The group For AR Kids held a rally Thursday, days after Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin approved their ballot title.
This is the beginning of the activist group's long attempt to collect signatures for their proposed constitutional amendment, which would equalize education and accessibility standards between public and private schools. Supporters of the amendment gathered on the Arkansas Capitol steps on Thursday.
Last year the legislature passed Arkansas LEARNS, a wide-sweeping law which gives public money to families for their children to attend private or religious schools.
For AR Kids' proposal, called the Arkansas Educational Rights Amendment of 2024, would add several caveats to this law. It would mandate that private schools that receive public money provide pre-K, disability services and afterschool and summer programs.
A volunteer effort attempted to overturn the LEARNS Act last year. The group Citizens for Arkansas Public Education and Students, or CAPES, came in 747 signatures short of putting the initiative on the ballot.
“That was one of the largest volunteer efforts in the state’s history around signatures,” said Bill Kopsky, executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, who is also working to collect signatures on behalf of For AR Kids. “So, we certainly took a lot of lessons around that in the way were building this.”
For AR Kids hopes their volunteers will collect enough signatures since their proposal only makes small changes to the LEARNS Act. In order for it to go on the ballot in November, the group has to collect over 90,000 signatures from 50 counties.
Kopsky says they have about 600 people across the state ready to collect signatures. He says many of them are in rural areas, which he feels are negatively affected by state voucher programs.
The group wants to round up over 2,000 signature gatherers. They plan to do this by hosting signature gathering events across the state and going door to door. Volunteers were handing out petition boxes at Thursday's event.
