Education notebook

Teacher licensing is focus of LR event

The Arkansas Department of Education will host its annual Become an Arkansas Teacher event from 3 to 7 p.m. Monday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 201 S. Shackleford Road in Little Rock.

State Education Department staff will be on hand at the free session to provide information on the teaching profession and assist attendees with background checks and fingerprinting.

Attendees will have the opportunity to meet with department and higher education representatives to learn more about the opportunities and routes available to become a licensed teacher. Former teachers, including those who have retired or left the teaching field, can learn how to renew their licenses.

More information about the event or about becoming a teacher is available on the Education Department's website, arkansased.gov, or by calling (501) 682-6349.

Waivers available for ACT exam fees

Waivers on fees to take the ACT college entrance exam more than once are available to Arkansas high school students who are from low-income families.

Those waivers have been under-used in the state, Arkansas Department of Education leaders reported Friday. During the 2016-17 school year, ACT issued 14,770 test fee waivers to qualified Arkansas students. However, 3,451 students, or 23 percent, did not use the waiver to test for free.

Taking the college entrance exam more than once has the potential to raise students' scores, increasing their opportunities for higher education and scholarships. ACT data show that members of Arkansas' high school Class of 2017 who took the exam at least twice earned an average composite score of 21.1 compared with 16.5 for students who took the test once.

All Arkansas public school students can take the ACT for free in the spring of their junior year. Additional tests, which cost $46 without the writing component, are paid for by students unless students qualify and request through their school counselors the fee waivers for up to two additional tests on national testing days.

To take advantage of the fee waivers for the Dec. 9 ACT testing date, the registration deadline is Nov. 3. Registering early gives students more time to access the online preparation materials and gives schools the opportunity to help students better prepare for the exam.

LR district budget dips into reserves

The Little Rock School District submitted to the Arkansas Department of Education last week its 2017-18 school year budget that anticipates receipt of $351 million in local, state and federal revenue and expenditures of $355.5 million.

District leaders anticipate dipping into reserves to meet all of those expenses. The district ended this past year with $43 million in carryover operating funds. They project that the reserves will drop to $39.5 million by the end of this school year.

The district's revenue is projected to include $160 million in local tax receipts, up from $156.9 million collected in the past year. State aid to the district is projected to be $126.5 million, down from the $132.4 million received in 2016-17. Of that state aid, $58.7 million is state foundation funding, which is down from $65.2 million in 2016-17.

The district will receive this year its final $37.3 million in special state desegregation aid.

The budget includes no across-the-board raises for employees but does include the traditional step or experience increase paid to eligible employees for their additional year of experience. That is about a 3 percent increase for the individual.

Mineral Springs schools suit tossed

U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. has dismissed a lawsuit filed last year by Mineral Springs School District leaders that accused the Arkansas Department of Education and Hempstead County officials of depriving the district of educational and financial resources and of encouraging the transfer of white students and black athletes to the neighboring Nashville system.

The judge said it was "troubling" that the state appears to not have fulfilled its statutory duties to analyze whether student transfers across district boundary lines are having "a racially segregative impact" on particular districts and to report its findings annually to the Arkansas Legislature's education committees.

"But these omissions do not salvage the claim," Marshall wrote. "The pro-school choice agenda is on the march in Arkansas," he said, adding that discrimination is not a plausible conclusion.

"Mineral Springs has pleaded a strong case of re-segregative effects," Marshall wrote. "But, in the Court's judgment, it's implausible on the pleaded facts to conclude that the State Defendants intentionally pursued those effects."

Education board moves meetings

The Arkansas Board of Education's regular monthly meetings will be held at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality building, 5301 Northshore Drive, North Little Rock, until further notice because of construction underway at the Education Department.

This month, the state Board will consider all of its agenda items -- including a couple of items regarding the Little Rock School District -- on only one day, Thursday, and will forgo its standard practice of meeting the next day.

A state board committee, however, will meet at the Arkansas Department of Education on Friday.

Metro on 10/08/2017

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