Educators reflect on first year of Arkansas LEARNS Act

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – It’s a time of reflection across school campuses as graduates walk the stage earning a degree for everything they’ve learned and this year the districts teaching them have also learned plenty from implementing the first year of the LEARNS Act.

The LEARNS Act, like any change, has come with some shuffling. One of its biggest and most immediate impacts is adjusting teacher starting pay to $50,000 annually.

“We went from 48th in the nation from starting teacher pay to the top 5,” Arkansas Department of Education Secretary Jacob Oliva said.

He said there is a current commitment in the state’s budget to continue to pay the difference for districts that paid less. That includes Jessieville School District who has felt the fact LEARNS does not fund raises for those who have been educators for many years.

“I feel like teacher morale among veteran teachers is a little lower,” Jessieville School District Superintendent Melissa Speers said. “I’ve had more leaving the profession this year than I’ve had in a while.”

To overcome this, JSD is implementing two retention bonuses at the start of next year for employees who have been with the district for 10 years and more than 15 years.

JSD also had to adjust for the elimination of AMI days. Without them, the district had to extend the 2023-2024 school year by a full week due to bad weather. For 2024-2025, the district will extend how long its school days are to meet the required education hours.

“We have seven bonus days. We can miss up to seven years and still finish before Memorial Day and get all our hours in,” Speers said.

She said her district has not noticed an impact from the Education Freedom Account Vouchers. Those were available to limited categories of applicants, which will expand next year. Then all students become eligible for the school vouchers beginning in 2025-26. Allow those seeking private education to use public funds if their school opts into state requirements.

“Families have the right to have a seat at the table and look at different education options that work best for their child,” Oliva said.

Also looking forward, scores will be in for the Arkansas Teaching and Learning Assessment System (ATLAS) which replaced ACT Aspire.

Speers said the ATLAS, which replaced Aspire ACT, has been an appreciated change brought by LEARNS.

“The new ATLAS test, I didn’t hear anything but positives from it,” Speers said.

“Teachers are going to have access to better information on how their student is doing,” Oliva stated.

With the scores, comes personalized student success plans in the Fall. Upon review, they must be signed by the student, their parent, and the school counselor. That will require, coordination, cooperation, and hundreds of extra meetings on top of the counselor’s existing duties.

“We are working strategically to try and make sure that we can fit all of that still. That our counselor can schedule time with all of those teachers and parents,” Speers said.

One thing the superintendent said could help further LEARNS’ mission, is helping fund literacy coaches in all districts. LEARNS requires literacy coaches in D and F grade schools. JSD had a literacy coach through the Education Coop but lost her to a lower-grade school. Affording another is not feasible for them until they can make further creative adjustments

“We’ll go through it and do the very best we can because it’s what’s right for our kids,” Speers said.

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