Thread by @ForARPeople1

With all the news lately about SolutionTree, LEARNS vouchers funding, and everything else going on at the Department of Education, we thought we'd pop into the Joint Education Subcommittee meeting this morning, slated to begin in about 20 minutes.

Quite a packed agenda: teacher salaries and merit increases, resource allocation, and learning standards.

Follow along with this thread! #arpx #arleg

(side note: DM us if there's anything weird going on with this thread! Our twitter is acting up a bit this morning, so apologies in advance for any snafus)

They are gaveled into session and we are hoping that Twitter makes it to the end of this meeting, which may be a long one. We carry on as best we can. (making accounts on the other blue tweeting site in between tweets)

They are planning for an all-day meeting - a recess for lunch with a predicted end at 3pm. Buckle up folks!

Resource allocation up first.

The powerpoints/reports that are under discussion are available on under the "docs" tab next to the meeting, FYI.arkleg.state.ar.us

Foundation funding (sum of per-pupil costs) makes up about 51% of the ~$7 billion education budget.

Categorical funding makes up about 4% of the costs, and that deals with things like ESL, Alt. learning environments, etc.

Wild statistic: analysis of expenditure data show 0.72% was spent on counselors, and 0.08% on student support. That's... probably not enough, huh?

56% of school superintendents said that current funding for alternative learning environments doesn't meet the current needs of students requiring this kind of specialized education.

Just over 25% of schools have to outsource some of this support to another coop or district. Wow.

Onto English Learner funding. Fed law requires funding for this; $366 per student with just over 40k students needing these resources.

Like alternate learning environment funding, expenditures are outstripping funding by a substantial margin.

Next up is Enhanced Student Achievement (free and reduced lunch programs, among other things - also behavioral support, academic support, higher teacher salaries, etc). A 2021 act required districts to spend these funds in specific categories.

All the ESA categories, for context.

ESA expenditures are actually underspent a bit looks like, would be very curious to see what categories are being underspent.

Research indicates that if these funds are used to reduce class sizes, esp. to support at-risk students, it results in a very efficient intervention for the students.

Focusing on preschools now, total expenditures last year was about $138 mil. Only about 11% of districts offer a preschool for kids younger than 3.

Professional development sees the return of everyone's favorite random government contract, SolutionTree! Not sure if lawmakers will stop the presenters from Ed/BLR to ask questions.

SolutionTree got just over 16mil from the state last year, FYI. AETN (Ark PBS) got 2.5 mil from the professional development fund (another reason why we got so heated about the attempt to defund it last month)

Big majority of profdev funding comes from Federal government - $34 mil - vs the state, only spends about $20 mil

64% of district superintendents say current spending on profdev meets their needs.

Onto supplemental funding. Isolated districts receive a lot of this, with a majority going to isolated special needs education. Isolated just means rural, low class sizes, etc.

Smaller districts actually require more support staff, somewhat counterintuitively; those small districts tend to need more support because they're isolated.

Districts that are losing students actually receive a bit of extra funding to make up the loss in foundation funding (which is based on current enrollment); The majority of that funding is spent on operations/maintenance and regular instruction.

Districts that are getting bigger naturally receive more foundation money; that gets spent on admin and regular instructional costs.

Tutors, preschool, and after school/summer programs need more money (like a lot of money), because they're the best way to reach at-risk students and positively intervene.

Total special education expenses last year were about $572 million. 45% of that was federal funding, 32% was Foundation, and about 17% other state/local.

SolutionTree: their prof-dev model is based around "professional learning communities", which is an "ongoing collaborate process of collective inquiry."

*collaborative process, whoops.

$52 million spent last year to equalize teacher salaries to legally required levels (LEARNS requirement, I think - this number will obviously go up dramatically in the coming years, it's one of Rep. Wooten and Sen. King's biggest concerns)

Instructional aides and facilities acquisition accounted for a pretty big part of non-matrix spending (the matrix is basically a list of categories where certain money can be spent; non-matrix items can still be purchased/financed, but it comes from a different bucket of $$)

Of the 112 superintendents polled by BLR, 42% say they need more funding for safety measures, mental health resources (a common theme today looks like) and just more staff.

Missed a bit re: funding for dyslexia support services, apologies, but we are onto questions.

Rep. Meeks: For the 36ish% of superintendents who found funding for prof-dev inadequate, do we know why?

A: Don't have it today, but we can pull the data for you.

Meeks: Declining enrollment-do we know why those areas are declining?

A: lots of reasons; population trends, declining birthrate in isolated areas, etc.

Chesterfield: Re ESA funding, what percentage of districts are returning monies designated for those students?

A: can pull that data.

Chesterfield wonders why the districts are sending money back instead of investing it in at-risk students.

Q: do we know how many teachers are teaching out of their area of expertise, and how many students are in AP/Advanced courses?

A: will have to pull that data for you too.

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Apologies, lost our thread but we found it again! Missed most of Sen. Hammer's questions, but he's diving into SolutionTree a bit; wondering how the collaborative learning communities for prof-dev can be recreated without them.

(twitter really losing it today. apologies again.)

A: have just started doing that analysis given the events of the last week, no comprehensive analysis yet.

Rep. Painter: do we have a breakdown of districts that focuses most on low-income preschool, etc?

A: not a question that's asked on our survey, but we can look into it.

Chesterfield: what % of students in alt. learning environments graduate highschool?

A: don't have that data at the moment.

Q: How many teachers teaching outside certification area?

A: not sure we can pull that data, but we'll try.

Q: any taking concurrent/AP classes?

Rep. Beck: Teacher salary equalization and LEARNS requirements - is this the same category?

A: stay tuned for the big ol' teacher salary report this afternoon!

Rep. Painter: food services got a big increase; inflation, more staff, what's the reason behind the increase?

A: Will have to dig in.

(Quick side note-sometimes the "we'll have to dig in" answer indicates lack of preparation not the case today. Just really complicated data)

Sen. Bryant: With alt. learning environments expenditures already over allocations, how do we plan for upcoming massive mental health needs?

A: ALE formula is just used to allocate funds; it won't capture future needs like that.

Bryant seems to be misunderstanding the use of the formula used to calculate ALE funds/their distribution.

He wants to know how they can prepare for the incoming/already happening student mental health crisis, but that's not really what the fund is used for.

A: part of what we're doing right now is trying to plan for the future like that. Growing number of ALE placements.

ALE covers a lot of ground, from students who might be physically violent to a student that is pregnant and needs extra support to finish their degree.

Rep. Meeks: do we know total amount of funding from all sources invested in K-12 education?

A: $7 billion, give or take.

Odd question? It was pretty clearly on the slide. Anyway.

Rep. Duke: asking for clarification on special ed "high cost occurrences" - the formula used to calculate reimbursement recently changed.

A: total funding increased from $13 to $14 mil - more claims for IEPs submitted, among other things. Anything specific I can clarify?

Rep Duke is concerned that service costs are increasing.

Sen. Hammer: how do districts make up differences in funding vs. expenditures in matrix and non-matrix funding?

A: various sources - federal, supplemental, categorical, etc.

Resources allocation is done!

(they hoped to be done with two more agenda items by 11:30, so.)

Equity report is up next!

The background for everything in this report is the Lakeview case, which is long, complicated, and has influenced Ark's spending on public education dramatically since it came down. Read more here: encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/lake-v…

Very brief overview of Lakeview's requirements.

To be clear, this isn't equity in the sense of DEI; this is funding equity. Obviously all districts don't receive the same amount of money; they have different needs, numbers of students. But they have to receive similar amounts of revenue per students (again, oversimplification)

Listening to lawmakers get a "Statistical analysis 101" course live is why we do this job, folks. Nothing like it

This year, looks like the values are a bit off; not by a lot, just a few hundredths of a point.

Standard deviations show the same trend.

As I am also not a statistician, can't be sure, but obviously curious if this disparity - which wasn't present in previous fiscal years - is the immediate result of LEARNS.

Another measurement tracks inequality via income inequality in the district. We're doing pretty well through this metric.

Next measure of equity based on property wealth and per-student funding amounts. Do the measures move up together, down together, or apart from each other?

Our correlations are fairly strong here (not great), but when you take into account other factors, this doesn't mean much.

Another metric of equity: demographic trends in school districts. Size, % of non-white students, % of students eligible for free/reduced lunch, and total district property wealth.

We look a lot worse when you measure by this metric, unsurprisingly given how segregated our schools still are and the allocations of funding to majority-minority districts.

It is also worth noting that COVID-19 funding still throwing off a lot of this data.

As an example of this inequity measure: in the lowest decile, the avg. property wealth per student is about $60k. In the top decile, it's $260k.

No questions! They are recessing till 1pm. We'll grab some lunch and start a new thread then! Thanks for sticking with us this morning through some complicated stuff.

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