The city resolution approved earlier this summer on Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr.'s "Rebuild the Rock" sales-tax package outlines a $40 million investment in early-childhood education over the next decade.
The planned spending on education represents a relatively small share of the overall tax package, which is expected to generate $530 million in new revenue over the next decade. But among the pieces of the "Rebuild the Rock" proposal, the early-childhood framework may be the most complex.
Little Rock voters are set to weigh in on the 1 percentage-point sales tax increase in a Sept. 14 referendum. If approved, the increase will take the overall rate in the city to 9.625% starting in January.
In a recent interview, the city's chief education officer, Jay Barth, described two linchpins to the framework. The first is enhancing the quality of early-childhood education providers in the city. The second is accessibility.
Under the schedule laid out in the resolution, "quality comes first and then accessibility really follows," Barth said by phone Thursday.
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He noted the increased federal interest in supporting early-childhood education under the Biden administration. It raises questions about how expansive federal involvement will be and how long it will last, Barth said.
Additionally, Barth said he worries that the federal government will focus on 3- and 4-year-olds. That would still leave "a real gap with infant and toddler care, which is where the biggest challenges are in Arkansas and really across the country in a lot of ways," he said.
When asked about the biggest challenge that faces families hoping to secure an early-childhood provider, Barth said there is decent accessibility into lower-quality providers, adding, "I think the problem is accessibility into high-quality providers."
Two of the oldest high-quality early-childhood providers in Little Rock -- the Little Rock School District's Rockefeller Early Childhood Center and the Gertrude Remmel Butler Methodist Child Development Center -- historically have had long waiting lists, Barth noted.
Often parents have to get on a list very early to get into some of the higher-quality providers, he said. Especially in some of Little Rock's lower-income communities, "you really just don't have high-quality providers at all," Barth said.
In addition to creating an advisory committee designed to evaluate the initiatives' effectiveness, the framework laid out in the city resolution encompasses five principal areas.
The first says the city will partner with higher-education institutions to coordinate technical assistance and job training in "the early learning space" to enhance the city's early-childhood education sector.
A lot will depend in the first few years on how much money the advisory committee and the city board determine should be allocated to issues of quality, Barth said. A large part of the effort to increase quality will come from the partnerships with higher-education institutions, he suggested.
Second, the city will make investments to expand "exemplar" public and private early-childhood learning centers "targeting the areas of greatest need" in Little Rock, according to the resolution.
But according to Barth, this component of the plan does not mean the city is getting into the business of running early-childhood centers.
"That's really going to be supporting other public and private entities that are engaged in that work," he said.
The idea is to send city dollars to the best early-childhood centers so they are able to offer more spots or hire more people, Barth confirmed.
Third, beginning Jan. 1, 2026 -- four years after the city begins collecting revenue from the proposed tax -- if a majority of the committee on early-childhood education votes to proceed, vouchers or slots will be provided to exemplary early-childhood learning centers for infants and toddlers up to age 3 from low-income families.
This facet of the program would have the city partner with the state Department of Human Services' Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education as well as the Arkansas Better Chance program.
No one-star facilities are to be targeted with vouchers, the resolution states.
According to Barth, the time-delay until 2026 is intended to see what federal involvement will look like.
"The assumption is, at the moment, with the federal government's involvement in this space that there will not be a need to directly fund" vouchers or slots in the early years of the city tax package, he said.
A lot will depend on who controls Congress, he acknowledged.
Some federal dollars can be used only at high-quality centers, Barth said, "and we simply don't have enough of those facilities available in the city."
He suggested that as the number of high-quality facilities increases, there will be more money available as families gain access to vouchers that can be used at those facilities, unlike one-star facilities.
Children from low-income families -- specifically families earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level -- or children who meet certain other eligibility requirements can enroll in a child care program through Arkansas Better Chance, which funds public and private child care providers throughout the state.
According to Barth, the Arkansas Better Chance program, which he said provides a lot of high-quality pre-kindergarten, as well as the Little Rock School District's fully-funded prekindergarten offerings mean the city is in good shape when it comes to 4-year-olds.
Many other cities have had to work on opportunities for 3- and 4-year-olds before they begin to look at what is available for infants and toddlers, he said.
"We have the freedom to go and really look down below at those earliest years," he said.
Another factor that favors Little Rock is the Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education, he said. The state division was "amenable" to the city putting money into the state system that would then be directed toward Little Rock families, according to Barth.
"That's great, because we don't have to create a city infrastructure to carry out that work the way that has been the case in other cities," he said.
Fourth, the city plans to create a small-home visiting program by partnering with an institution or institutions specializing in pediatric nursing. Under the framework, nurses would go to the homes of newborns "to connect parents with services to get children off to a healthy start."
"A focus shall be on training of new nurses to effectively engage in this work," the resolution said.
Finally, a public education campaign would raise awareness about early-childhood education, its importance and would provide parents tools when they are seeking such services.
The committee to assess the initiatives' effectiveness would have 11 members, including three community members appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city board.
It also would include one member of the city board appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the board; the city's chief education officer, i.e., Barth; the director of early-childhood education for the Little Rock School District; and the director of the Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education or his or her designee.
Additionally, the committee would include seats for the chancellors or presidents (or their designees) representing the following institutions: the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College, Philander Smith College and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
The scope of the early-childhood education proposal invited questions and criticism when the mayor's tax package was released this spring.
Vice Mayor Lance Hines, who represents Ward 5 on the Little Rock Board of Directors, homed in on the early-childhood framework soon after the package was unveiled in detail.
At a meeting in late April, during an exchange with Barth, Hines argued that the city was out of its "lane" with regard to how the proposal would use tax dollars relative to state and federal agencies.
"I can tell you that to a T, I've heard no one that supports this from my representatives or the business community," Hines said at one point during the meeting. "This is the area that the state and federal government have."
Hines is now helping to lead an opposition committee to encourage residents to vote against the tax increase.
The education framework had been whittled down slightly by the time the city board voted to call the September election.
An earlier 10-year allocation for early-childhood education was ultimately reduced by $5 million from its $45 million total. An item funding 529 savings plans for public school students that was included in an earlier version of the proposal was eventually dropped, too.
The Little Rock School District offers tuition-free prekindergarten for 4-year-olds at more than a dozen locations, some of them elementary schools that serve students up to fifth grade and some of them prekindergarten only. Some sites also offer classes for 3-year-olds.
Esther Jones, director of early childhood programs for the Little Rock School District, said she has been in meetings with Barth where he shared what the mayor was trying to do, but she has not seen the full written proposal.
Jones indicated that she favored the idea of the city targeting the youngest children.
"If you want my opinion, you know, there definitely needs to be some funding earmarked for infants and toddlers," she said by phone Friday. "There is a big need there, as well."
The Rockefeller center is the district's only site for infants and toddlers, she said. The center can serve up to about five infants and has approximately 16 toddlers, she said.
The district is considering opening another site to infants and toddlers, Jones said.
"We do recognize in our district that there is a need, and I know our superintendent's trying to meet that need, but I also know that funding is an issue," she said.
There is a weekly cost associated with enrolling in the Rockefeller center, but families can apply for vouchers, she said.
Additionally, the district's pre-school program has about 1,200 children registered and a "very, very large wait list," Jones said, with about 180 children waiting to get into the program.
A number of families enrolled in the pre-school program do not meet the income eligibility for support but are covered by the district, she said.
Information for this article was contributed by Cynthia Howell of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.