Saving kids from America's richest family

A constitutional amendment in Arkansas seeks to rein in the damage done by the Walton family and its far-right school privatization network

Welcome to a Thursday edition of Progress Report.

A news week as busy as this one often resists analysis, but as I sit at home recovering from heart surgery, I’m able to take a broader view of events.

Yesterday, for example, Mitch McConnell announced that he will step down as the Republican Senate leader in November. It wasn’t shocking: McConnell is 82 years old and in physical decline, and his stances on foreign policy (he wants to fund Ukraine’s war) and decorum (he fought with Trump) put him out of step with much of the GOP.

A media driven by conflict played up that tension in its coverage (here’s the NY Times), to the detriment of reality. Context is key: his announcement coinciding with the Supreme Court’s latest favor to Donald Trump is a reminder that McConnell could have just as easily convened the press in front of a giant “Mission Accomplished” banner.

McConnell is the architect of a far-right judiciary stocked with fringe Federalist Society cultists up through the Supreme Court, which on Wednesday said that it wouldn’t hear the Trump immunity case until April 22nd. This court, its 6-3 conservative supermajority a result of McConnell’s total shamelessness, is in position to do whatever it wants, especially because Democrats like Dick Durbin refuse to place it under any pressure.

More on that in the days and weeks to come. In tonight’s newsletter, we’re going inside one of the most important ballot initiative campaigns of the year, which pits grassroots activists and parents against the richest family in the nation.

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The fate of public education in Arkansas may rest on a few legal technicalities, the disposition of one elected official, and the hustle of an army of volunteers.

In December, a coalition of education and civil rights activists first submitted the text for a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee a quality education to every child in Arkansas. Polling indicates that it would pass overwhelmingly with voters — if it can pass muster with state attorney general Tim Griffin, who has rejected three different iterations of the prospective amendment since December and is now evaluating a fourth version.

Griffin’s approval is a key hurdle for activists in Arkansas, where the AG’s office must bless the ballot language before signature collection can begin.

“Historically, the attorney general viewed their role in this as more of a consumer advocate, to help grassroots groups find the right language,” explains Bill Kopsky, executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel. “And this AG is taking it a little bit more of an adversarial way… that drags it out.”

There are four central components of the amendment, which was written — and is now being regularly rewritten — by an umbrella of nonprofits collectively known as For AR Kids.

First, it would require districts to provide universal access to early childhood education and summer programs. It would also mandate adequate special education services as well as financial assistance for low-income families. To ensure that these services meet students’ needs, the amendment would codify the definition of “adequate education,” as laid out in a famous 2002 court decision in the state.

“We’ve been pushing for an expansion of pre-K funding for 15 years,” says Kopsky, who also serves as treasurer of For AR Kids. “The state passed the bill to create the structure for a state after-school and summer program back in 2009, but they have never funded it. The evidence is so unbelievably clear on what policymakers should be focused on to improve public education, and the fact is that they haven't focused on those areas because of big money politics.”

The fourth component of the amendment would reform Arkansas’s new school voucher program, striking a blow to the state’s biggest economic and political power.

Who Vouches For the Charter Schools?

Arkansas’s politics have long been a reflection of the Waltons, the descendants of Walmart founder Sam Walton and the state and nation’s richest family. They have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into pushing school privatization schemes over the past several decades, including the funding of candidates who support the destruction of public schools.

Their involvement in school boards and legislative races in Arkansas has changed the politics considerably. In the early 2000s, the state Supreme Court ruled that Arkansas’s school funding mechanism was unequal and thus unconstitutional. That set off years of right-wing activism, and Waltons’ long-term ideological crusade paid off last year when Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the LEARNS Act.

Among other things, the new omnibus law established a state-funded “education savings accounts” that funnels state money to private and charter schools. The For AR Kids’ amendment would hold those schools that receive state voucher money to the same standards as public schools, creating a measure of accountability that was conspicuously missing from the law as signed by the governor.

In fact, school accountability is absent from virtually every universal voucher scam that’s been passed over the last two years. If voters support this amendment, it would set a new precedent as privatization sweeps red states.

“In Arkansas, we have an awful lot of charter schools that don't meet the same standards, so a lot of families will send their kid for a private school or charter school, and only find out later that the school doesn't have a certified special education teacher or that doesn't have a certified teacher at all, doesn't offer the advanced curriculum that they wanted, etc.,” Kopsky says.

There’s a whole lot at stake, financially and otherwise. The voucher program currently provides up to $6,672 toward a student’s private or charter school tuition. This past fall, the program’s first annual report noted that 95 percent of voucher recipients had not attended public school during the previous school year, with much of the money flowing into the pockets of families that already sent their kids to expensive private schools.

The program, which will be available to all K-12 students in Arkansas within the next few years, also funnels money to religious institutions that actively discriminate against LGBTQ+ students and families. In a state with the 43rd best public education system in the nation, throwing $300+ million per year — and likely far more, based on other states’ experiences — into a blackbox of wealth and zealotry devoid of any academic standards is an almost criminal waste of money.

It’s also not particularly popular, as polling indicates, which is where the Walton family money comes into play.

“Republicans, Democrats and independents all poll nearly identical in terms of their support for the equal standards measure, as well as for the support for the other components,” Kopsky says. “Historically, education in Arkansas has not been a very partisan issue, but the Walton people have primaried moderate Republicans, so it is much more partisan at the legislative level than it ever has been. But at the grassroots level, most people want good schools for their kids.”

Waiting for the Starting Gun

Griffin’s decision on For AR Kids’ proposed amendment is due on Friday. If he finally certifies the language, activists can begin the process of collecting the 91,000 valid signatures required to actually qualify for the ballot.

Kopsky is gracious about the delays, saying that they haven’t found Griffin’s various objections to be “completely superfluous.” Should the rejections continue and begin to feel more superfluous, the coalition is comfortable taking its case before the Arkansas Supreme Court.

With signatures due by July 5th, putting the amendment’s backers in a bit of a time crunch. The silver lining is that the wide appeal of the proposal has already attracted more than 500 volunteers before commencing a recruitment period that aims to get 2500 people on board.

Each will be essential to both collecting the signatures and combatting the deluge of money that will be deployed in an effort to smear and defeat the amendment to ensure that kids in Arkansas get a quality education. They know what’s coming — Kopsky points to a 2011 ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage, which began with 78% support before a well-financed opposition campaign began battering the proposal on the airwaves. Even so, the initiative passed with 68% voter approval, creating a template for progressive issue campaigns in the years to come.

“We're just going to have to run a very strong grassroots campaign and rely on small dollar donors,” he says. “We're not going to have the Waltons jumping in and pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign on our side. Our strategy is just to run a very authentic grassroots campaign with our leaders and members driving the bus.”

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