Moore: Normally, every other Tuesday, my friend Andrew DeMillo joins me from his office in Little Rock. This Tuesday, he joins me from my office here in Fayetteville. He was in town for the Georgia Bulldogs' demolition of the Arkansas Razorbacks. Andrew, a Georgia alum. Andrew, thanks for coming in today.
DeMillo: Thanks for having me. Especially after that game, too.
Moore: You're welcome, I think. Well, so let's jump into it here. We've got some reporting that your team at the Arkansas Advocate has done over the last week. Let's start. Andrew, since you're up here in Northwest Arkansas, let's start in Northwest Arkansas with the new health care campus that opened in Bentonville, thanks in part to Alice Walton.
DeMillo: Yeah. And this is kind of part of just this transformation that we've seen in Bentonville in recent years from Alice Walton's generosity, and this health care campus that they did a groundbreaking of last week and really raising a lot of optimism of what it's going to do in terms of expanding access to care, especially when it comes to specialty care in Arkansas, which is an area that I think we've talked about before where there's a great need.
This is going to be a huge project there. You've already got this Alice Walton School of Medicine out there. I actually had a chance to walk around the campus there while I was in Bentonville this weekend. And it's just fascinating just to see just what's happening out there and just how hard and how large of a project this is going to be and what this is going to do for health care, not just for the northwest region, but just for the state as a whole.
Moore: Yeah. When you say large, you're not kidding. 709,000-square-foot facility. That's going to be the first building that's a part of this. As you said, the School of Medicine is up and running. It's there. This is kind of a bit of a phase two, right? Of like, not just a place where people are learning and educating our future health care workers, but now we're offering places for them to go and work once they get out of school.
DeMillo: Yeah. And a big focus of what Alice Walton's talked about, she's talked about kind of thinking about health holistically, thinking about whole-body health. And this really kind of fits in with that philosophy right now. It's going to be really fascinating to see kind of how this develops.
Bentonville is already an area that we've seen transform just through things like the museums out there, through the trails and now just health care, which is beyond just a kind of fun quality-of-life thing. Just a huge need here. So I'm really fascinated to kind of see how this develops, just the investment that's coming from her and not just from her, but Tyson has also put money into this. You've got area health systems that are also investing in this. So this is going to be a huge endeavor here.
Moore: Yeah, yeah. We're looking at the expected opening date to be 2029 on this. Staying a bit in education here. We recently got the report cards for Arkansas schools, public schools and school districts across the state. The percentage of Arkansas schools and districts receiving failing or low grades from the state of their performance has decreased, which sounds good, right?
DeMillo: Yeah. This is something where we've seen a decrease in the letter grades that are given to not just schools, but school districts, A through F grades, and the number of schools or percentage of schools that had D grades, F grades went down. These are based on number of factors, including test scores.
And this is really being touted by Gov. Sanders' administration as kind of validation for the LEARNS Act. This overhaul of education that has been kind of her signature legislation. You see pushback from folks who have pointed out other issues with LEARNS, namely the voucher program, the growing cost of it, the impact that's having on public schools, and also just concerns that we're seeing about grading schools based on standardized testing.
And we've seen the discussion over the years about the impact that standardized testing has, the idea of teaching to the test. So yeah, it is definitely something where, gives the governor something to point to as kind of a victory not just for her or her policy, but also for schools as a whole.
Moore: So we saw a decrease in schools getting D and F letters, but we also saw 80 different schools lost ground. And as the reporting says here, of the 613 schools that scored A, B or C last year, 68 of them scored a D or an F this year. So we are seeing gains in some spaces, but we're also seeing some school districts who are, as the reporting here describes, losing ground.
DeMillo: Yeah. And this is one of the areas where we had talked with the Arkansas Education Association. They had raised concerns about grading schools on kind of a rigid test-based A through F system is not really a fair system. And so that is a concern that's coming up with us.
Moore: Finally here, I want to touch on your latest column here talking about social media and talking about how the state of Arkansas has done a great job, or at least they have done a stringent job of reining in social media. And you argue that we should use a similar method to think about AI here in the States.
DeMillo: Yeah. This is, we've seen kind of the model from the state in terms of since you're not seeing action at the Washington level on a lot of things when it comes to social media. The governor and the attorney general have really taken it on themselves as a cause. And it's been one of the rare bipartisan issues that we've seen here in terms of restrictions on age to use social media and also litigation against social media platforms for not doing enough to protect children.
And I, the point that I make with this is: this provides a model, an example of what Arkansas could be doing right now when it comes to AI. There's no shortage of horror stories that we're hearing right now of what could happen with AI. And clearly, Washington's not doing anything right now.
And there is an area for the state to be able to step in and do things, may not be able to kind of have the wide-ranging effects that you would see at the federal level. But there's still steps that Arkansas could take in terms of addressing the harms that are caused by AI. And there are examples that we're seeing in other cities and other states in terms of putting restrictions on the use of AI in the classroom. Restrictions on use of AI chatbots, age limitations and more transparency on when companies are using it and when companies are using our information and our data for it.
And the point that I really make with it is these are things that can at least kind of lessen the harm of something that's becoming more and more entrenched and entrenched in society, but also could send a very strong message to Washington, to federal policymakers, including the president, that the states are concerned about this and that this is not just one small corner. There's bipartisan concern about what's happening with AI right now.
Moore: When we think about how Arkansas, and specifically Gov. Sanders, has framed the concerns and the issues with social media, it's been children. She's done work to make sure that public schools don't have cell phones during school hours. You, as someone who's got a kid who's school age, when you think about social media, you think about the impacts of technology in the classroom. What are some ways that you can think about framing AI impact and making sure to add some guidelines in a way that could be effective for thinking about children, thinking about the future?
DeMillo: I think very much the same type of messaging, that we should not be trusting big tech to be alone on that. They're going to do the proper guardrails. And also that you're exposing children at a very young age to a technology that does have harms when you think about companion chatbots, and we've seen examples of the harms with that, those are as risky as what we're seeing with social media, but also what it does in terms of creativity.
We're hearing more and more from teachers having to deal with papers that are written by AI, assignments that are handled by AI. You've heard some. Yeah, I think you're probably, here in Fayetteville, you have some professors who are going back to the blue book for assignments, handwritten assignments, because they're that concerned about it.
And I think having kind of a AI-free space for elementary school, middle school is one of the areas that I think should be part of the discussion on that. So they have a chance for their brains to develop, but also a chance to be able to figure out how to be creative on their own without AI doing the work for them.
Moore: My last question for you here, this is a fun one, is we're entering fall here. Today is the first official day of autumn. What is it for you that is the thing you have to do in fall?
DeMillo: The thing I have to do. I've already had my pumpkin spice latte. I'm going to be running a lot. Running a lot more. But the big thing is with Halloween, I'm going to be reading more horror books and watching just really junky horror movies on TV and eating small, very, the fun-sized pieces of candy.
Moore: I love it. Have you seen "Widow's Bay" yet?
DeMillo: I have not. And yeah, I'm, I was rooting for "Hacks" to win, but since they didn't, I got to check out "Widow's Bay" now.
Moore: It's on my list as well. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for your time. You can find all of his team's reporting when you go to arkansasadvocate.com. Andrew, thanks for joining us in the studio today.
DeMillo: Thanks for having me.
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