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Senate panel advances bill to replace flat vocational-center funding with tiered model
Summary
The Senate Education Committee advanced Senate Bill 135 to replace a $3,250-per-FTE flat payment with a tiered funding structure for secondary vocational centers; agency officials said the plan would better match program costs to employer needs while superintendents and center directors urged more regional input and fiscal analysis.
Charice Childers, director of the Arkansas Department of Career Education, told the Senate Education Committee that Senate Bill 135 would discontinue the current flat $3,250 per full-time equivalent payment and create a tiered funding structure to better align funding with program costs and labor-market demand. "Senate bill 135 allows for our current funding structure of $3,250 per full time equivalent to be discontinued in favor of establishing a tiered funding structure for distributing vocational center aid," Childers said during her presentation.
Childers said the department has budgeted $20,100,000 for vocational center aid, on top of standard foundation funding, and that the proposed tiers would be vetted for roughly 9 to 12…
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