KYLE KELLAMS: Last week, ProPublica reported on a private school in Arkansas receiving state taxpayer money. The report provided evidence of child maltreatment at that private school. Despite the school's founder being charged with nearly a dozen felonies, the school continues to receive state funding, and the school's founder is still listed as a registered agent for the school. Friday, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and Arkansas Appleseed joined to offer a list of reforms to increase accountability for private schools participating in Arkansas' school voucher program.
Nicole Carey is the education policy director for Arkansas Advocates. She spoke with Ozarks at Large's Matthew Moore about the reporting and the reforms.
She says when she saw the story, she had three immediate reactions. The first, a concern for the welfare of the children in the school.
CAREY: And then the secondary reaction was, wait, why did this happen? And why did this happen in this type of placement, at a place where kids should be safe? And then thirdly, wait, taxpayer funds are also going to this place. That should raise the accountability, especially around child safety, even higher.
MOORE: You sound like you were a little bit surprised that this happened, but when you take a step back from the immediacy of the facts hitting you, are you surprised that this sort of thing could happen here in Arkansas, when we think about the school voucher program?
CAREY: I would say, and definitely from our press release, there are better things that we can do to help ensure child safety. So I think that kind of gets at, we haven't created the guardrails of a system to protect kids in the way that we need to. And so in that sense, we haven't done our due diligence to create the placement for the kids that would protect them best. So I guess in that sense, not necessarily a surprise. But I also wouldn't say something bad happening to a child is inevitable, because I don't believe that.
MOORE: You released a press release today, we're talking on Friday, listing a rundown of reforms you'd like to see happen. Maybe let's first start by talking about, there was a ballot measure that was put forward and signatures were collected throughout this year to kind of do a little bit of this work. This is the second time a ballot measure has been put to the people to try to collect signatures to make reforms to the school voucher system here in Arkansas. Both times it failed to collect enough signatures. When you think about the reforms that you're putting forward, are these things revolutionary, or are these things that are really groundbreaking in the sort of reforms you're asking for here?
CAREY: I would say not groundbreaking. They are all very common-sense safety measures. One of the things that the educational ballot measure would have done, had it gone to the voters and been approved, is to align the standards that private schools who participate in the voucher program have to comply with to the standards of accreditation that public schools in our state have to abide by.
There are certain things required of public schools that we also believe should be required of participating voucher schools, so that kids can be more safe and that parents can trust that their kids are safe there. So in that sense it's definitely not groundbreaking at all, because these are the types of things, for the most part, happening in the majority of schools in our state, as it is, and things that either the legislature has mandated in law or that the state agency has mandated through the rulemaking process, through the state Board of Education as well, to say these are the important things that need to happen to ensure children's safety in all of these other types of environments.
MOORE: Some of these reforms feel like they could be in direct response to what happened at the school in Jonesboro. Some of them, I imagine, are things you've been thinking about for a long time that just so happened to coincide with what happened there. How much of this is a chicken-or-egg kind of situation? Your proposal would trigger a review after a 25% enrollment drop after a single year. This is what happened at the school in Jonesboro. How much of this is ideas that were already thought through and are something that could have prevented this sort of thing from happening?
CAREY: I would say a little bit of both. There's kind of two sides. One side is, in general, we and Appleseed, who was partnering with us on this press release, believe that how we currently have the voucher system structured, we need more accountability for that program. And a lot of times that accountability, when it's referenced, means fiscal accountability. So there are some pieces of that too. But I think this specific scenario just raised the bar of how much child safety has to be a piece of that.
So I would say, going through each one of these, we definitely had a conversation through the lens of, if that was in place, would that have changed the scenario for this child, and just tried to be responsive to what happened. And this isn't pie in the sky, let's see everything we can throw at it and make it stick. This is, number one, what would make sense for Arkansas that common-sense things that we can add to help ensure, as a system, that children are safer in these environment? And two, would these specific things have helped in that scenario? Because unfortunately, when bad things happen and they do get brought to light like that, it does raise the question of what should we have done differently? What could prevent something like this in the future? So you have to definitely look through it through that lens as well.
MOORE: One of the things that really stood out to me in this great reporting was that this school lost EFA funding for a period of time and then started receiving funding again within two days. There was another example of a school, Homestead Academy, that had a similar situation where they lost access to Educational Freedom Account funding and then it was brought back. Is that something that's concerning to you, like a turning off of the spigot and then turning it on without much change happening?
CAREY: I think there's two things. There's the change that you want to happen, and there's also things so egregious that change does not rebuild the trust. And then I think, too, there's the transparency piece. In our press release, we only named one of the organizations, the one that was the focus of the story, and that was in large part due to the severity of what happened there, and the role that person played as the founder of the school. And then I also pulled the corporation information off the Secretary of State's office this week, and that individual is still listed as a registered agent on the new name of the school. So when you see all of that, it's like, what level of actions could that school have really taken to turn the money back on? Because that is kind of the accountability mechanism that the state has.
But for us to keep saying this is an approved voucher school, and so we continue to send money there, that gives a message to parents. The fact that it's an approved school gives a message to parents, as a parent myself, that would give the message to me that that place is trustworthy, that my kids would be safe there, they're approved to take state money. So I think the quickness that it turned back on, and for the main school mentioned, the fact that it was turned back on at all.
MOORE: The story also mentions that there were about a dozen complaint emails that came through, that the state has a fraud and misuse hotline available via phone and email. It doesn't seem as though the state had much to say about the other complaints, but it doesn't seem as though that's been a very productive and effective way to address and look at more detail of what's going on here either.
CAREY: I think that seems to be something that's concerning as well. As the public and as advocates, we want a sense of transparency around what is happening. Especially, I mean, this is still a fairly new program to Arkansas, and there have been a lot of eyes on it. So the transparency around what is happening, I will say, with how the law is written, how the regs were written, and then even the hotline that is set up, there is some stuff in there about financial integrity, and the hotline is strictly about financial integrity of the program. But what is raised here is the whole piece of child safety.
There are many aspects of this situation that should have been captured in the existing child safety system, such as everyone in that room was already a mandated reporter and should have made that call to the hotline. But there is a disconnect between how the state is monitoring this EFA program and accounting for child safety. So that's why we think the education system, specifically ADE, who is monitoring the program, should add more child safety-related components to that accountability system. It can't just be focused on the money.
MOORE: In other states where school choice is a prominent component of the education program, like it is here in Arkansas, do we see similar child safety reforms that have been put in place?
CAREY: I will say, when this story broke nationally, a lot of folks in the advocacy space were so distraught and shocked by how bad this was, so this could be a type of trigger to others, honestly, to try to push some of those things forward. I will say, one of the ideas that we have in here, about if the enrollment drops lower than 25%, that requires a review, that actually came from a bill that was filed in Florida. It didn't pass in Florida, but that's just an example of something that other states and other groups have talked about that could add another layer to the accountability piece, that we thought would be a good fit in Arkansas as well.
I don't have any specifics about things that have happened like this in a voucher school in other states, but I do think this type of situation is a warning and an alert to other states, to other people with these programs, that once you attach state money to a private business like this, that gives states the option to have more safety guardrails in place, whereas maybe they didn't for private schools generally before. So hopefully this can lead to some additional child safety measures to be put in place by other states as well.
MOORE: Arkansas Advocates regularly works with lawmakers, works with the legislative body to play a role in legislation and policy and these sorts of things. But at the same time, the LEARNS Act as a whole is the brainchild of the governor's office and really came down as a mandate from her office. So when you think about it from that lens, how confident are you that the governor's office and the Arkansas Department of Education will take your reform requests seriously, whether it comes from you or from other people?
CAREY: What we saw last session is a bill run by legislative leaders that was ultimately passed to add some additional financial accountability to the voucher program. So I do think that there is an ability to listen to concerns and make changes. There does seem to be a willingness to make changes when it's obvious that changes do need to be made. So I do think that was one of the reasons that we and Appleseed wanted to raise up these issues, because here is a gap for child safety. And hopefully that message is heard and some additional changes will be made, like some of the very specific things that we suggest to help prevent something like this from happening in the future.
KELLAMS: Nicole Carey is education policy director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. She spoke with Ozarks at Large's Matthew Moore over Zoom late last week.
Disclosure time: my wife, Laura Kellams, is the executive director for the Northwest Arkansas branch of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. I played no role in assigning, reporting or editing this story. In fact, I was out of state when that all took place.
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