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Task force reviews Arkansas school finance formula, including isolated- and professional-development funding
Summary
Presenters outlined Arkansas’s student-based State Foundation Funding Aid, a matrix-derived per-pupil base set in statute, and a set of categorical programs including declining-enrollment aid, alternative-learning funding, enhanced student-achievement (at-risk) brackets, professional development funds and teacher salary equalization.
Jennifer Light (KLRD) presented the Arkansas school finance memo, summarizing the state’s student-based primary funding model and nine categorical programs that supplement the foundation formula.
Arkansas sets a per-pupil foundation amount in statute; the presentation cited a per-pupil base of $7,771 in the current school year. That foundation amount is calculated by a matrix reflecting costs for a prototypical 500-student school (school-level salaries, school resources and district-level resources). The foundation aid for a district is the result of multiplying the per-pupil amount by the district’s average daily membership, then subtracting 98% of a uniform tax rate (statutory minimum 25 mills multiplied by district assessed valuation) and miscellaneous funds. Light gave a numerical example showing the calculation for a hypothetical 300-student district.
Arkansas’s categorical programs include declining-enrollment funding, alternative-learning environment funding (for students enrolled at least 20 days), ELL funding set by the legislature and the Enhanced Student Achievement (ESA) program (Arkansas’s at-risk funding) with three brackets that phase funding changes over a three-year transition when student free-and-reduced percentages change. Light noted a $5.5 million matching grant in 2023–24 tied to evidence-based programs for ESA-identified students. Other categories discussed included student-growth funding (mutually exclusive with declining-enrollment aid), isolated-school funding (districts meeting several distance/area/transport criteria), secondary vocational area center aid, professional development funding (per-student amount reduced statewide for funds used centrally; FY25 per-pupil amount cited at $37.50) and a teacher salary equalization fund (statewide target average salary cited as $51,822 for fiscal year noted).
Committee members asked for state-by-state district counts, average sizes and isolation percentages to enable clearer comparisons. Staff said they would provide those district characteristics and follow up on items not immediately on hand, such as the teacher-salary-equalization program origin and details of “professional learning communities.”
