It wouldn’t be fair to ask private schools to have to provide transportation to students living within 35 miles, because we don’t require that public school bus routes extend that far. That seemed to be the deciding argument Tuesday in the House Education Committee, where Rep. Jim Wooten‘s (R-Beebe) attempt to level the playing field in Arkansas’s new school voucher hellscape got tossed in the trash.
A dogged advocate for public education, Wooten was one of very few Republicans who opposed Gov. Sarah Sanders’ Arkansas LEARNS universal voucher bill that will leech money from traditional public schools as students claim taxpayer-funded freedom vouchers to put toward private school tuition. Wooten is 81, so threats that he would be primaried and lose his seat if he didn’t vote for the governor’s bill didn’t phase him.
His House Bill 1205 is one of two bills he filed this legislative session to try to set ground rules for a fair fight as public and private schools will soon be competing for the same public dollars. His first bill on this theme would have required private schools that agreed to accept vouchers to admit any voucher students who came along, just as public schools must. The House Education Committee nixed that one, too, meaning private schools that accept public voucher money can continue to admit only the students they want and turn away the ones they don’t.
Wooten’s failed HB1205 was another attempt to make private schools accessible to poor kids. Even when vouchers cover tuition costs and the private schools agree to let the kids in, families might still find private schools are out of reach because those schools don’t have to provide free and reduced lunches, transportation and other services public schools offer. If empowering all parents to choose the best schools for their children is really what the goal is, free transportation needs to be guaranteed for all options, Wooten argued, albeit unsuccessfully.
So it looks as if Arkansas LEARNS will fail on yet another front on its promise of empowering parents to choose the schools they think will best serve their children.
The good news for these parents unable to deliver children to private schools’ vaunted gates is that data shows public schools are just as good. At least for now. Arkansas LEARNS, with its punitive regulations to limit what history and literature can be taught in public schools and its requirement that public school students serve a sentence of 75 hours of community service to graduate while fancy private school kids aren’t required to lift a finger, seems geared toward humiliating, defunding and demoralizing public education.