All journalist Roby Brock wants is the year-three budget amount on those Education Freedom Accounts, arguably the most controversial part of the Arkansas LEARNS Act.
“Education Freedom Account” is just another name for a voucher toward private, church or home school expenses, and starting in the 2025-2026 school year, every Arkansas student will be eligible for one, regardless of need.
How much will all that cost? Despite Brock’s best efforts, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t oblige when she sat down with the journalist in a recent interview.
Incoming kindergartners, some students with learning challenges and a few other groups were eligible for vouchers this school year. Year three is when these Education Freedom Accounts go universal, with presumably more people accessing the funds.
Arkansas’s vouchers are currently set at nearly $7,000. Sanders said that as of right now, she sees no reason to adjust the amount. Money has been allocated for years two, three and beyond, she said, and she feels comfortable where it’s at.
“Obviously we’re constantly watching budgets,” she said. “We have teams that look at the numbers all day, every day, and they live and die by the spreadsheets that they’re putting together. So we’re constantly monitoring if we have to adjust at some point.”
Brock told Sanders that he asked for the budget or even just the amount, but received no answer.
“Could you give me that number now?” Brock asked. “What are you expecting it to cost when it goes universal?”
The answer isn’t hard and fast, Sanders said.
“The big thing, though, at the end of the day, while we want people to be able to be empowered to make decisions about where and what is best for their kids and how they should be educated, at the same time, we’ve invested heavily in public education,” Sanders said.
For a lot of students, she said, their first and best choices will still be the public schools in their communities.
Sanders interrupted Brock a few times as he pressed for more information.
“Frankly, Roby, I wouldn’t be the governor of Arkansas if people didn’t want to see these changes implemented,” she said after Brock suggested that the vouchers were the most controversial part of the Arkansas LEARNS Act.
“We’ve spent so much time talking about it, campaigning on it,” Sanders said. “We spent more than half a million dollars advertising just on education alone during the campaign, telling people exactly what we plan to do and I won with an historic margin, an overwhelming victory.”
Brock disagreed, telling Sanders that she didn’t lay out a lot of details about what the plan was going to be on the campaign trail.
“ So when those details were revealed in the legislation, I think it was a big surprise for a lot of people,” Brock said. “I still hear from critics even in rural parts of the state that say our tax dollars are subsidizing private schools, families in Little Rock, Arkansas, Northwest Arkansas. How do you address that criticism?”
Sanders got defensive.
“One of the only parts that people talk about when they look at Arkansas LEARNS is the school choice piece,” she said. “They ignore the fact that we’re paying our public education teachers far more than we ever have in the past. They ignore the fact that we’re investing in literacy in a way, frankly, that Arkansas has never looked at or taken as seriously as we are.”
After several minutes and multiple requests, Brock still couldn’t extract an amount from Sanders on the year-three budget.
“Alright, let’s switch to another topic,” Brock said.
