LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KATV) — Public school enrollment in Arkansas has seen a significant decline this school year- the first for which school choice vouchers established by the LEARNS Act have been made universally available to Arkansas students.
The decline in public school enrollment from last school year is steeper than any year during the COVID-19 pandemic and possibly the last 20 years.
Arkansas public schools have lost a net total of 8,916 students since last school year, a decline of nearly two percent.
In Northwest Arkansas, Springdale School District has lost nearly 600 students, while Fort Smith has lost about 400. Here in Central Arkansas, LRSD has lost around 600. While there are exceptions—Bentonville School District gained nearly 400 students—most school districts in the state have seen some decline.
“I think that these numbers are going to level off in the next couple of years, but I hope they do, quite frankly,” said April Reisma, president of the Arkansas Education Association.
Affected school districts attribute some of the loss to the Education Freedom Account program created by the LEARNS Act. This school year, the state is spending an estimated $327 million or more in taxpayer dollars on the school choice program, $50 million more than it had budgeted for in June because of the higher-than-expected number of applications approved, over 46,000.
The program gives families vouchers to be able to send their children to private schools or homeschool them. But according to the state, of the students approved for vouchers this year, 28,000 were already attending private schools and 16,000 were already homeschooled.
If that’s right, then only about 2,000 of the 46,000 school choice voucher recipients this year actually used the vouchers to move from public schools.
“95 percent of them already were attending private schools,” Reisma said, “so this was just an additional expense for the Arkansas taxpayer.”
Concurrently, private schools in Arkansas have raised their tuitions by thousands of dollars since vouchers first became available.
“The cost of tuition seems to be going up as well. In a lot of places, it seems to be the same amount as the EFA, which is an interesting thing to look at. They are opening up left and right to make dollars off of our children,” Reisma told KATV.
“We need to make sure that our public schools are funded. Our students, an overwhelming majority, still attend those schools.”
Perhaps the state can justify the loss of students, and by extension, funding, suffered by public schools directly caused by vouchers if outcomes for voucher students improve. But even that may be in question. In December, Homestead Academy in Pearcy was removed from the voucher program after the state said it failed to provide adequate safety or academic instruction for students.
That’s why the Arkansas Education Association and others in the For AR Kids ballot question committee are collecting signatures to get an issue on this year’s ballot that would ensure that private schools receiving state dollars are held to the same standard as public schools.
“I know it’ll pass because we have overwhelming results from our surveys that we have done, with all sides of the political aisle being in favor of making sure that our students are taken care of,” Reisma said.