Arkansas advocates present interactive “children and youth” fiscal map showing funding streams, gaps

Peter Gess, economic policy director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, told the joint Senate and House Aging, Children, Youth and Legislative Affairs Committee on the first substantive item of the meeting about a new interactive fiscal map that catalogs state and federal funding for children and youth in Arkansas for fiscal years 2019–2023.

The fiscal map, hosted on Microsoft Power BI and available via aradvocates.org, compiles 413 distinct funding streams that support children and youth (ages 0–24) and lets users filter by funding source, program type and age. Gess said the tool shows per-child funding of roughly $4,290 in fiscal 2023 when public school funding is included and about $2,000 per child when public school funds are excluded.

The map’s features include definitions and filtering by outcome category (for example, “supported and connected” or “intervention”), a listing of funding streams (searchable by term such as “childcare”), and a cross-state comparison module developed in coordination with the national Children’s Funding Project and links to Kids Count data produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Gess demonstrated the map’s pandemic-related effects, noting federal relief funding rose from near zero to about $3,000,000,000 in 2021 before returning toward prior levels. He also showed that, by age group, Arkansas documented thousands of funding streams and billions in total funding for older children in some cohorts; for example, he highlighted an example figure for ages 12–15 that the dashboard summarized as $7.6 billion across 264 funding streams (dashboard filters and aggregation choices determine the display).

Committee members pressed for additional detail and next steps. Senator Sullivan, Representative Bentley and others asked whether the dashboard’s cross‑state comparisons standardize categories and whether the map links funding to outcomes; Gess said the Children’s Funding Project applies a consistent methodology to place funds into broad categories but that the explicit linkage between funding changes and outcomes is a planned “next step.” Representative Springer and others asked for specific searches (for example, two‑parent household data from the Kids Count site); Gess agreed to provide targeted data the committee requested.

Members also questioned nutrition and childcare details. Gess showed Arkansas’s state-level nutrition funding is lower than in several neighboring states and noted Texas appears as an outlier in some per‑capita nutrition metrics; he said further investigation would be required to explain state policy differences. Committee members requested more detail on which state programs (for example WIC, school meal programs or Department of Agriculture appropriations such as farm‑to‑school) were included and how those streams displayed in the map.

Why it matters: The fiscal map is intended to make funding transparent and help policymakers and advocates identify gaps and model the cost of scaling services. Gess characterized the map as a tool to foster dialogue about where dollars flow and where additional investment would be needed to improve child outcomes.

The committee did not take formal legislative action on the fiscal map at this meeting; members asked for follow-up data and for links between funding and outcomes in future testimony.