Education Plan Moving Forward

Arkansas Education Department staff and state legislators are gearing up for their first face-to-face meeting on Governor Huckabee`s revised education plan. The Joint Interim Committee on Education will meet tomorrow to review the plan for the first time. The committee, which invited education department staff to the meeting, hopes to convene weekly and reach a consensus on how to overhaul public education to the satisfaction of the Arkansas Supreme Court. School restructuring, especially school consolidation, has been at the heart of the discussion. But also critical are issues of academic standards, school facilities, teacher pay and finding the money to pay for improvements. In the regular session this year, the governor proposed consolidating school districts of fewer than 15-hundred students when the districts don`t meet education standards. His latest proposal calls for high schools with fewer than 425 students to prove they can meet academic standards in an economically efficient way or merge with a neighboring district. Posted by Mike Hellgren