Arkansas

Our key ally in Arkansas is ForwARd Arkansas, a public-private partnership of the Arkansas State Board of Education, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. They work to increase equity, increase student achievement, and close the achievement gap. Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families is a ForwARd Arkansas grant partner.

Top Policy Priorities for 2021

Inform and influence Arkansas’ policymakers’ response to COVID-19 and its effects on early care and education.

Advocate for enactment of refundable tax credits for early childhood educators in Arkansas.

Promote expanded support for infant care in Arkansas—particularly through family child-care settings.

Arkansas’ 2020 Early Childhood Policy Landscape and Progress:

$5.38B STATE BUDGET
Estimated FY20 State General Fund Expenditures

ALIGNED GOVERNMENT
House (R), Senate (R)
Governor (R)

52% LOW-INCOME
173,765 Young Children (0-8) are Below 200% FPL

The public health crisis caused by the pandemic exposed cracks in Arkansas’ systems of early care and education and is spotlighting inequities within those systems. The crisis created an opportunity to renew investment in early care and education as part of a comprehensive education system and a vital component of the social safety net. Allies worked to help shape Arkansas’ early care and education policy response to the pandemic and how state funds from the federal CARES act would be spent. Another priority became state and federal advocacy on access to health care coverage and safety net programs and other programs, such as Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, TANF, SNAP and WIC, services for immigrants, and using federal education dollars to close equity gaps in education.

Advocates engaged the state to ensure the effective use of CARES funding, including: 1) Allowing a limited number of licensed child care centers to stay open to serve “essential” personnel, 2) Convincing the state to implement an outreach and communications strategy to update and inform child care providers, 3) As part of the state’s coordination of child care for essential personnel, prioritizing providers who are part of the Arkansas Better Beginnings QRIS, 4) Temporarily establishing state payment policies to cover additional costs associated with the pandemic, such payments going to all licensed providers for maintenance and cleaning supplies via temporary enhanced voucher incentives, and 5) Deeming child care workers as “essential” personnel during the pandemic so their children can access child care.
Advocates encouraged the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) to develop and publicly release new ECE (Early Care and Education) guidance for parents, superintendents, and providers as part of the state’s back-to-school pandemic-related guidance for the K-12 system. Under pressure from advocates, ADE eventually developed and publicly released guidance tailored specifically for the ECE community.
Advocates secured improvements that made it easier for families, especially immigrant families with children, to receive Medicaid.
Advocates provided guidance on the transition of governance of state-funded early childhood programs from the Arkansas Department of Human Services to the ADE.
Advocates secured agreement from legislature to conduct an interim study (ISP-TNL007) on pay parity in ECE between ECE teachers in public and private ECE programs.
Advocates established the Arkansas Early Childhood Well-Being Caucus to bolster support for addressing needs of ECE sector.

State Budget Data: National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO), “Table 4: Fiscal 2020 State General Fund, Estimated (Millions); The Fiscal Survey of the States.” Spring, 2020

Low-Income Data (including disaggregation by race): National Center for Children in Poverty, “NCCP Analysis of ACS 1-year Estimates—Public Use Microdata Sample, 2019.”

State Action Data: Provided by state advocates, October-November 2020, with analysis and synthesis by Frontera Strategy for Alliance for Early Success, “Protecting Progress and Investing in Scale: The 2020 50-State Progress Report on Early Childhood Education Policy.”

Additional State Actions: Early Care and Education, State Budget Actions, Fiscal Year 2020. National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), October 2020.

The Alliance for Early Success is achieving large-scale, long-lasting change for the state’s young children by providing our allies with powerful advantages that help them shape Arkansas early childhood state policy.

Strategic, Outcomes-Focused Investments

Consulting and Strategy

Technical Support from National Expertise

Rapid Response Support

Connections/Access to Allies in Similar States

Roles in National Communities of Practice