Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Huckabee's new education plan: solution or recipe for disaster

Is Gov. Mike Huckabee's new plan for education the solution to the problem or a disaster in the making?

This is the question looming before all Arkansans with Huckabee's Leadership for Education Accountability and Reform Now (LEARN).

Under the proposed act Huckabee addresses the history of the problem and his ideas for the solution. The situation arose from the Lake View lawsuit, which took 10 years to reach its culmination. However, once a decision was reached, the Arkansas Supreme Court did not mince words.

In fact, the ASC ordered the state to provide an adequate and equitable education for every student in Arkansas, and gave the state until Jan. 1, 2004, to do so.

The court defined equal opportunity as including the basic components of a substantially equal curricula, facilities and equipment.

The LEARN Act, if approved by the Arkansas General Assembly, will dissolve the Arkansas Department of Education and create the Arkansas Bureau of General Education.

Under the act, all ADE employees will be terminated as of midnight, Wednesday, June 30. But, they could all be rehired by the Director of the ABGE as grade 99 employees.

Rick McAfee, at the October meeting of the Nevada School Board, said grade 99 employees can negotiate their salaries, but can be dismissed with no recourse.

The director of the ABGE will be over all school personnel, and will serve at the pleasure of the sitting governor.

Should the Act become a law, there will be three types of transfers, with type 1 the most common.

A type 1 transfer would basically leave a district with the same authority it had before the transfer, including the ability to issue bonds and other interest-bearing obligations, make rules and enforce them.

However, all management and administrative functions of the transferred district would be under the Secretary of the department it's transferred into.

In addition, all personnel, positions, titles, appropriations, funds, assets, materials, data and information of the transferred district would go to the department it was transferred into.

A flow chart from Huckabee shows the breakdown of the departments. After the ADE is abolished and the ABGE created, an Arkansas State Board of Education will also be created. There will be a Bureau of Higher Education with a Higher Education Coordinating Board and a Bureau of Workforce Education, with a State Board of Workforce Education and Career Opportunities under it.

There will be no more "departments", as they will become "bureaus". The heads of bureaus will be directors, who will have "Secretaries" under them.

Under information from Huckabee's office, the first problem facing the state's educational system is the accountability function needs to be removed from the ADE as it is.

His solution is the creation of the Office of Public School Accountability, which will measure school performance and compliance.

The next problem is equitable and adequate facilities as ordered by the court. The solution, under the Act, is to create an Office of Public School Facilities, headed by a licensed architect, that will be responsible for technology requirements as well as buildings.

The Office of Accountability would be required to monitor schools for compliance with the rules and regulations developed by the State Board of General Education; coordinate the implementation and administration of tracking the results; administer all monitoring and compliance activities dealing with academic and fiscal accountability; monitor schools for compliance with standards of learning and accreditation; and coordinate the analysis dissemination and reporting of criterion and norm-referenced testing. (Norm-reference testing will play a big part in the plan if approved.)

School districts will cease to exist as they are now. The new classification will be "provisional" school districts.

However, any district with a minimum of 425 students in grades 9-12 before July 1, 2004, shall be designated a district.

Any school falling below this number, but is able to meet all curriculum, accreditation, efficiency, teacher salary requirements and facility standards will also be called a district.

But any high school with fewer than 425 students unable to meet the requirements will be dissolved and merged with one or more other districts until the resulting schools demonstrate an ability to meet the requirements.

However, these "improvement's" don't come without a price tag. According to information from the governor's office, the state will require additional revenue in the amount of $368,000,000. The state currently spends $2,9 billion per year on education, with the minimum funding requirements of the LEARN Act projected to be $3,268,000,000.

The type 2 transfer is similar to a type 1, but the district involved shall be employed and serve at the pleasure of the Secretary or Director of the bureau transferred into.

Additionally, the district's authority is transferred to the Secretary or Director.

Type 3 transfers are simple: they abolish school districts not meeting the requirements, with the state agency involved absorbing the authority, records, property and unexpended balance of funds.

After July 1, 2004, the ABGE will have the power to determine the need for and location of any new high school to be built in a district upon the petition of the school board.

There is an exception, of sorts, to the type 3 transfer. Districts able to convince the ABGE it would be unduly cost prohibitive to transport students to another high school because of the geographical location and terrain could be allowed to exist.

All provisional district school boards would be reorganized as well, each having no less than five nor more than nine members who would be elected at regular school elections.

These are some of the provisions of the LEARN Act the legislature may decide if a special session is called for Dec. 8 as previously stated.