Public school enrollment numbers saw a sharp decline in the most recent school year, according to numbers from the state Department of Education. More than 9,000 students, around 2% of total enrollment, left the state’s public schools, the largest drop in nearly 20 years. This year was the first in which school vouchers established by the LEARNS Act have been made universally available to Arkansas students.
April Reisma is a special education teacher in Little Rock and president of the Arkansas Education Association, which advocates on behalf of public schools. She tells Ozarks at Large’s Daniel Caruth that the trend away from public education could have consequences for the entire education ecosystem, and the AEA saw this move coming.
April Reisma: We predicted it, and we talked about it ad nauseam, you know, to quite a few people in the past few years since the LEARNS Act came into existence. And we could look at other states where vouchers are in place and you can see the same issues…