ARKANSAS, USA — The 145-page Arkansas LEARNS Act raises teacher pay, offers more paid maternity leave, offers literacy programs, and introduces a private school voucher program that would be phased in over the course of three years.
Groups opposing the LEARNS Act largely support the teacher raise, maternity, and literacy programs, but say it would further lead to the defunding and privatization of public education.
“The voucher scams are taking public dollars from public schools and funneling them into private businesses that aren't held to the same standards…and so what we're going to see is taxpayer dollars being spent in private schools where they can discriminate against children if they choose, there's no oversight there whatsoever,” said the Chair for the Citizens for Arkansas Public Education and Students (CAPES) Veronica McClane.
But Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says the only people opposing it are a vocal minority.
“We feel confident that there will be a ruling in the near future, and we feel very solid about our case and the attorney general representing us that we will win the supreme court,” Governor Sanders said.
The question brought before the State Supreme Court has to do with a temporary restraining order blocking the start date of the LEARNS Act... CAPES claims that the lawmakers did not follow legislature procedure in approving the act with an emergency clause, which would have put it into immediate effect instead of later this summer.
This all started over the group's push to block the Friendship Education Foundation from taking over the rural Marvell-Elaine School District in the eastern part of the state.
“The language in the state constitution is very clear— there has to be a separate vote on the emergency clause. I watched the video, and there was not a separate vote. They lumped it together. Unfortunately, it appears that they did this with about 100 other bills that went through during the session,” explained McClane.
At a town hall, Governor Sanders said “The good news is LEARNS Act is going into effect regardless of what happens, it just depends on the timing on whether that happens in the next few days or the next couple of weeks. but this is a piece of legislation that was overwhelmingly passed in the legislature. The court does not have the ability to block it completely.”
Justices are set to rule on the case sometime this week. In the meantime, CAPES is also pushing to put the LEARNS Act to a statewide vote.
That referendum is one step closer to being on the November 2024 ballot after attorney general Tim Griffin approved the ballot language on Monday.
“We were really excited. This was our third submission for the ballot title after we were told the first two were too short. This time around, we were able to condense the LEARNS Act and summarize it,” McClane recalled.
Capes still needs to get more than 54,000 signatures across the state for the petition to go on the ballot. Their goal is 90,000, but they are expecting even more legal challenges.
“Once we get our signatures, and we go to turn everything in there, there could be somebody that files a lawsuit against our ballot title or our signatures,” said McClane.
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