4 p.m. update:
The Arkansas House Committee on Education rejected a second attempt Monday to pass a bill that would give existing charter schools first right to access empty public school buildings.
The committee expunged an earlier vote approving three amendments to Senate Bill 847, by Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, and approved an additional amendment.
The new amendment would allow public schools to appeal the state's decision to grant an open-enrollment charter school access to lease or purchase a vacant or underutilized building to a commission instead of one person, Clark said.
No charter school could claim a vacant building on a campus or adjacent to a building being currently used by a public school district, according to the amendment.
Richard Abernathy, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, said he had several concerns about the bill and recommended it be studied.
Scott Shirey, executive director of KIPP Delta Public Schools in Helena-West Helena, said students at his school deserved to have access to vacant buildings like one currently vacant in his community.
"This is hurting our community as much as the kids," Shirey said. "Students are in trailers with no cafeteria, no library and are walking to class in the rain. Having that [vacant building] sitting there in our community is tragic."
The bill passed on a voice vote, but failed 8-6 in a roll call vote.
See Tuesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full coverage.
Earlier:
A bill that would give existing charter schools first right to access empty public school buildings failed Monday in an Arkansas House committee.
Senate Bill 847, sponsored by Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, would allow already existing open-enrollment charter schools in a particular district first access to lease or purchase underutilized or vacant buildings from a school district.
Clark said the law currently allows for charter schools to do this, but some school districts have been circumventing the law by not putting vacant buildings up for sale.
"[Charter schools] can decide to lease that building or not," Clark told the House Education Committee. "The public school has the right to appeal if they don't agree with decision. No school building can be claimed by a charter school that doesn't exist; it has to be one in the district."
SB847 originally stated that the director of the Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation would have the authority to determine that an underutilized or unused school facility would be "better used" by the charter school, but Clark said it was amended to allow a commission to have that authority.
Rep. Reginald Murdock, D-Marianna, voiced his concerns about involving the local community in the decision for a charter school to use a facility when a school has been closed by the state.
"It's the structure [of the bill] I have concerns with because the implementation requires you to go into communities that have been fractured and devastated by some of the things we've done and the way we're doing them," Murdock said. "When that authority does not involve the local entity, be it the school board or whatever, it appears to have the structure of someone else coming in to take over our situation where we've invested [tax dollars] and we have no input."
Clark pointed to a magnet elementary school in his district that has attracted "600 kids in the minority" as one reason to allow open-enrollment charter schools to occupy empty public school facilities.
"Charter schools in Arkansas are majority minority," Clark said. "These mostly minority students are asking for the crumbs from the public school table."
Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, said Clark's comments were "a little insulting."
"[Minority students] have received hand-me-downs and then when the minority white students got into those schools, they had the hand-me-down schools," Walker said. "I hope you are not suggesting that we are hand-me-down people. If you're going to have the schools, they ought to be equal."
Walker motioned for immediate consideration of the bill without testimony from at least two people signed up to speak against the bill.
The bill passed on a voice vote but failed 7-4 on a roll call vote.
