The Arkansas Kids Count Coalition and Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families hosted a recap of the 2025 legislative session on Thursday.
The nonpartisan groups highlighted what they saw as the high and low points of the 95th General Assembly.
Kicking off the event, the Arkansas Kids Count Coalition presented the Champions for Children awards, which honored those recognized as bringing a voice for children to the Arkansas State Capitol.
Several state lawmakers were awarded, including Sen. Clarke Tucker and Reps. Howard Beaty, Jim Wooten, Denise Ennett, Tippi McCullough and Ashley Hudson.
The presentation of the report was set into broad categories the organizations consider key to the well-being of Arkansas children and families. Those were child welfare, democracy and voting rights, education, equity, economic security, health, and food insecurity.
Two major areas of focus were on education and child health.
The organizations championed the passage of the "Bell to Bell, No Cell Act," which bans cellphone use during school hours, and also an act providing free breakfast for all Arkansas public school children.
Still, AACF Executive Director Keesa Smith-Brantley said there is more to be done.
"Obviously, the hope would have been, and the hope still is, that we will figure out a way to address lunch. Initially the proposal was for free lunch, then it was free breakfast and lunch, and then it was free breakfast. So the hope is that there will be a continued focus on that and that we will really do more to address food insecurity.”
AACF said a missed opportunity for education during this session was the lack of new investments allocated toward early childhood education.
The recap also celebrated the passage of the "Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies Act," including presumptive eligibility for Medicaid coverage for prenatal care.
However, organizers said lawmakers could have gone further, noting Arkansas is still the only state not to have expanded Medicaid coverage for mothers beyond 60 days postpartum.
AACF Community Engagement Director Rebecca Zimmermann spoke at length about laws making the direct democracy process in Arkansas more difficult.
Zimmermann challenged each of the new barriers, including one that requires a full ballot initiative title to be read to voters before signing.
"The time that it can take to read a ballot title, based on ballot titles that have been submitted in past years, could be up to eight minutes long. So either you have to read the ballot title in front of the canvasser, or they have to read it to you," Zimmermann noted. "The next thing that will happen to you as a voter is that you will be alerted that you might be committing fraud, which is going to scare a lot of people away too.”
Zimmermann reserved her harshest criticism for Act 273, which she framed as the most egregious law passed related to direct democracy, saying it effectively “punished the innocent.”
“If, as a canvasser, I, Rebecca, am out and I accidentally don't read the full ballot title, I have committed a crime. And as a canvasser, if the Secretary of State's office is alerted to that fact, they could throw out every single signature I have collected. Every single one. Not just that page, all of the signatures I collected. It could be thousands of signatures.”
Currently, a lawsuit has been filed challenging many of these laws, and two proposed constitutional amendments are in the works to reform the state’s ballot initiative process.
The full Kids Count Legislative Summary for 2025 is available at ARAdvocates.org/2025session.
