On cell phones and free breakfast

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t spend much time discussing K-12 education in her State of the State address Jan. 14, but she did mention banning cell phones in schools and making school breakfasts free with the help of medical marijuana money.

Both would seem likely to have broad support, especially since the first-term governor remains at the height of her influence over the Legislature.

The cell phone ban would follow a pilot program Sanders started this year. Students in about half of the state’s 237 school districts are locking up their phones in portable pouches and have limited access during the day.

Sanders has made student cell phone dangers one of her issues. She’s been teaming up with Jonathan Haidt, author of the best selling book “The Anxious Generation,” who says that children should not have smartphones or social media accounts. She brought Haidt to Arkansas a few months ago and then appeared with him last week in Switzerland.

The pilot program followed a successful effort the previous year at Bentonville West High School. There, students slipped their phones into pouches located in the back of their classrooms and generally had access to them only between classes and during lunchtime.

The principal, Dr. Jonathon Guthrie, told me the system worked well, and there hasn’t been much pushback. Compared to 2022-23, verbal or physical aggression offenses fell 57 percent. Drug-related offenses such as the use of THC vapes fell 51 percent. School officials suspect

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Steve Brawner Arkansas Commentary BRAWNER

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the new phone practice makes it harder for students to text each other to plan a meetup.

One thing to watch is how specific and prescriptive the final version of the legislation will be. Sanders called for banning the phones “bell to bell.” At Bentonville West, parents can contact the classroom, and the student can step out and call them. One teacher told me she uses the phones occasionally when appropriate as a teaching tool.

Sanders’ other noteworthy proposal was using medical marijuana tax proceeds to provide free breakfasts for students who don’t already qualify for the federal freeand- reduced-price meal program. Students currently qualify for a free meal if their household income is below 130 percent of the federal poverty threshold, and a reduced price if their household income is below 185 percent.

Part of that proposal has already been put into legislative form through Senate Bill 59 by Sen. Jonathan Dismang, RSearcy.

Arkansas already has a high number of students – 64.39 percent – who qualify for free and reduced prices, so government support for student meals is nothing new. Dismang sponsored a law in 2023 that made meals free for students who qualify for the reduced price rate. Medical marijuana helped pay for that, too.

Schoolwide free breakfasts would lessen an administrative headache for schools, which currently are put in the awkward position of trying to collect money from parents who can’t or won’t pay. In the past, some schools would serve those students an alternative meal at lunchtime to shame their parents into paying. That wasn’t fair to the students, and lawmakers made the practice illegal in 2019.

The potentially quiet session for K-12 education follows the transformative one of 2023. That’s when lawmakers passed Sanders’ LEARNS Act. It created education freedom accounts that allow families to use state funds for private and home school alternatives. Only small percentages of the state’s students have been eligible the past two years. Next school year, all of them will be.

The new environment is forcing school leaders to consider what they will offer and how they will market themselves.

Dr. Debbie Jones, Bentonville School District superintendent and the Arkansas Superintendent of the Year, told me superintendents are thinking more like CEOs in this new era of choice and competition. Meanwhile, schools are adjusting to the state’s new ATLAS student achievement test. The Department of Education developed it with help from Arkansas educators to better align with state standards than the previous, offthe- shelf ACT Aspire test did. That’s a lot of change in two years. After all that’s happened, school personnel probably will appreciate a quiet session where the biggest issues are cell phone bans and free breakfasts.

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 18 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@ mac. com.