Learning, Litter Might be Area?s Only Road Bumps

National economists are crowing about a better 2004, and the local gurus maintain that Northwest Arkansas is virtually impervious to any economic tick.

The standard line goes something like, “Everyone needs Tyson Foods’ chicken and Wal-Mart Stores’ tooth paste and toilet paper even in a recession.”

So what might it take to derail the economic gravy train that made Northwest Arkansas the Milken Institute’s 2003 poster child for viability?

The answer is public schools and chicken litter.

Of all the potential financial nightmares that petrify the rest of America — the omnipresent threat of terrorism, major market downturns, cheap foreign labor — nothing gives local leaders the willies like the potential for prolonged litigation on these two fronts.

Jeff Hawkins, director of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission, said local cities are dealing with issues such as growing traffic and higher water rates. But as far as the kind of serious adversity that could really hobble the two-county area, those things pale compared to Arkansas’ school funding crisis and the Tulsa v. Decatur, et al, phosphorus runoff litigation.

“As far as things that could potentially jump up and bite us, those two could really do it,” Hawkins said.

Oddest of all, area leaders say, outside the media and company boardrooms, folks in Benton and Washington counties don’t seem to be paying much attention to either.

A Serious Lake View

The area’s most senior legislator in the Arkansas General Assembly, State Sen. David A. Bisbee, R-Rogers, said he doesn’t think people in his district realize how damaging the Lake View School District case could be for Northwest Arkansas. All-black Lake View challenged the way the state funds schools with a 1992 lawsuit that reached the Arkansas Supreme Court. The court’s November 2002 ruling declared the school system unconstitutional and ordered the Legislature to make funding adequate and equitable by Jan. 1, 2004 (see story, p 16).

Speaking from the state senate floor on New Year’s Eve, during a special session called on Dec. 8 to remedy the problem, Bisbee said it looked like an agreement wouldn’t be reached before Jan. 15. The legislators were haggling over a plan that would consolidate districts of 500 students or less — a far cry from the 1,500 and under districts Gov. Mike Huckabee originally targeted for mergers.

An early study said it would take $800 million plus major facility improvements to set things straight. The latest proposals were in the $300 million-$500 million range.

Since schools in the two-county area’s four largest cities average 10,647 students, Bisbee said most locals see the crisis as an Arkansas Delta issue. He said the danger would be in the assembly implementing a system that gave someone legal standing in federal court to sue for “equal protection” under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

An out-of-state federal judge with a lifetime appointment, Bisbee said, isn’t going to be as sympathetic or in tune with what Arkansas really needs as state judges.

“The first thing all industrial recruiters ask is, ‘How are your schools?'” Bisbee said. “If a judge takes over our school system it would be a disaster economically for the state and in particular for Northwest Arkansas. You and I can’t even comprehend what it would cost us if we do this thing wrong.

“After the 1957 Little Rock desegregation debacle, the chamber of commerce said it was six years before a new business opened down here. Let a federal judge take over Arkansas schools and see how many folks Wal-Mart can recruit to move into Northwest Arkansas?”

Ways to Tread

Bisbee said closing schools for failure to meet standards is the fastest way to wind up back in court. Say a school with 300 kids gets closed because it doesn’t test well, but one with 2,000-4,000 does as bad but stays open because of its enrollment.

The most likely scenario, Bisbee said, is a predominantly white district in north Arkansas continues to exist while a lot of smaller predominantly black schools in the Delta aren’t able to meet the standards.

“The lawsuit would be, you held us in slavery for 150 years, segregated us for 100 years, underfunded us for 40 years and now in three years you want us to be as good as everyone else,” Bisbee said. “And then, you lose in federal court.”

The best case scenario, the Vietnam veteran and former U.S. Marine Corps Captain said, is the Legislature raises a penny sales tax. Northwest Arkansas helps pay for everyone else, but local schools still get some money and, Bisbee said, it’s better than raising property taxes. Hiking income taxes aren’t even an option in his mind because border competitors such as Tennessee and Texas don’t even have state income taxes now.

“I am OK with 500 being the cutoff number for consolidations,” Bisbee said. “You just have to consolidate by numbers and treat every school under the cutoff the same for it to hold up. Consolidation is not a fix-all. Only 28,000 students attend schools with 500 or less enrollment. And there’s 445,000 public school students in the state.”

The real way to save money, Bisbee said, is to raise the student-to-teacher ratios like has been done in Northwest Arkansas. Not to be confused with the classroom ratio, which is set at one teacher for 25 students, the student-to-teacher count is the number of certified staff divided by the number of students. Those ratios average 18 to 1 in Northwest Arkansas, Bisbee said, compared to 13 to 1 in Little Rock. The state average is 14 to 1.

“The difference is the number of teachers — music, P.E., special needs — who aren’t in the class room,” Bisbee said. “People say Northwest Arkansas pays teachers more because there’s more local wealth, but that’s not true. We pay more because we’re more efficient. We spend less per student but our teachers have the highest pay scale.

“The state funds $2,000 per student, so if your student-teacher ratio is 18 to 1, you can pay the teacher $36,000 and be even. What can you afford if it’s 12 to 1?”

Bisbee, 57, spent six years in the Arkansas House and is in his sixth year in the Arkansas Senate. The owner of a $1.5 million building contractor business in Rogers, Bisbee will run for his final term in November.

Litter Looming Less

The city of Tulsa’s 2001 lawsuit against Decatur and six major poultry producers in Northwest Arkansas is expected to reach a truce in January, although continued debate about phosphorus runoff isn’t.

Dan Coody, Fayetteville’s mayor, led the effort to work with Tulsa to resolve the suit by implementing standards that both can live with. Final details are being resolved, but Coody said he expects “everyone to be shaking hands” this month.

“Had these issues about the amount of phosphorus going into the watershed not been resolved, it could have been devastating,” Coody said. “If Oklahoma had stopped Fayetteville from building a sewer system, it would have been devastating.”

The suit alleged the poultry companies were responsible for dumping 170 million pounds of chicken litter produced each year into the watershed. It sought potentially hundreds of millions from the economic-engine poultry firms.

A litter spreading ban has upset farmers, but a new index has been developed to monitor water quality.

“The key is both sides working together to phase in standards over several years,” Hawkins said. “If standards are raised all at once, it’s still going to have a negative impact. The key is working together and Mayor Coody certainly has shown leadership with that.”

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