It’s a government holiday today, but the Arkansas legislature will meet and the outlook remains grim for the seventh week of the session.

Common Ground Arkansas, the fledgling centrist group, sounds the alarm about a constitutionally dubious measure to essentially alter the constitution by statute to make it harder — nigh impossible — for citizen-backed campaigns to qualify measures for the ballot.

Common Ground writes about SB 260, which is on the Senate agenda today:

The legislature is trying to change the Constitution themselves by passing a bill. But the Constitution is clear that only the PEOPLE can change the Constitution, and we do it at the ballot box.

How are we so sure this is a Constitutional change? Because the legislature referred a less extreme version of this to the people as a Constitutional amendment in 2019. And guess what? Arkansans voted against it in 2020 with 56% against. Now just 3 years later, they’re trying to sidestep the Constitution and the People’s NO vote by sneaking in a change legislatively.

It continues

This bill attempts to change the Arkansas Constitution. However, Section 5, Article 1 of the Constitution says this: “The people reserve to themselves the power to propose legislative measures, laws and amendments to the Constitution, and to enact or reject the same at the polls independent of the General Assembly.”

In layman’s terms, only the People through the ballot box are allowed to make amendments to the Constitution. But this bill attempts to do that through statute here in the General Assembly, circumventing that Constitutional requirement that the people make that choice.

Our Constitution clearly lays out the number of counties that signatures must come from and the percentage of signatures required.

This bill attempts to change that, both in the required number of counties and the percent of signatures per county.

In fact, this isn’t the first time the General Assembly has tried to change this part of the Constitution. An attempt to change this exact language was referred to the people by the General Assembly, and it appeared on the ballot in 2020, where it was rejected by the people of Arkansas with 56% against.

This legislative body has shown through that past action that it knows this is required to be referred to the people. Otherwise, this change would have been made by statute then, rather than referred.

This usurpation of the people’s power is expected to take a back seat in news coverage today to introduction of Governor Sanders’ sweeping measure to reshape education in a method preferred by opponents of equal and egalitarian PUBLIC schools.

It has not yet been introduced.

UPDATE: But the petition-killer bill passed out of a House committee like corn through a goose and just as smelly. Speakers from the League of Women Voters, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and the Citizens First Caucus opposed the bill along with a couple of lonely legislators but the matter was pre-ordained. The Republican majority told a huge majority of voters that defeated similar proposals in the last TWO elections to go to hell.

But we know it is intended to phase in a vast privatization of public schools in Arkansas.

First, by a phase-in of taxpayer money to private schools and people who home-school their children. It is not expected to set any rules or regulations or accountability measures for private schools or home schoolers. There will be no school “report cards,” being used now to justify a wholesale attack on enrollment in conventional public schools, where scores often reflect dire home situations more than poor quality education.

It also is expected to remove the cap on charter schools, lightly regulated, privately run schools (some for profit and none with elected school boards). Many are failures by report card standards, but still, they operate and more are desired. The huge virtual charter system (a profit-making enterprise) is particularly low on the performance standard by which real public schools are judged. (See the low-graded charter schools here.)

Questions this morning, in addition to accountability measures, concern teacher pay. The bill may set a $50,000 base for teacher pay, but it also may eliminate state support for increases in pay for experience and additional education. Sanders will say local school districts are free to pay for this on their own, but only the richest districts can afford this. And they may be hit by the new school voucher bill.

In Pulaski County alone, a three-year phase-in of providing private school parents with an equivalent amount of state support for private schoolers could cost $70 million a year for existing private school students. Experience in other states shows that voucher expansion primarily benefits families already in private school. But in areas with many private schools (not rural Arkansas) the bill could drain students and state support from public schools, without a showing that the affected students aren’t being served in public schools or that the private schools have a record of excellence.

And then there’s the cost. A first-year estimate of $300 million has been mentioned. This is not a one-time expenditure. Nor are the estimates of additional costs as vouchers are broadened to eventually cover even the wealthiest families.

Former Sen. Jim Hendren, a founder of Common Ground, boils the money down simply in this tweet:

Many questions, including the size of the sponsorship contingent, particularly in the House, which has demonstrated a bit more support for public schools and teachers than the Senate currently demonstrates. Its leader, Sen. Bart Hester, seems to view public schools, and particularly their superintendents, as the enemy.

The revenue impact of this legislation, a required part of the process, will also be interesting when released. But don’t forget that it will be controlled by the Sanders administration.

Whatever you do, don’t call this school bill “reform” or an “overhaul,” terms that imply a broad improvement in the existing order of things. It will diminish real public schools. It would demean the value of continuing education and experience for career teachers. It applies a double (unequal) standard to private and public schools. It doesn’t address state taxpayer support for religious indoctrination. Among other shortcomings. It does little to address the root causes of the problems many children face, some the result of systemic discrimination in Arkansas and the U.S. (A subject that the governor wants to rule off-limits in her narrow view of what is acceptable to talk about in school.)

PS: The school bill is cut from a template being pushed by Republicans nationwide. Here’s an account of legislation pending in Kansas, which seems likely to echo in Arkansas:

“The bill would allow parents to retrieve about $5,000 from a public school’s funding and apply the money to the costs of private school tuition or homeschooling.”

AND! It’s triple dipping because “parents could participate in the new program as well as House Bill 2048, which would expand a tax credit that allows taxpayers to write off up to $500,000 worth of scholarships they provide for private schools.

Under HB 2218, parents could also receive money from other students by setting up their own unaccredited school.”

PPS: And that favorite hobby  horse of this legislature — beating up on the tiny, oppressed minority of transgender children — is back on a Senate committee agenda this morning for a minor amendment before it’s whooped through to an eventual gleeful signing by culture warrior Sanders.

PPPS: And the same committee that whooped through the anti-transgender kids law in minutes this morning then moved to providing a method to strip libraries of books objectionable to the Religious Rights now controlling Arkansas government. They’d do it by allowing spurious prosecutions of librarians for distributing materials deemed objectionable and by letting local governing bodies, not librarians, decide what books can be on shelves. UPDATE: Another bill passed by committee over token Democratic opposition and a raft of brave librarians