the worst with the shooting and the three hour long lockdown prompting many to jump out of second floor windows run for their lives.

And in Arkansas since the start of school just a few weeks ago, there have been several school security incidents.

None have led to injury or death here, but they have been very alarming for parents, teachers, students and joining me to discuss today Little Rock School District Director of Safety and Security Ron Self also North Little Rock School District Safety Services Director Hayward Finks and we have with us Arkansas Education Association President April Reissma.

And I appreciate all three of you being here today.

This is an important topic and we have a lot to get to.

So I first want to start with you.

Mr. Finks in North Little Rock 1/4 grader at Amboy Elementary brought an unloaded gun to school on the first day of class.

This is prompted your Superintendent to look into perhaps whether elementary school students now should be screened.

What has happened and what are you doing since then.

So at the beginning of the school year, we in installed weapon detectors at all of our elementary schools.

Last year we did a pilot program with the high school and the middle school.

We feel that it was successful.

And so in that program we screened all students coming into the building and leaving the building, I mean coming into the building daily.

So we we felt that the weapon detectors were successful, and so we installed them in all of the elementary schools, but not for the students.

We were looking more at visitors coming to the buildings during the daytime and making sure that we didn't have weapons coming onto the campus.

Unfortunately, we have had an incident where a student brought a weapon to school and it has prompted us to look at the possibility of adding additional detectors so that we can screen all students daily at the elementary schools.

Have you gotten pushback from parents on this?

We get feedback both ways.

Some parents are very happy that we have the detectors that makes them feel safe.

We've gotten positive feedback from the students that it makes them feel safe.

And then we have the other side where you know, the parents feel like it may be going a little bit overboard to have elementary students go through weapon detectors.

However, we did have unfortunately an incident already where you know, 4th grader brought a weapon to school.

I want to move over to Little Rock School District.

There have been many security measures put back in place before the start of the year and there are recommendations from the Arkansas School Safety Commission, 24 recommendations in fact.

It was created by Governor Hutchinson at the time.

Describe what Little Rock School District did to put safety first.

So we did the weapons detection systems at all secondary schools as well.

So that's all high schools and middle schools.

We do not have them at the elementary schools.

Additionally, we installed a crisis alert panic system, which is a badge that the students where are the teachers where and the teachers can summon for help if they need it when and they can also have the ability to put those school in the lockdown if they need it.

So a teacher on the science wings, if they see an issue they have the ability to put the whole school in the lockdown.

Have you detected guns using the the weapons detectors so far this year or have any of the teachers had to use these emergency devices?

So far so we have not detected any weapons so far this year.

The devices have been used simply for what they call a staff alert.

So they do a short alert, which is the staff alert.

And that staff alert is for.

It could be just a student that may be having a bad day or or even a medical issue.

And then the team will come to respond to that class.

I want to get to you, April, your group represents teachers and I know there are so many concerns for educators.

We have so much to talk about from how this affects students to teachers, but teachers first, can we talk about educators?

Because we represent every public school employee, not just the teachers.

I do like what he said about the badges.

That was really good putting some, empowering the teachers to be able to be there and to have that constant contact and we are very concerned about the staff being safe as well as the students.

Of course students are first, but everyone needs to be safe.

You know, there's a, there's a core problem here that we're facing all across the nation.

And you know here we're reacting by putting in these metal detectors and we're taking these reactive steps.

But we've got to get to the core of this, right?

Right.

And and that's, I think that's the part that we're missing here.

We're missing that the the root problem and we really do need to take care of the social emotional learning, not only of the students but of the staff like I mentioned, but also providing the counselors.

We have a severe shortage of of educators of course, but of especially at this point we're talking about counselors.

It's recommended there should be one counselor for every 250 children and we're not just not meeting that.

In fact it's gone so far as some schools are one to every 700 students and we are not able to help those kids when we don't have the people in place to be able to do so.

And we really do need to take care of their mental health, their social, emotional learning.

They're missing out on something that they really need to take care of the road of that problem.

Instead of being, like you said, reactive, we need to be proactive.

Well, and that's what we're talking what you can do at school.

But I think probably both of you would agree and Central Arkansas, both being that two larger school districts where we are that the problem starts at home in so many cases, absolutely.

And so one thing that we have done in the N Wood Run school district we have, we use Stop It app technology software, where it's an app where students and their parents can report bullying.

Bullying is a big issue in social media.

They can report anonymously so that we can address those issues.

We know that it affects the students, you know, when they come to school, their mental health, things that occur online or on social media dealing with bullying.

And is this being communicated to the students so that if they are feeling bad, they're having a bad day, they get to school.

You know, maybe they have temptations to to start a fight or do something.

Like is it being communicated?

Hey, there's another way.

Absolutely.

And it works because the students are content, contact and get us.

She mentioned the social emotional learning, and I don't think that that can be talked about enough.

It goes back to what's going on at that house and what's going on out there in the in in the world and they bring that to school and and a lot of times they come to school looking for help which is where we step in and we're able to help them with those with those issues.

So I definitely think that the the what goes on outside of the school needs to be addressed as much as what goes on inside the school.

And we briefly touched on the the recommendations from the School Safety Commission in the state.

There was funding allocated to districts to help it.

Was it enough funding to make substantial improvements in in both of your opinion, no absolutely not.

It's it's a shot, it helps us get forward.

For example Little Rock School district received 819,000 in security funding.

Most that is going towards additional access control.

We already had access control.

We're adding more as well as those district wide deployment of a visitor management software, but it's not.

It's other states across the US have a continual funding source for security and Arkansas does not and it needs to happen.

We need a continual funding source instead of districts having to pull and pinch from various other areas.

Now don't get me wrong, our district in North Little Rock as well do a great job at trying to find that money, but we shouldn't have to find it.

The state should be able to fund it.

I mean this problem is not going away.

That's right.

You know, I want to touch on this as well.

And this is maybe this is for another show, who knows?

But some parents now say, well, you know, I'll just pull my kids out of the public schools system and we'll go private.

And then what does that do to public schools?

And what does that do to public schools for experiencing it right now, with the funding being taken away from public schools, as they do pull those students out into private schools?

And these private schools, they don't have to follow the same rules as public schools do.

And the funding that they're providing with the LEARNS Act on these vouchers, it isn't enough to pay for the whole tuition in most cases.

And then we have those students in rural areas that don't have that opportunity.

I just think that what we need to do is to take our public funds that we pay as taxpayers and invest those in public education, not in private schools.

It's it's a right.

It is.

And that's a whole nother.

Probably 5 shows.

You're right, Don.

And I want to ask both of you all.

You know, you're in touch with districts all across the state of Arkansas.

Is this a Central Arkansas problem?

Are you seeing it in in a Cabot, Bryant, Benton.

Let's go to Bentonville and maybe northeast to Jonesboro.

Are you seeing it it everywhere?

I think that everybody's having an issue, it's not just an Arkansas problem, it's a nationwide problem.

Since COVID, we've seen a huge uptick in what has happened because of the social emotional issues that were mentioned earlier, but we've seen a huge uptick.

So we're we're very much in communication with security directors all across the state and even in other states.

So it's not just a problem here in Arkansas, it is definitely a nationwide problem.

But the decision, and you can talk to this as well, is made-up each, each individual school district does get to decide, you know, which schools have these measures.

Maybe it's worse in some places and it's OK in other places.

Is that true or no?

I think that it, it really goes back to funding because I can tell you I feel calls from both public and private schools across the state and I've gotten calls from, you know, school districts and other states.

And the concern is a lot of the school districts feel they need additional security, but they don't have the funding.

So you have to kind of pick and choose what can you implement right now, you know, the fix this problem, you know, so it's the funding and the availability of funds that that has a lot to do with what's implemented at the different schools.

Do you all give advice to parents as well?

I mean, do parents call you concerned?

Like what should I do every day, every.

And what do you tell them?

Be involved.

It's be involved in your child's life and know what's going on.

Know what's going on on their social media and and it's go back to you know those afternoons of sitting in when the kids come home and seeing how their day went and checking their backpacks and going through their backpacks and being a parent and and and and more importantly letting us know what's going on as well if you know we went through this campaign of see something say something then it kind of just fell off but we really need to bring that back hard and and and I know that North Little Rock and Little Rock both are are very we utilize that that saying quite often and and it needs to occur are some of these incidents and I will talk specifically North Little Rock High school.

Central High School in Little Rock, the area surrounding is impoverished in so many manners and is some of it the problem of where the location of the school is as well, but it's not necessarily students, but there's incidents around and then that impacts education.

That's always a big factor.

Myself, coming from a law enforcement background, I'm used to looking at the safety issues, not just the building, you know, the campus, but the surroundings area around the campus also.

So you always have to factor that in and then the the safety plan for that campus needs to be catered around what's going on in the perimeter and how how is youth crime and and other, you know, criminal incidents in the surrounding area in the city.

How is that impacting what's going on in the different schools?

Well, the elephant in the room here that this is taking away from students education.

Final thoughts, we have about 30 seconds.

We'll start with you.

Well, back to parent engagement.

I highly encourage parent engagement.

A lot of times parents have concerns being a having a student myself and you know school district, I understand you want the best for your child and you want to know when you drop your child off at school that they're going to be safe and return in the, you know, the same manner that you left them.

And so a lot of times, you know rumors get out about what's going on with with safety.

And anytime we can talk directly with the parents and let them know exactly what we're doing and why, usually they are very receptive of that and gives them a sense of calm that you know, we are headed in the right direction with school safety.

We are out of time.

We could probably fill a whole show on this and maybe you'll indulge me and come back again for more of this.

But we are out of time, April.

Thank you, Ron and Hayward.

We appreciate you being here and we will have more of Arkansas week coming up in just a moment.

Welcome back.

Nearly 1/3 of Arkansas counties do not have a hospital within their borders and the state's limited rural hospital say they are struggling financially.

One attempt by the federal government to alleviate some of the financial strain is a new classification offered to small rural hospitals.

This would give them additional federal funding, but they must end inpatient services.

Is this new rural emergency hospital designation a path forward?

And what other methods are being used to improve rural healthcare here in Arkansas With me to talk about these issues?

Hospital administrator for Saint Bernard's Five Rivers Medical Center in Pocahontas, Randy Berryman, and the chair of Family medicine, the department there at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Dr. Shashank Corletti.

Thank you both for being here.

We appreciate you talking about this with us.

It's very much a concern.

And Dr. Corletti, I'm going to start with you.

If you could just give us an overview of the healthcare situation in rural Arkansas.

What is missing now, like you mentioned earlier, several of the counties in Arkansas are designated as rural and even though majority, I mean they are close to half of the population of Arkansas is in rural settings.

Only about 25% or less providers or clinicians are in the rural area providing care.

So there's a huge gap with regards to access to healthcare and it has been shown that rural areas have higher poverty levels, higher food insecurity, decreased access, decreased transportation and that leading to poor healthcare outcomes.

We have some of the lowest healthcare health, good health in these counties, but also high rates of obesity, substance use, diabetes.

And so that's that's something that we we really need to work on as a state.

We're partnering with every particular organization that we can and also build training programs and and conduits to help increase healthcare programs and people working in these rural areas so they can provide care to these populations.

Dr. Berryman to you, your hospital is the 1st to get this rural emergency hospital designation and the lawmaking this possible was passed just this past February.

Why did your hospital jump on board with the new program so quickly?

What does it mean for your hospital?

So yeah, we started evaluating this the first part of the year early in 2023, even before the state made it a viable option.

And really we we looked at all aspects from the financials to the services that we provide here at Five Rivers and and really the services that are being utilized.

And when we took a good hard look at things, we only about 5% of our our patient population and used our inpatient services and that's the extended stay services that we provided and the majority we're using our our ancillary or outpatient services, our emergency room services.

And so kind of once we started analyzing that, we also looked at our, our average length of stay and by using the REH formula, our our average annual stay was about 10 hours.

So really once we analyzed everything, talked with key stakeholders in the community and just explained kind of the the financial situations of rural healthcare and really evaluated our patient population, it really made sense for Five Rivers.

You know we have a strong strong partnership with many other facilities in the state and of course that with the Saint Bernard's Medical Center in Jonesboro.

So transferring patients and that nature was was not going to be an issue for us.

So it really made sense for us sure what you'll be doing with that additional funding.

So like most rural facilities, you know we have an an aged building, we also have equipment that that we need to evaluate.

But first and foremost we want to secure our emergency room services and all other outpatient services that are being utilized.

You know, really protecting and securing those essential services is, is is priority number one and then we will look to, you know, make some, maybe make some changes to equipment and things of that nature.

So obviously this means your hospital won't be offering inpatient services.

I want to ask you, Doctor Croletti, if you have an opinion on whether having the rural emergency hospitals have those inpatient services or is it better just to to leave, leave it outpatient.

Well, there's definitely a need on both sides and we need to be able to.

And like Randy mentioned, the important thing is partnering and collaborating.

So if you can find hospitals and other institutions close by that we can partner with and get the better of both worlds with this opportunity, then that would be a win, win situation.

We definitely need to enhance our primary care and emergency access because that's the need of the hour for rural areas and to be able to provide that service.

How Dr. Colletti, did we get here in your opinion?

Is this a shortage of doctors or what?

What is the the core issue here?

Usually Healthcare is not a standalone problem.

So when you when you talk about lack of healthcare, it's it's also related to lack of good public health, lack of good education and the overall social ability of the population to perform at a higher level.

So it needs to be a a collaborative effort for you know, to improve education from like high school college levels and going into medical and healthcare related training programs.

But also work on the basic social needs of these populations to be able to grow the community to a point where they can.

We can have people moving into these rural areas as people keep moving out as we can see the trend.

And so these rural populations need to grow and be able to pull communities together.

And that that really has been a challenge is that they did not been able to do that for a long time.

And Mr. Berryman, do you agree with that and what other solutions do you see?

So yeah, I certainly agree.

And and whenever we talked with key stakeholders in the Randolph County area, you know it was very important to industry that we, we were able to keep our doors open, to keep our emergency room viable.

You know when talking with city officials that was their most concern as well is, is keeping their healthcare facility open and viable so that we can collaborate with with the community on their health needs.

And and really you know the emergency room was was the topic of conversation was whatever we really whatever we need to do to keep our emergency room services inhale in our area.

And those other outpatient services, you know you have your, your radiology services, people don't want to drive 40 miles to have an X-ray.

So haven't having those services locally is a great need and you see this transition going OK there, Mr. Berryman.

And what will it do for your community do you think?

So in all of our planning and talking with the key stakeholders, I do think, you know, of course, you know we'll have some naysayers, I'm sure and it will affect a small number of folks in the community that that now will have to be transferred.

But overwhelmingly, you know in talking with the public and the key stakeholders, our Advisory Board, the main sentiment was whatever we need to do to keep our emergency room open and they keep it as strong as it is currently.

You know we are Level 4 trauma center.

So that was that was the most important piece of the puzzle.

Well, doctors are scarce.

We touched on this a moment ago in rural areas, specifically Doctor Crolletty, I know you AM S has been investing in some of the solutions that are mobile health units.

Tell us more about that.

Well, we definitely want to work on an Omni channel approach to improving access.

We don't want to just provide care for patients that walk into our clinics and the hospitals.

We need to be able to end the current scenario, go to their homes and be able to provide care there.

We also use telemedicine to provide access to our primary care and speciality services across the state, not also including behavioral health and other aspects.

But we recently added mobile units.

So we have 4 units across the state that will travel to these underrepresented physician shortage areas and will be able to recruit these members from the community to provide preventive care, vaccinations, screenings and also the healthcare that they very much need.

So we're really looking forward to partnering with the local community organizations to set up the Wizards in areas of need and looking forward to expand on that as well.

How would people access these services?

Is there an easy way for them to find more information?

We are definitely partnering, like I said, with the local churches, schools and other community organizations.

We are going to be putting up information with a map of where these mobile units will be traveling to on given dates and that will be available with us.

We're partnering with the public health and Department of Health organizations with and also providing that information and and getting that information into the community.

Final thoughts from you Randy Berryman.

So I just you know through this I just want our community to know that we're we're here.

We're going to be here for for many years to come.

We're going to do everything we can to secure those essential services.

And then I think another important important point is that you know because we started our planning early for the REH, we we did not have to terminate any of employees.

So I know that's that was a major concern we had going in is how does that affect our employees?

And so that was all right.

Randy Berryman, the hospital administrator for Saint Bernard's Five Rivers Medical Center in Pocahontas and the chair of the family medicine department at UAMS, Doctor Shashank Krilletti, we appreciate both of you.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you for having me.

And that is it for Arkansas Week.

I'm Dawn.

Scott, thanks for being here.

We'll see you next time support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the Arkansas Times and KUARFM 89.