Politicians, like everyone else, have good days and bad days. For Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Tuesday was a pretty good one in two respects.
For one, Sanders joined Dassault Falcon Jet CEO Thierry Betbeze in announcing a $100 million, 800-job expansion of its Little Rock operations.
Dassault already employs 1,400 here who finish a lot of the interior work on very expensive luxury business jets. With the expansion, Arkansans will complete the company’s smaller 6X models.
In a state known for its homegrown companies like Walmart, Tyson and J.B. Hunt, the French-owned Dassault flies somewhat under the radar, if you’ll pardon the pun. But it’s a major employer. In fact, aerospace is Arkansas’ largest export category, and Dassault is a big reason why.
Sanders took part of the credit by saying her meeting with company leaders at the Paris Air Show in June helped lead to the announcement. Dassault will take advantage of various state incentives that will reduce the expansion’s cost.
The Paris Air Show, by the way, is related to some of the governor’s not-as-good days. When blogger Matt Campbell requested public records related to that trip, he discovered the $19,000 lectern her office purchased that the state Republican Party reimbursed.
I’ll not devote much space reviewing the lectern controversy. If you’re interested, you already know about it.
Tuesday was also good for Sanders because a poll released that day found relatively strong support for her signature legislation, the LEARNS Act.
Passed earlier this year, it remade Arkansas’ education system. Among its important elements were education freedom accounts. Those provide families roughly $6,600 in state funds for private and home school expenses.
Pollsters contacted 800 Arkansas registered voters with K-12 students living at home.
ExcelinEd, a national group that supports this kind of school choice reform, commissioned the poll. Impact Management, a well-regarded Little Rock political consulting firm with Republican Party ties, conducted it.
Respondents were asked this question, among others: “An ‘education freedom account’ in K-12 education establishes for parents a government-authorized account with restricted but multiple uses for educational purposes. Parents can then use these funds to pay for qualified expenses such as school tuition, tutoring, instructional materials for in-person or virtual instruction, curriculum, educational services provided to a student with a disability, education-related transportation costs, and more. What is your opinion of education freedom accounts?”
More than 61% had a favorable opinion of the accounts (28.71% very, 32.43% somewhat). A little more than 25% had unfavorable opinions.
Respondents also were asked if they would change their child’s learning environment if the state provided $6,600 through the accounts to cover private school tuition or home school expenses. Almost 25% said they would change, while 15% said they would consider changing. Another 58% said they would not change.
The poll gives Sanders some talking points, if she ever needs them. It found more support for the education freedom accounts than opposition. It also found many parents who said they might take advantage of them.
Opponents, of course, can find reasons to disagree or discount the poll. One criticism would be that the question quoted above showed how the accounts could be used but didn’t share some of the potential downsides. Those include the fact that the $6,600 instead would have gone to local public schools if the children had attended them.
Also, 39% of the respondents had household incomes of $100,000 or more, an income group that would be more likely to use the accounts, at least for now. That’s well above the state’s median income of $56,335, according to the Census Bureau. On the other hand, many families with school-age children are in their better earning years – out of their broke, unmarried 20s but not yet retired.
The law’s other high-profile provision increased the public school minimum teacher salary to $50,000 from the current $36,000. It had the support of 79.5% of respondents, while 13.3% opposed it.
That’s not surprising. That provision had broad support when it passed, although school superintendents have been concerned about budgets and salary schedules. Also, that response was consistent with another in the poll where 54% said the teachers with whom their children interacted in the most recent school year “appeared highly effective,” while 36.4% said they “appeared moderately effective.” Only 6.5% said they “appeared not to be effective.”
In that respect, Tuesday was a pretty good day for teachers, too.
Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 15 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.
