Arkansas’ first major snow since the passage of the LEARNS Act brought renewed attention to its practical elimination of alternative methods of instruction (AMI) days.
According to Arkansas Advocate, with school canceled last week in much of the state, many districts will be tacking on make-up days at the end of the school year, but one state lawmaker is considering offering legislation to restore the flexibility of AMI days for public school districts.
The LEARNS Act increased minimum teacher salaries from $36,000 to $50,000 and requires all teachers to receive at least a $2,000 raise for the 2023-2024 academic year. The state provides funding to support the increase in teacher salaries and benefits to districts that meet certain requirements, including providing “on-site, in-person instruction” for at least 178 days or 1,068 hours.
After the law’s passage, Rep. Julie Mayberry, R-East End, filed a bill to permit up to five AMI days to count toward the on-site, in-person requirement. It failed in the Arkansas House.
Act 862 of 2017 permits the Education Commissioner to grant up to the equivalent of 10 student attendance days for alternative methods of instruction, including virtual learning, when the district is closed due to “exceptional or emergency circumstances” such as inclement weather, contagious disease outbreak or utility outage.
“I would like to bring the topic up during the next legislative session and see if we can come to a more reasonable compromise and get some more clarity and flexibility really for the school districts because really what I’m trying to do is just give some flexibility,” Mayberry said.
LEARNS Act co-sponsor Sen. Breanne Davis, R-Russellville, said the new law did not repeal AMI days, meaning districts can use them but they simply won’t count toward the in-person requirement.
Davis said requiring in-person instruction was a response to the “learning loss” students experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as districts requesting AMI days for unintended purposes, such as canceling school to allow students to travel to a championship basketball game.
“There really was an abuse, in my opinion, for what AMI was really intended for, and it really got loose after COVID,” she said. “And so I think it was important to rein that back in and say we believe in the high-quality instruction and we think that means in person, face-to-face.”
Mayberry sought clarification from Attorney General Tim Griffin regarding the effect of the LEARNS Act on AMI days last year. In an October opinion, Griffin said AMI days likely would not count toward the on-site requirement, but “legislative clarification is warranted” because of a lack of clarity with terms used in various laws addressing AMI days and student attendance.
Davis said she’s always open to changes and cleanup language when necessary, but action will depend on support.
“I’m one person out of 135 if enough members are starting to say, ‘Hey, let’s go ahead and give clearer definitions in other parts of the law that match this definition in LEARNS or vice versa,’ then those are conversations, certainly, that I’m willing to have,” she said.
The requirement for 178 days of on-site instruction only applies if districts want to receive state funds for teacher raises. Mayberry questioned what schools wouldn’t want access to extra money.
All traditional public school districts received state funding for additional teacher compensation this year. Of the state’s 23 open-enrollment charter school districts, three did not receive money, according to the Arkansas Department of Education. Two are virtual schools that are ineligible because they don’t meet the in-person instruction requirement and the third was not in existence last year, ADE spokeswoman Kimberly Mundell said.
Read more on ArkansasAdvocate.com
WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI