Joint committee hears APA/WestEd proposal to update Arkansas school-finance adequacy study

The joint Senate and House Interim Education Committee on Education heard a presentation from APA Consulting, with WestEd as a subcontractor, on a proposed statewide school-finance adequacy study in response to an RFP released March 19. Jill Thayer of the Bureau of Legislative Research told members the procurement drew a single responsive proposal by the April 12 deadline and that BLR had completed compliance and reference checks.

Jason Willis of WestEd, who led the technical portion of the presentation, said the study would use three complementary approaches to estimate necessary resources: professional judgment panels of Arkansas educators, education cost-function statistical modeling and case studies of successful school districts. "None of these individual methods are in and of themselves perfect," Willis said, and the team would “take the best of these various approaches” to produce recommendations tailored to Arkansas.

Justin Silverstein of APA described the vendor team and national experience, listing technical experts who would support literature reviews, GIS work and equity analyses. The presenters proposed statewide listening sessions, a district survey to collect missing data and targeted case studies (they recommended visiting about 10 schools) to examine how high-performing districts organize resources.

Committee members repeatedly raised Lakeview, the long‑running state court mandate on adequacy and equity, as central context for the study. Representative Walker pressed the team on both Lakeview familiarity and the racial composition of the contractor’s staff: "Now I'm concerned because Arkansas ... public schools are 25% African American, that none of your ... 10 person staff is African American," Walker said, asking why the proposer lacked African American representation. The presenters acknowledged they had not yet been hired and said they would work with committee staff to align the study to Lakeview requirements and broaden stakeholder representation.

Members asked technical questions about preschool inclusion, class-size scenarios, how panels would reach consensus, and whether capital spending or district debt practices would be included. Presenters said preschool is often folded into elementary panels but could be convened separately and that capital infrastructure would generally be treated outside the core ECF per-pupil modeling, though local coding of expenditures would be clarified with state staff.

The vendor offered a delivery timeline that included an initial background report around March of the following year, a draft final in August and a final report in October, and proposed to work with committee staff during the study. Thayer said the procurement process would next go to the legislative council for contract approval if the committee chose to proceed.

The presentation underscored that the study is intended to inform potential changes to the state’s finance formula and to provide an interactive model illustrating how different parameter choices would affect district funding. The committee did not take a hiring vote during the presentation; members reserved contract and procurement questions for later discussion.