The House Education Committee on Thursday approved a bill that places a moratorium on placing schools in academic distress. Democrats made a failed attempt to push an amendment to remove all schools, including Little Rock School District, from state takeover.
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The committee then rejected a measure to transfer Crowley's Ridge Technical Institute to East Arkansas Community College, after opposition turned out in force and Rep. Reginald Murdock, D-Marianna, told the bill's sponsor that the effort lacked transparency and tact.
"Sometimes the efficiency for you or some may not be the efficiency for all. Because of the uniqueness of the Delta, sometimes what you may think, from your vantage point, will help us, really hurts us," he said. "That may not be your intent, but that's why it's very wise to confer with those of us earlier in this process that represent that area."
Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, who is sponsoring House Bill 1012, argued that the bill would allow both campuses to run more efficiently by freeing up money used to pay administrators for student needs.
"We're talking about economy of scale. We're talking about resources that will be better available to all students with the two merged campuses," he said. "One of the reasons why the cost is so high at the vo-tech -- $3.8 million -- there are so many things you have to fund whether you have 200 students or 2,000 students."
The state spends more than $17,000 per student at the school -- far more than at other technical programs, he said.
HB1012 failed in a voice vote followed by a roll call.
The measure on school labeling and grading is intended to "pause" or put a hold on categorizing schools as "academically distressed" or giving schools A-F letter grades based in part on the new ACT Aspire tests given this spring, state Education Commissioner Johnny Key said in an emailed response to questions on Monday.
And Mark Gotcher, deputy commissioner of the Arkansas Department of Education, told lawmakers they should support HB1001 at the committee meeting.
"The pause is necessary to allow time to facilitate with stakeholders and the U.S. Department of Education time as we transfer into a new accountability system," he said. "The key point in this is that no additional schools -- with this legislation -- would be identified in academic distress and all those schools may benefit if their test performance ... is high enough, but no school would be added."
Several Democrats said they believed the measure was unfair to schools recently placed on academic distress because the state has changed the test three times in three years and schools were not given a pass in the past.
"Why not allow all schools to be out of academic distress this coming year knowing that, No. 1, we're anticipating that [schools are] going to go into distress because of this testing scenario?" said Rep. Warwick Sabin, D-Little Rock. "No. 2, the implication of that is the schools currently in distress are really unlucky and unfortunate in having had bad timing."
During the meeting, House Minority Leader Rep. Michael John Gray, D-Augusta, asked Gotcher if this gave some schools a "free second chance."
"I would agree with that," Gotcher said.
Rep. Charles Blake, D-North Little Rock, offered an amendment that would have specified that the Education Department not identify "any" schools or school districts as being in academic distress.
But Kendra Clay, general counsel for the state Education Department, said she did not believe that would lift schools from sanctions because the schools had been previously identified as being in distress.
The amendment failed and the committee passed the bill in a voice vote followed by a roll call.
A Section on 05/20/2016