Arkansas panel OKs proposal aimed at assisting newly formed smaller school districts

Audience members listen during a meeting of the Joint Budget Committee’s Special Language Subcommittee on April 22, 2026, in Little Rock. (Photo by Ainsley Platt/Arkansas Advocate)

By Ainsley Platt, Arkansas Advocate

Early childhood funding, UA athletics money measure fail before committee

Lawmakers on Wednesday gave initial approval to a measure aimed at assisting several newly formed smaller school districts, and rejected an effort to increase funding for an early childhood education program.

A legislative panel also rejected an effort to block the University of Arkansas from transferring millions of dollars to UA Fayetteville’s athletics department. The measures were among a flurry of proposals that went before a legislative subcommittee as the Legislature neared the end of its third week in this year’s session.

Sen. Missy Irvin, a Republican from Mountain View, proposed adding language to House Bill 1007, the appropriation for public school funding, dealing with isolated districts. Isolated districts are smaller, mostly rural districts that break away from districts they were previously consolidated with under a 2003 law adopted in response to a decades-long school funding case.

Irvin authored legislation in 2025 that allowed isolated schools that consolidated with larger districts to separate from those districts.

Irvin’s proposal, which next goes before the Joint Budget Committee, details how funding and assets would be divided between the isolated districts and the districts they separate from.

She told the Joint Budget Committee’s Special Language Subcommittee that the new law didn’t outline such a process. Irvin said she hoped districts would be able to decide how to split on their own, but negotiations between several districts have broken down, she said.

“Money follows the student,” Irvin said. “The state of Arkansas and the Department of Education must have clarity as soon as possible, so that these schools can be ready to operate and open come August and teach those kids.”

Special language refers to language that is tacked onto legislation, often in the form of instructions on how or when money can be spent or disbursed, but it can also take the form of specific policy.

Under the proposed language, the new isolated districts would receive money equal to 90% of the per-student state funding that went to the district it was separating from in the 2025-2026 school year.

Parents and students from the affected parent and isolated school districts attended the meeting, some carrying signs reading “No HB1007.”

Courtney Salas-Ford, the Arkansas Department of Education’s chief of staff, told legislators she believed the parent districts had enough funds to cover obligations under the proposed language. Even if they didn’t, she said, the department could use $5.9 million from the Consolidation Incentive Fund, a fund she said had been unused for several years, to assist the parent districts. Using that money would require an emergency rule, Salas-Ford said.

House Speaker Rep. Brian Evans, a Republican from Cabot, said he’d received over 150 emails in the 24 hours before the hearing from concerned people within Mountain View’s school district, which is a parent district to several isolated districts that decided to split off.

He said there appeared to be significant misinformation circulating within the Mountain View community about the district’s financial position and how Irvin’s proposed special language would affect it.

“At the end of the day, what we’re arguing about here today is money, and we’re not talking about kids, and that is very troublesome to me,” Evans said.

Early childhood funding boost nixed
The subcommittee also considered and ultimately rejected a proposal from Rep. Julie Mayberry, a Republican from Hensley, that would have appropriated roughly $22 million from the state’s public school adequacy fund for the Arkansas Better Chance program, a 35-year-old program providing early childhood education services to children of low-income families.

The proposal also would have required that early childhood education provided under the program be reimbursed at a rate no less than 75% of the current market rate.

The program is different from the School Readiness Assistance program, which faced trouble last year after the state tried to make changes that families and providers said would have made providing early childhood education unaffordable for families and uneconomical for providers.

“Our ABC programs currently receive $28 a day. Our other early childhood education programs receive either $33 or $36 a day based on the age of the child,” Mayberry said. “ABC programs have not had a significant increase in funding since 2008.”

Sen. Jonathan Dismang, a Republican from Searcy, asked if Mayberry was comfortable with using the funds from the public school fund for early childhood education given the ongoing concerns from some lawmakers that Educational Freedom Accounts, which fund private and homeschool education costs for participating students, are harming public schools.

Mayberry said that 75% of the funds would end up back at public schools if her special language was adopted because most ABC providers are public schools in the first place. Pointing to data she said was from the state education department, she said 70% of pre-K students who participated in ABC were proficient and ready to start kindergarten by the time they finished.

Effort to block UA money to athletics fails
Later, the subcommittee voted down an amendment to the University of Arkansas’ appropriation that would have prevented the university from transferring funds to its athletic department.

In March, the UA Board of Trustees authorized the system president to provide $3.4 million in additional funding for the flagship campus’ athletics department, less than the $6 million the panel sought in new funding earlier this year.

Preventing this from happening would be “pro-academic” rather than “anti-athletic,” said the amendment’s sponsor, Rogers Republican Rep. Brit McKenzie. He said additional funding for athletics should come from new student fees or tuition increases.

McKenzie also said the Legislature should “resolve to work hard on this in January of 2027 to make sure that no tuition payer, no taxpayer, is taking one extra dollar… to pay for the opportunity to be better at athletics.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Jonesboro Republican, pulled two amendments related to higher education. One would have prohibited state-supported institutions of higher education from providing funds to the chapters of the Middle East Studies Association. The other would have prohibited state agencies from distributing money to the University of Arkansas’ King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies.

Sullivan said he will take a closer look at the center, which he said had “significant issues,” through a subcommittee that he chairs focusing on higher education. Sullivan said he plans to review the center’s mission, financial records and alleged “incidents of indoctrination, bias [and] lack of balance” in violation of state law.

Shirin Saeidi was relieved of her duties as the center’s director in December over social media posts she made about Israel and Iran, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. She was fired in March despite a faculty committee’s unanimous recommendation that she be reinstated.

Antoinette Grajeda and Tess Vrbin contributed to this story.

The Arkansas Advocate is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to tough, fair daily reporting and investigative journalism that holds public officials accountable and focuses on the relationship between the lives of Arkansans and public policy.