A bill crafted to scrap excessive paperwork was tossed out by its sponsor Tuesday morning.
State Rep. Kim Hendren, R-Gravette, went to the House Committee on Education with five of his own pieces of legislation, which including school district oversight and the teaching of cursive in elementary school.
The only one that was discussed by the committee, House Bill 1051, would create a public school efficiency and evaluation task force. Hendren pulled his legislation at the close of the meeting.
"I hate task forces," Hendren said. "I'm not too excited about big government at all."
But Hendren said he hates the prospect of teachers wasting time on excessive paperwork even more.
Frustrated by the amount of regulations, procedures and red tape that govern teachers and administrators, Hendren wanted to create a legislative task force to review the issue.
"If it ain't any good, then quit doing it," Hendren said. "A teacher would rather be teaching a kid how to make change than filling out a report that doesn't do any good."
Hendren conceded that the aim of his bill, which would look at "state and federal regulations" that interfered with instruction, could take until "kingdom come." But he said he was frustrated by what he saw as a lack of activity by legislators to increase efficiency in schools.
A member of the committee, Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, said in the spirit of efficiency, it would make sense for legislators to take a look at regulations without adding "another layer" of bureaucracy and creating another government entity.
"I don't want more government," Hendren said. "But the government we've got is not doing its job."
The chairman of an education subcommittee, Rep. Charlotte Douglas, R-Alma, vowed to attack the issue "with a passion."
With that, Hendren pulled the bill from consideration.
During the brief meeting, Hendren alluded to, but did not discuss, another one of his proposals to the committee: cursive.
House Bill 1044, if enacted, would require every public elementary school in the state to teach cursive writing. It would also require a "cursive writing" component to Arkansas schools' "grade-level testing."
Hendren said too many districts have dropped cursive instruction, in part because of an emphasis on technology, and also because there is no standard of instruction for cursive in the state's Common Core curricula.
He is worried that by losing cursive instruction, Arkansas students will lose a time-tested educational standard.
"If you can't write it, you probably can't read it. And if you can't read it, then you can't read the founding documents of this country," Hendren said. "[Losing cursive] is not good for the kids or for the country, in my opinion."
Kimberly Friedman, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Education, said Tuesday that there is no state standard for cursive instruction and that her organization does not track how many districts teach cursive writing.
Hendren has also filed legislation that would reduce the length of school board members' terms from five to three years and would prohibit school districts from using district funds to pay membership dues to groups that bar the general public from attending or having the opportunity to make a comment.
Metro on 01/21/2015