A proposed amendment aims to provide universal Pre-K, hold private schools to equal standards

Listen or read the full interview at www.kuaf.com.

A proposed constitutional amendment has been rejected that aims to change elements of the governor’s major education law. The Educational Rights Amendment of 2024 proposes that all schools that receive local or state funding will be required to meet “identical State academic standards and identical State standards of accreditation.” Bill Kopsky serves as the director of the Arkansas Public Policy, and he says leading up to the proposed ballot measure, they conducted research on a group of Arkansans.

Bill Kopsky: The polling shows this is completely a nonpartisan issue, which is the way education always has been until the past few years. It's becoming more and more hyper partisan, sadly because of the legislature, but in the public we have overwhelming support across all partisan identities. This is not a partisan issue in any way, shape, or form.

Matthew Moore: What sort of experience do you have personally with the ballot initiative process?

BK: I've worked at the Panel for quite a few years and we've worked on a number of ballot measures over the years, and so we've worked on a whole range of issues around several minimum wage efforts. We've raised the minimum wage in Arkansas through ballot measures several times. Ethics and campaign finance reform. We've opposed a few ballot measures over the years. Most recently, last cycle, there was a measure that the legislature proposed that would have raised the threshold to 60% of the vote, which allowed just a 40% minority to block passage of a ballot measure. We oppose that and defeated it was 60% of the vote, which felt particularly gratifying.

MM: As someone who has done this before you've kind of been through this process before. What kind of get into this and a little bit but just kind of on its surface. What is this process been like for you going through with this ballot measure and this specific Attorney General compared to previous experiences? 

BK: It depends. We have a really strong committee of lawyers and volunteers and educators that have been helping us build the campaign and build the measure. So that part's been really gratifying. We have a really amazing team. And so that part's been fantastic.

You know, the Attorney General's Office has traditionally played this role, actually. So this is not terribly new. In the past the Attorney General's Office, have a little bit more of … what's the right word … they're more helpful in really trying to help citizen groups. I mean, I think the whole reason why they were put into the middle of the process to begin with was to help citizens prepare a good law. And in the past, the Attorney General's office staff would actually call people that were working on ballot measures, talk to them about what their real goals were and help them find the best language the right way to accomplish their goals, whether they agree with it or not. They were there just to basically make good public policy.

And this attorney general seems to be taking a little bit different approach towards that and a little bit more adversarial. But at the end of the day, as long as they're operating in good faith, you know, it's still good work out. We expect it to be rejected on the first time. We're already planning to submit a new version in the coming days and we'll see how the process goes.