Organizers collecting ballot signatures for a measure to amend the Arkansas Constitution’s education clause said today that they are “nearing the halfway mark” in their collection effort.
That estimate may be somewhat speculative at this point, however. Their official tally of signatures in hand is lower, but they say a large number have been collected but still need to be turned in by volunteers.
“I think we’re going to get this thing across the finish line well in advance of our July 5 deadline,” Steve Grappe, executive director of Stand Up Arkansas, said at a press conference held over Zoom by the For AR Kids ballot question committee.
“When you work with an all-volunteer team, reporting signatures is difficult to do,” he added. “So we’re always trying to figure out how many signatures we have.”
In order to make it onto the 2024 ballot, supporters must collect at least 90,704 signatures from at least 50 counties. (Arkansas has 75 counties total.) Grappe said that more than 1,000 volunteers across the state are working on collecting signatures.
The group currently has around 25,000 signatures in hand, but based on an analysis of the number of petitions and people in the field and the response rate, they can extrapolate that they’ll be around 45,000 to 50,000 total once volunteers turn in signature sheets. Grappe said that was a conservative estimate, and they could well have even more.
He said that the group had met the needed threshold for individual counties in about 11 counties with 10 more “right on the brink”
Grappe was the executive director of a group, Citizens for Arkansas Public Education and Students, or CAPES, that tried and failed to put a repeal of Arkansas LEARNS on the ballot last year. LEARNS is the law passed by the Legislature in 2023 that created a universal school voucher program, among other sweeping changes to the education system.
More volunteers are still needed, organizers said, to continue their current pace. They’ll need to gather around 1,000 signatures per day over the next 45 days to meet the July 5 goal.
The ballot initiative committee is a coalition featuring a number of players in Arkansas progressive politics and education issues: the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, the Arkansas Conference of the NAACP, the Arkansas Education Association, the Citizens First Congress, Stand Up Arkansas, and the Arkansas Retired Teachers Association.
The Arkansas Educational Rights Amendment would require private schools accepting public funding in the form of vouchers to meet the same academic standards as public schools. It would also guarantee universal pre-K and afterschool care, as well as additional services for low-income students and students with disabilities.
Its language also would more explicitly cement the guarantees for adequate and equitable education established by state courts in the landmark series of decisions known as Lake View, beginning in 1994.
“It takes the education standards that the Arkansas Supreme Court created in Lake View and places them in the constitution,” Bill Kospky, executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, said. “It ensures that the legislature can’t water down our educational standards.” Kopsky didn’t say this explicitly, but it could also be seen as a defensive effort to stop a future ruling from the Supreme Court — which has grown more conservative over the years — to reverse the requirements of Lake View.
Kopsky said that polling on the measure has been promising thus far.
“We’ve seen some other polling that reaffirms our initial polling showing that the support for the measure is around the mid-70s,” he said. Their own internal poll showed 78% support, he said.
“That’s unbelievably high for a ballot measure. We’re starting to see that the opposition has clearly seen some of those same polling numbers, because they’re starting to pour huge money into trying to stop this before it gets on the ballot. Because it’s clear once it’s on the ballot, Arkansas voters support quality education for all Arkansas kids. That’s what our measure does,” Kopsky said.
As we reported last week, Walmart heir and Arvest Bank CEO Jim Walton donated $500,000 last month to a group working to defeat the Educational Rights Amendment.
“We are a grassroots coalition putting common sense education reform on the ballot for Arkansas voters,” said Elaine Williams, education chair for the Concerned Citizens of Prescott, who spoke at the press conference. “We’ve been attacked by billionaires and millionaires with a big-money campaign aimed to dismantle our public schools. Jim Walton has been trying to destroy our public schools for years now.”
Williams pulled no punches in her depiction of Walton’s involvement: “He’s invested half a millions dollars preventing kids from getting the proven education support they need, like quality special ed; overcoming poverty; and afterschool, summer, and pre-k programs. He’s invested half a million dollars to leave the door open so lawmakers can water down our educational standards. Imagine that. Why? He doesn’t have kids in our schools. He doesn’t live in our community. He and his … friends are spending big to fight the Arkansas Education Amendment — fighting against public schools.”
She added, “They want to impose their extremist agenda on all of us until our public schools are gone or they’re just a shadow for our children.”
Organizers said that despite the money pouring in on the other side, their focus remains on collecting signatures for now, with plans to transition to more fundraising soon. “Small dollar donations could make a huge difference,” Kopsky said.
Thus far, they have raised around $4,500, which they acknowledge will not be close to enough for a campaign if the measure makes the ballot. But the group does already have enough resources to get through the initial phases of signature gathering and addressing potential legal challenges.
“This has been a volunteer, grassroots effort from the get-go,” he said. “We knew we were going to get outspent and outgunned. We had a volunteer, pro-bono team of lawyers draft the amendment. We have a really strong volunteer, pro-bono team of lawyers ready to defend the amendment if and when it’s challenged.”
Kopsky expressed confidence that they will be able to raise sufficient money to get their message out once they have the necessary signatures.
April Reisma, president of the Arkansas Education Association, said that the popularity of the amendment’s basic provisions with voters helped explain the big money coming in from the opposition, which she said was relying on misinformation.
“They don’t attack the [effectiveness] of quality special education, afterschool and summer programs, support for kids in poverty, and pre-K,” she said. “Because they cannot attack those points — they are proven. They are the most proven education reforms that we all know of, and investing in them is the only way that this state will get off the national floor and start providing all of our kids the education they deserve.”
Reisma noted that the proposed amendment would not take away the voucher regime installed by Arkansas LEARNS. It likewise does not stop schools from offering courses they wish to offer. It simply applies the same minimum educational standards as those in public schools.
“Quite frankly, if they don’t meet those standards, they don’t deserve my tax dollars and they don’t deserve yours,” she said.
We’ll follow up later with an explainer on just what’s in the proposed amendment and how it all might work in practice, but here is the overview from the For AR Kids ballot question committee:
1. Guarantee voluntary universal access to pre-K for 3- and 4-year olds, afterschool & summer programming, quality special education, and wrap-around services for children within 200% of the Federal Poverty Line
2. Establish the minimum quality standards ordered by the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2002 in its Lakeview decision.
3. Require any school receiving any amount of public funds to follow the same standards that traditional public schools are required to follow.