Public education advocates For AR Kids submit revised ballot measure to attorney general
Published in the Arkansas Times on Jan. 18, 2024
A group hoping to put its “Educational Rights Amendment of 2024” on the Nov. 5 general election ballot submitted a second proposal to Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin on Thursday, just over a week after Griffin rejected their first try.
Bill Kopsky, the executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, said the coalition behind the proposal is confident of a better reception at the attorney general’s office this time around. The ballot measure would require private schools accepting public funding in the form of vouchers to meet the same academic standards public schools must meet, among other changes. Arkansas LEARNS, the sweeping K-12 education law passed last spring, created a voucher program that will eventually be open to all students in the state.
Attorneys working with For AR Kids, the group behind the proposed amendment, “invested the last three days during this winter storm event to take that feedback given us [and] to draft what we believe is an even better proposed ballot measure to enshrine into our constitution common sense best practices that will greatly improve our state’s public education system,” Kopsky said.
The group requested a meeting with the Attorney General’s Opinion Department next week “so that we can make sure that we are all on the same page,” he added.
In a Jan. 18 letter to Griffin, Kopsky said that the group had “called, and emailed” his office over the last couple of weeks to request a meeting to discuss the issues that Griffin’s office “found to be defective with our first attempt.” But the meeting never happened.
Jeff LeMaster, Griffin’s communication director, verified that the second proposal had been received.
“It will undergo the same review and all that entails,” LeMaster said. “Our deadline for a response for that — barring unforeseen circumstances — is Thursday, Feb. 1.”
Griffin nixed the group’s first attempt because he said it would violate parochial schools’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion if they were required to meet state standards when accepting vouchers. The attorney general also took issue with a lack of specificity in language used throughout the proposed amendment.
Kopsky said the majority of the changes are “technical.”
“There’s not a whole lot of substantive difference,” he said. “On the First Amendment issue, we didn’t really feel like there was a First Amendment issue to begin with.”
Kopsky said they went through Griffin’s argument point by point.
“We’re pretty confident. We’re optimistic,” Kopsky said. “But we’ll just wait to see what the process does. Our legal team feels that as long as the AG’s office is operating in good faith that we’re comfortable with the process.”
The Educational Rights Amendment of 2024 would do three things:
Require any school receiving any amount of public funds to follow the same standards that traditional public schools are required to follow;
Establish the minimum quality standards ordered by the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2002 in its landmark Lakeview decision, which required the state to make improvements to public schools and led to an overhaul of school funding;
Guarantee voluntary universal access to pre-K for 3-4 year olds, afterschool & summertime programming, quality special education, and wrap-around services for children within 200% of the federal poverty line.
The For AR Kids Ballot Question Committee is a coalition that includes the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, the Arkansas Conference of the NAACP, the Arkansas Education Association, the Citizens First Congress, and CAPES.
