By: Josh Teeter
FAYETTEVILLE, ARK- The Arkansas senate has passed the new education bill, also known as bill 294, earlier today. This 144-page bill has a lot of new proposals. Some of these include a minimum $50,000 salary for Arkansas teachers, the funding for tuition, fees and other expenses at private school, and a voucher system.
Greenland superintendent, Dr. Andrea Martin, said she had some worries about the funding and education issues that may arise from this.
“Being a rural school district, funding is always a concern for us, and so, with the vouchers and choice with no caps on those things, I don’t right off hand think that is going to be hurtful for a district,” Martin said. “Obviously, the funding, if it’s provided, that’s great, that is what we need. But there is also some unwritten, I don’t want any of those unintentional consequences to hurt us. There are a lot of K-3 concerns. The right to read act information in there, has a lot of information we don’t know, so really it comes back to those unknowns. Some of those funding pieces could hurt us financially if those things aren’t provided to us.”
For a lot of teachers and educators around the state, the $50,000 minimum salary stands out. Greenland educator Alex Lance said it is one of the only good things she has seen in the education bill.
“The pay raise for teachers is good because it is very hard being an educator in Arkansas. I think that is probably one of the only good things, maybe maternity leave as well, that’s the only positive I can say at the moment,” Lance said.
Lance also said she dislikes the reading requirement that is in the bill.
“The one thing that really stands out to me is the requirement to be at the third grade reading level before moving onto fourth grade. That is going to be very difficult for a lot of students. More than our governor probably realizes. I understand that there are exceptions in the bill for reasoning you could move a kid on without being at the third grade reading level, however you are going to see districts doing that for almost all of their kids because our literacy in the state is just so low,” Lance said.
Both Dr Martin and Lance said that there are pros and cons in the bill and they hope it does not affect schools in a negative way.
The bill will now be sent to the house for voting, but there is no update on when this will take place.