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Beebe: Leave the 350 consolidation number alone Thursday, Aug 31, 2006 By Doug Thompson Arkansas News Bureau FARMINGTON - Democratic governor's candidate Mike Beebe said Wednesday he opposes increasing the minimum enrollment of Arkansas school districts from 350 students. "I do not want any more consolidation. That 350 number that we have now should remain and we should let the schools have school for a while," Beebe, the state attorney general, told a group of at least 50 educators and administrators at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Education Cooperative headquarters here. Beebe's Republican opponent, Asa Hutchinson, said last week that small, rural schools are in danger under existing education standards. Hutchinson, using the recent closure of Paron High School as an example, blamed "bureaucratic zealousness and, increasingly, a desire for centralization at the expense of local influence." At Farmington Wednesday, Beebe said all schools should be held to state school standards. Hutchinson has proposed easing required course standards to keep some small schools open. "The big difference between me and my opponent is the belief that students, wherever they are, should get a quality education," Beebe said. "We don't need to back up." He also said that the decision to close Paron High School was a decision of the Bryant School Board after the Bryant district annexed the rural Paron district in 2004. The board's vote was four to one, Beebe said. "The state doesn't need to micro-manage school boards and tell them which schools they can't close," he said. Hutchinson spokesman David Kinkade accused Beebe of trying to have it both ways - working to close local schools in rural communities and then denying he is opposed to local schools. "As attorney general, he lobbied against the Rural Schools Support Act, and just last week he said he was against even giving rural communities a voice on the state Board of Education," Kinkade said. "We should not discriminate against kids living in rural and small towns - especially in a rural state like Arkansas - and whatever Mike Beebe's motivation, the result of his actions is the closing of more and more local schools." This spring Hutchinson supported legislation in a special session that would have allowed Paron High to remain open even though it did not teach all of the 38 state-required courses. Beebe opposed the measure, which passed the House but died in a Senate committee. Last week, Hutchinson proposed reserving a seat on the nine-member state Board of Education for a representative of small districts. The governor appoints all state board members. The Legislature approved consolidation of schools with fewer than 350 students in 2004. The state Supreme Court, which had declared the state's public education funding system unconstitutional, endorsed the consolidation act and other measure adopted by the Legislature in response, Beebe said. "We've about got the courts satisfied, and we don't need to backtrack," he said Wednesday. The state needs to develop programs like traveling teachers who go between districts to teach subjects in disciplines where teachers are hard to find, he said. "If (Hutchinson) tries to tell you I'm against rural schools, that's not true," Beebe said. After his talk to the cooperative, Beebe said in an interview that he helped devise an addition to the state school funding formula for isolated schools to specifically help districts in remote rural areas when he was in the state Senate. Beebe's comments came during a day-long tour of Northwest Arkansas. The series of campaign stops began with a 7 a.m. breakfast Fayetteville. An overflow crowd of 240 people attended the meeting a fundraiser, where Beebe was introduced by retired Army Gen. Wes Clark of Little Rock. Beebe also toured the University of Arkansas nanotechnology center, where he said in an interview there was a "sharp drop off in higher education funding when I left the Senate," along with others, including former state Sen. David Malone of Fayetteville. Beebe said higher education would be a priority if he is elected governor. He said the state's General Improvement Fund should primarily be a fund for economic development and higher education. |
