Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders called her sweeping education reform bill a "blueprint" for other states looking to overhaul and improve K-12 education.
Introduced earlier this week in the state Senate, the LEARNS bill would expand literacy programs, allow for universal school choice and raise teacher pay, among other things.
Sanders told the Washington Examiner that the measure "can be a blueprint for states across the country to look to on how we can improve education."
"We have been working with parents, teachers, school board members, superintendents, and other stakeholders around Arkansas and getting their feedback and priorities and areas they think that we can lean into to improve education," Sanders said. "And over the course of that time, and working with our partners in the legislature over the last couple months, crafted what we think is the most comprehensive and conservative education reform package in the country."
The 144-page bill is the most significant legislation the Republican governor has pushed for since she began her term last month.
According to Axios, the proposed universal school choice program would begin in the 2025-26 academic year and would create a voucher system, if passed. This would allow public money to be diverted from the school assigned to a child based on their place of residence to the school they actually attend — whether public, private, or homeschool.
Arkansas' new governor said the school choice program aims to "put the power into the hands of parents to make sure that our students are getting the best education possible."
The minimum pay for public school teachers would be raised from $36,000 annually to $50,000 and all teachers would also receive at least a $2,000 raise.
"We're really focusing on doing a better job of recruiting and retaining the best teachers that we can," Sanders told the Examiner. "We've also added some other incentives to place priority on teachers who are willing to go into some of the higher demand sectors."
The Arkansas Education Association said the governor is promoting an "unpopular and destructive voucher scheme" with the legislation.
"Vouchers take scarce funding away from public schools and give it to private schools that are unaccountable to the public," Arkansas Education Association President Carol Fleming said earlier this month. "Arkansas needs to focus on investing in our public schools — where 90% of our children go — instead of diverting money from them to give to the 10% who attend private schools.
"By taking funding away for public schools, vouchers will harm rural communities, where public schools are popular and remain the only option for most students."
Sanders addressed the criticism by saying the education measure is actually designed to support public schools.
"I think anybody that argues that this legislation isn't supportive of public schools clearly hasn't read it," she said. "We are leaning heavily into our public school system.
"We know that the majority of students are going to be in public schools in Arkansas, and we just want those to be high performing public schools."
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