Beliefs & Resolutions - Section 3: General Policy Considerations

3.1—Federal funding for Public Education
Full funding of federal education programs is an essential step in improving educational opportunities for all children. ASBA believes education funding should be of the highest federal priority to ensure that our nation’s students have the opportunity to meet the challenge of world-class standards and responsible citizenship through these principles:

• Improving equity in educational opportunity by making schools with significant poverty indices a high priority for increased federal aid;
• Increasing federal special education aid to meet Congress’s obligation to fund 40 percent of the cost of educating children under the requirements of the federal law and supporting the placement of IDEA within mandatory spending portions of the budget to ensure that, over a period of time, the obligation will be met as a federal budgetary priority;
• Supporting programs with colleges and other post-secondary institutions to license teachers in accordance with the NCLB Act provision for teacher qualification;
• Ensuring that school districts with immigrant or Limited English Proficient/English Language Learners (LEP/ELL) are provided with the necessary resources to provide for those students as they make the transition into our society;
• Maintaining educational technology funding programs to help districts that lack local resources to acquire the infrastructure, hardware, software, and staff training necessary to provide a technology-rich instructional environment;
• Providing funding to meet school infrastructure needs to improve the safety and health of all students and to improve the quality of the learning environment, and
• Funding of all federal mandates, including the No Child Left Behind Act and IDEA.

3.2—Use of Public Funds
Local boards for both regular and charter public schools have the responsibility, by the authority granted in law, to ensure that public funds are used to produce the highest possible educational attainment of students.

3.3—Non-Public Education; Vouchers and Tax Credits
Funds raised by general taxation for educational purposes should be administered by public officials and should not be used to support any privately operated schools. ASBA opposes any measures that would subsidize elementary or secondary private schools through tax credits, scholarships, and/or vouchers for the parents or guardians of children enrolled in such schools. ASBA recognizes and upholds the right of any group to establish and maintain schools so long as they are financed by their own supporters and not with public school funds.

3.4—Labor Negotiations Legislation
ASBA opposes any federal or state legislation that requires collective bargaining or mandates binding arbitration between school boards and school employees.

3.5—Support for Students
ASBA supports federal, state, and local efforts to strengthen and provide additional funds to programs that aid students. Such programs or interventions include, but are not limited to, early childhood and pre-kindergarten programs, after-school and summer programs, enrichment programs, and those that address school dropouts; credit recovery; child abuse; alcohol and drug abuse; suicide prevention; teenage pregnancy; communicable diseases; and violence.

3.6—Bilingual Educators
ASBA supports adequately funding opportunities for teachers to become fluent in languages other than English in order to effectively educate the growing number of non-English speaking students and to communicate with the parents of those students.

3.7—Federal Role in Education
ASBA supports limiting educational regulations, but opposes budget cuts in categorical education programs. ASBA also opposes federal legislation that would result in local school districts having less discretion over how federal funds are used at the local level. Furthermore, all federal regulations and requirements for states and local schools should be fully funded prior to mandating implementation.

3.8—Child Nutrition Programs
ASBA supports child nutrition programs, including free- and reduced-school lunch and breakfast programs and other special nutrition programs presently provided through the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Arkansas Departments of Human Services and Education. ASBA urges continued funding of school nutrition programs at maximum entitlement levels.

3.9—Rural Education
ASBA urges the government—state and federal—to study the impact that federal policy, including farm policy, has on education programs and the financing of rural school systems. ASBA urges that this impact be considered as part of the federal policymaking process.

3.10—Early Childhood Education
Understanding the importance to a student’s long-term success, ASBA supports developmentally appropriate, quality three- and four-year-old pre-kindergarten programs, especially for children whose parents are at or below 200 percent of the poverty level.

3.11—Safe Schools
Students must have a safe place to learn that is free of abuse, violence, weapons, alcohol, tobacco products, and other drugs. ASBA recommends that school officials develop appropriate programs and cooperative relationships with parents and law enforcement, the judiciary, and other community agencies and organizations to prevent and reduce crime. ASBA supports enforcement of these standards and additional funding to help make schools safe and healthy places for students and staff.

3.12—Common Core Standards
ASBA supports the state’s commitment to the Common Core Standards. ASBA strongly encourages the ADE and the General Assembly to help ensure the Standards’ successful implementation by providing adequate resources, both monetary and support personnel, to enable both teachers and students to be properly prepared. ASBA further strongly encourages the ADE to pursue waivers from current No Child Left Behind requirements to better pave the way for successful implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

3.13—Coordinated School Health
ASBA supports initiatives that encourage schools, agencies and the community to work together efficiently and seamlessly to provide needed services for children and their families. A coordinated approach to school health improves students’ wellness and their capacity to learn.

3.14—Educating the Whole Child
ASBA believes the goals of education need to be greater than students’ test scores. There is a difference between the performance of a student on a test and the same student’s ability to be a functioning, contributing, thriving participant in society. Partnering with the community to provide students an engaging, well-rounded education that develops the whole child should be the paramount goal of public education. ASBA applauds the efforts of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) to promote the education of the Whole Child.

3.15—Funding of Public Schools
ASBA urges the Governor, the General Assembly, and the State Board of Education to support a budget that provides for delivery of an equitable and adequate public school system for all Arkansas schoolchildren.

3.16—Legislation/Constitutional Amendments/Initiated Acts That Would Reduce or Abolish Revenue for Public Schools

ASBA opposes legislation and constitutional amendments that would abolish or reduce revenue for public schools without providing a reasonable and effective method for replacing those revenues.

ASBA opposes any efforts to repeal or lessen the security of the Educational Adequacy Fund and its assurance of providing adequate funding to the public schools of Arkansas (Act 108 of 2004).

ASBA opposes constitutional amendments, initiated acts, or legislation that would adversely affect the ability to adequately fund public schools.

ASBA supports a fair and equitable tax system that provides a stable and mixed stream of revenue to support public schools. Whereas property taxes account for approximately 30 percent of total school district funding, and whereas Arkansas enjoys one of the lowest property taxes in the country, ASBA opposes across-the-board efforts to reduce or abolish property taxes.

3.17—Unfunded Mandates
ASBA opposes any federal or state mandates or State Board of Education rules that would require unfunded expenditures by local school districts. ASBA may support, without reservations, only those bills clearly stating that proposed legislation will be required of school districts only to the extent to which they are fully funded.

3.18—School Transportation Systems
ASBA strongly encourages the General Assembly to establish and maintain a system to fund transportation for local public schools that is fair to all districts.

3.19 Home Schools
ASBA encourages the legislature to continue to examine home school legislation and enact reasonable accountability measures to ensure that home schooling not become the refuge of students who would otherwise be considered school dropouts.

3.20—Technology
ASBA supports initiatives that advance the application and integration of technology into teaching and learning. ASBA strongly encourages measures that would improve teacher training in technology and greater access to technology by those students unlikely to have computers in their homes. The rapidly expanding role of technology in education necessitates significantly greater bandwidth be available to schools. ASBA supports efforts to create bandwidth statewide, sufficient to allow schools to greatly expand the role of technology in public education. ASBA supports efforts to remove statutes and ADE Rules that hinder districts’ ability to change their education program delivery to adopt and adapt new technologies.

3.21—Distance Learning
ASBA supports the creation of distance learning policies, guidelines, and teacher licensure rules that allow maximum flexibility to schools to use telecommunications technology for student instruction, training educators and others, distance learning, and data transmission.

3.22—School Report Cards
ASBA encourages school boards to determine and implement ways to communicate simply and honestly to parents and the community the findings of the annually issued school report cards, including the academic progress and health of its students.

3.23—Facilities Partnership Program
ASBA believes flexibility needs to be built into the Facilities Partnership Program between the state and local school districts that reflects districts’ inherent difficulty in foreseeing their exact growth/decline and the state’s need to budget for the Program.

3.24— School Day/School Year
ASBA believes that districts presently are required to provide and accomplish more in each school day and school year than can be fully accomplished in the time allotted. Therefore, ASBA opposes any additional requirements to the daily or annual schedule without adding additional time to the length of the school day or school year. Further, ASBA opposes any effort to move the school year’s starting date to later in the year. ASBA supports lengthening the school year, school day, or both to better enable teachers and schools the time necessary to successfully educate students.

3.25—More than Adequate
ASBA commends the Arkansas General Assembly for its commitment to improving the funding and other resources for public education and encourages the General Assembly to strive for continuous improvement. We request that the General Assembly strive to provide all Arkansas children with more than an “adequate” education so that our students may truly excel.

3.26—No Child Left Behind
ASBA believes that NCLB has cast a much needed light on the achievement disparity between different groups of students. We believe, however, that the overall effect of NCLB has stifled the ability of districts to provide a well-rounded education.

The failure of Congress to reauthorize NCLB is significantly adversely affecting Arkansas's ability to implement the Common Core State Standards—to the detriment of both students and teachers. ASBA urges Congress to quickly reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (formerly known as NCLB) with provisions that support rather than punish teachers and schools and that lessen the federal role in public education.

3.27—Military Families
ASBA supports America’s military families, whose frequent relocation requires children of these families to transfer schools and establish new peer relationships. ASBA encourages school districts to provide assistance in acclimating military family children within the fabric of the school community while helping these students achieve expected academic performance levels.

3.28—School Election Dates
School board member zones do not align with the boundaries of other state and local officials or with county lines. Moving the annual school board election to coincide with any general election will cause county election officials significant difficulties and result in both ballot construction issues and voting marchine complications that would result in voter confusion. Moving the annual school board election to coincide with any general election would cause significant issues regarding election cost allocation with the likely result that election costs would significantly increase for schools. Therefore, ASBA opposes efforts to move the date of the annual school board election to any date that coincides with a general election.

Click on one of the sections below to continue reading:

Section 1 – Declarations of Appreciation
Section 2 – Control and Support of Public Schools
Section 3 – General Policy Considerations
Section 4 – A Continuing Resolution

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