Should Gov. Sarah Sanders sign Senate Bill 262 into law, Arkansas’s smallest school districts will be free of the worry that they’ll be forced to consolidate with other districts.

SB262 by Sen. John Payton (R-Wilburn) passed out of the House Tuesday. It had already cleared the Senate. The bill amends a law that’s been on the books since Sanders’ dad, Mike Huckabee, was in the governor’s office. Current law forces schools that drop below 350 students to consolidate with another district for efficiency’s sake. Such consolidations could mean long bus commutes for students, job losses and culture shifts for small towns whose identities are tied to their schools.

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Payton’s bill leaves consolidation open as an option, but removes the requirement.

The future is looking brighter for the Marvell-Elaine School District too, thanks to a bill by Rep. Mark McElroy (R-Tillar) that’s tailored to fit the exact tough spot where Marvell-Elaine finds itself stuck. His bill, which passed the House Tuesday but still has to make its way through the Senate, would save schools from having to consolidate if any students would then be forced to ride a bus more than 40 miles to get to their new district, and if the district is in level 5 academic distress. House Bill 1504 stipulates that a district that meets both of these criteria, as the Marvell-Elaine district does, will be taken over by the state, and its superintendent will be out of a job.

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