A legislative committee on Monday evening gave preliminary approval to Arkansas ACCESS, the 122-page higher education bill that Gov. Sarah Sanders has made her top priority this legislative session, after an all-day hearing that featured passionate testimony from high school students who said the bill would squelch their right to political participation and protest.
But the bill was amended by its sponsors Monday afternoon in response to those concerns, which were echoed by some lawmakers of both parties.
The original version of ACCESS would have entirely banned both colleges and K-12 schools from granting excused absences to students for purposes of “political protest, social or public policy advocacy, or attempts to influence legislation or other governmental policymaking[.]”
The amendment would “allow a path for a student to receive an excused absence,” provided a school and parent gave permission, according to bill sponsor Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R-Beebe).
It wasn’t immediately clear, though, if that change would apply only to K-12 schools or also to college students. (The amendment wasn’t yet available on the bill page as of 6 p.m. Monday.) Dismang also said the amended version would require school districts to report the number of excused or unexcused absences to the Legislature each year, along with what the political advocacy was for.
The reason for the reporting, he said, was to ensure that districts aren’t picking and choosing what should count as an excused absence based on the student’s policy positions. “What I don’t want is a district being the arbiter of what’s a worthy cause to advocate for and what is not,” Dismang said upon presenting the amendment. He said no students’ names or other identifying information would be included in those reports.
ACCESS would make a slew of changes to scholarships, college funding, admissions, concurrent credit in high schools, and more. (Much of the bill affects K-12 schools, despite being pitched as a higher ed overhaul.) It would make it easier to fire tenured professors and prohibit so-called “indoctrination” on college campuses. It would pave the way for the state Education Department to allot funding to colleges and universities in part based on the “return on investment” of their degree programs, though the bill contains few details. (Those will have to be spelled out by the Division of Higher Education in the rulemaking process, assuming the bill passes.)
But the most controversial piece is the limitation of student protest and advocacy. The bill says schools cannot allow student walkouts — perhaps a shot at progressive actions at Little Rock’s Central High or a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Fayetteville High School last year. It also says college students could be held liable for “negligently or intentionally” causing property damage to a college campus while engaging in protest or “public policy advocacy.” If students didn’t pay up, they would be ineligible for a degree or any transfer credit from the institution.
Even some Republicans expressed reservations about the political advocacy section when the bill was presented in its unamended form on Monday morning.
Rep. DeAnn Vaught (R-Horatio) told Dismang and co-sponsor Rep. Matthew Shepherd (R-El Dorado) that the bill “seems to take away all local control” from school districts regarding excused absences. She cited legislation that she sponsored in 2023 to require Holocaust education in public schools; the idea for that bill came from a 16-year-old high school student, Vaught said. Should he have not been excused from school to come to the Capitol and speak on the bill, she asked.
Shepherd said the prohibition was “doing our school districts a favor” by taking the decision for politically motivated absences out of their hands. It was also doing students a favor, he said. “Are we sending students to school to be educated … or all these other things?” Shepherd said.
Shepherd later said in response to another legislator’s question that, “We want our students in school to learn …They’re not there to have a teacher push them into some type of advocacy or political process or some type of attempt to influence legislation.”
Mira Krain, a junior, was one of many students from Little Rock’s Central High School who spoke against the bill. “This bill violates the rights of free speech … [It] sends a clear message to us as students that our voices do not matter,” she said.
Krain pushed back against Shepherd’s claim that political advocacy was at odds with the purpose of school. “I assure you that I take my education very seriously,” she said. “Walkouts and protests are a way for me to stand behind my beliefs and learn about civil action.”
The committee adjourned at 12:45 p.m., then re-convened in the afternoon to continue hearing public testimony. Both iterations of the ACCESS bill — there are identical versions on the House and Senate side of the Capitol, and both were heard in Monday’s joint committee meeting — passed out of committee on a voice vote.
