Palestine-Wheatley School District in St. Francis County will move to a four-day week when students return to school this fall in one attempt to fill its 54-teacher roster.
Superintendent Jon Estes said the district lost only four teachers last year after the four-day school week decision was announced. One of those teachers moved to Northwest Arkansas where teacher pay is significantly higher than Estes' district.
"We compete with Memphis and West Memphis," Estes said. "If you live between here and West Memphis, do you want to come here and make state minimum or go to West Memphis and make $10,000 more?"
State minimum pay for teachers has become the focus of a battle between Democrats who say the state is at risk of losing teachers because of low pay, and Republicans, who contend that now isn't the appropriate time for the discussion.
The topic has heated up in recent days as a special legislative session focusing on spending the state's $1.6 billion surplus draws closer. Multiple legislators have taken to social media to discuss the issue and a nonpartisan organization, For AR People, has started a petition with plans to rally at the Capitol in upcoming weeks.
The Palestine-Wheatley School District is one of more than a dozen districts in the state that pays new teachers the minimum, which is set at $36,000 for the 2022-23 school year. While the state Legislature sets the minimum, districts are able to create their own pay scales anywhere at or above that minimum.
The Arkansas Democratic Party has been vocal in the discussion calling for the issue of a pay raise for teachers to be put on the special session agenda.
"Teachers and staff have been given broken promises constantly," Dustin Parsons, vice chairman for counties for the Democratic Party, said Friday. "We are basically calling for the Legislature to sit down and do something now."
Senate President Pro Tempore Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, said Friday that the argument is not about whether to look at teacher salaries but when to look at them.
"There is not a consensus on raising salaries in the special session," Hickey said. "The reason for that is, first of all, salaries are ongoing and these are surplus funds that have largely been created by this federal stimulus money, and it is not going to be recurring every year."
He added the Legislature does an adequacy study every year to make data-based decisions on how and where funds should be spent for education.
The conversation seems to have heated up after Gov. Asa Hutchinson released a proposal in June to raise the state's minimum pay for teachers and provide a $4,000 salary increase. He also suggested the proposal could be discussed during the special session.
Last week, Hutchinson said the proposal would not be discussed during the session, saying he had a lack of support in the Legislature.
Hutchinson and Department of Education Secretary Johnny Key said previously that offering competitive pay to educators was an important investment, as other surrounding states were making pay increases.
Key mentioned Mississippi, which recently increased its base salary to $41,500 with a $5,000 salary increase.
He also said Arkansas would start next school year behind the base salaries of Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi -- something Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, tweeted out last week. Someone replied to her tweet with a picture of a local billboard from the Dallas Independent School District that advertised salaries between $60,000 and $102,000.
Estes said his district has met with college students saying they plan to move to Texas.
Hutchinson's original plan would raise the state's current minimum salary for new teachers to $46,000 next year. Last year about 30 of the 261 school districts in the state paid base pay in the $40,000s, according to data from the Arkansas Department of Education.
The governor has been supportive of teacher pay bumps while in office, endorsing past increases that raised the minimum over time. The base pay was $29,244 in 2015.
According to data collected by state House and Senate members, the state didn't see an increase in minimum pay between 2008 and 2015. After Hutchinson took office in 2015, the minimum has increased every year since with the largest increases of 3.25% and 3.15% approved by the legislation for fiscal years 2022 and 2023.
Data collected by the National Education Association had Arkansas fourth- lowest for minimum pay in 2020-2021 school year, with only Colorado, Missouri and Montana trailing. The national average at that time was $41,770, the data shows.
The $4,000 pay increase would likely bring the average salary in the state to $60,000, Key previously said in an email to the governor's Deputy Chief of Staff of External Operations Bill Gossage.
The average salary for teachers in the nation was $65,000 in the 2020-21 school year, according to a report by the National Education Association. Arkansas' average was $51,000. It was ranked 46th in the nation at that time but states have continued to increase pay since the data was collected.
Hickey has argued the governor's proposal would cost the state $333 million.
A 1990s court decision in Lake View School District v. Huckabee set a required funding model for the state, Hickey said. Adequacy studies are completed and studied by the legislative education committees annually to set funding.
"I fully expect in this adequacy study there is going to be a need for increased salaries," Hickey said. "There are all types of ideas out there right now on how to fund education."
Hickey said there is talk about raising salaries but also discussions about putting more into teacher benefits such as health insurance and retirement funds.
Parsons argues that the education system doesn't have time to wait until January.
"We have underfunded educators consistently across the state," Parsons said. "It proves that we are not adequately funding our schools. With Mississippi already increasing theirs, we should be able to do the same."
The state can't risk losing teachers, Parsons said. He said using the surplus funds now would help retain teachers.
According to Kimberly Mundell, spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Education, the state doesn't track teachers leaving the state. It does, however, track the state's attrition rate -- or percentage of teachers leaving public schools each year.
The state saw about 24% of teachers leave public school jobs in 2021, the data shows. There was 21% in 2020, 25% in 2019 and 24% in 2018.
For Estes, the difficulty in recruiting and retaining teachers is more complex than just the minimum pay.
"Nobody graduates from the University of Arkansas and has dreams to work here in east Arkansas," Estes said.
When asked about the surplus special session, Estes said, "I applaud Asa Hutchinson and all he is doing to raise teacher pay, but I don't see a clear answer between a small school district opposed to a large school district in an urban area."
In Northwest Arkansas, the districts offer salaries significantly higher than Estes' but districts are still in competition amongst themselves in the region.
Bentonville School District approved a base salary of $48,755 for the 2022-23 school district in March. Rogers Public School district base pay is $48,000, Fayetteville bumped its to $50,000 and Springdale comes in the highest with $50,282.
"Certainly we have to pay attention to recruitment and retention," Leslee Wright, spokeswoman for Bentonville Public Schools, said. "We are currently working on a teacher recruitment campaign."
From Bentonville to the Palestine-Wheatly School District, some of the best methods start with recruitment in their own back yard.
Bentonville started a program called "field of studies" which gives students 12 credit hours in high school.
"We've been successful in recruiting several of our students back to work after college," Wright said.
The program had 18 students its first year and within five years has increased to 61 students, she said.
Estes said his district keeps up with former students currently in college for an education degree.
"We always encourage them and keep up with them and even if they just graduated from college, they will get a phone call from us that says, 'Hey, do you want to come back to teach?'" Estes said.
The Arkansas Department of Education also has relaunched Teach Arkansas, which in part starts coaching students interested in education while still in high school.
This year, legislation also will require every district to have a recruitment and retention plan for teachers and administrators, Mundell said.
As the state battles with what to do with education funding, Estes sticks to the methods he has to retain teachers.
"Teachers know they will have to teach more prep, they know they are going to do it for less money, they know they are going to have extra duties," Estes said. "They do it anyway because they love the small school school environment and atmosphere."