Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Arkansas newspapers:
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. July 15, 2017.
In a civilized state, those in the middle of a mental crisis would get immediate care before they did harm to themselves or others. But for far too long the state of Arkansas has been taking these poor souls not to a place of sanctuary where they could get treatment, but off to jail. Call it the shelter of first resort.
That kind of state-sponsored barbarity should come to an end by this fall as a special committee sifts through the applications for Arkansas’ new, needed and more than welcome three “crisis stabilization units” to get the mentally troubled immediate help instead of a jail sentence.
At last report, four counties have submitted applications for the duty and privilege of housing these patients. The northwestern and northeastern corners of the state are represented in the bidding. Sebastian and Pulaski Counties have stepped forward to help, too. These new centers would be 16-bed hospitals operating 24/7 where people are trained to take care of the sick instead of locking them up.
Let us now praise Gov. Asa Hutchinson for budgeting $5 million to fund these centers this coming fiscal year and the Legislature for passing Act 423 of 2017 that made this reform possible. But it’ll be mainly up to the taxpayers of the counties involved to come through with the money to get these places up and running.
Necessity being the mother of invention, all kinds of ways have been suggested to raise money to operate these new centers. Some counties would use now empty structures to house this new service rather than investing in brand-new construction. There’s no sense, economic or medical, in re-inventing the wheel. While other counties would work together with already existing programs for the mentally ill. For example, in the very center of the state, densely populated Pulaski County has a quorum court that’s already pledged to provide $1 million toward working with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences; the plan is to have post-graduate students train for the specialized care that mental cases require. And these trainees are to be working under the watchful eyes of UAMS faculty members. In the northern corners of the state, county leaders are gearing up to help the least among these, as well. As The Book requires.
How did all this get started? It happened when some creative types got together to talk about what changes were (and still are) needed in the state’s criminal-justice system, and not throwing mental cases in jail was one of the most obvious and pressing needs. Now it’s being met. The time to submit applications to build these crisis centers was short, but who says Arkansans can’t move fast once our attention is got, if necessary by the political equivalent of a two-by-four? At that point, realization dawns like an explosion.
Kelly Eichler, the governor’s chief adviser when it comes to problems in the criminal-justice system, says she was expecting not just this welcome number of applications but even more, like six. But when the first wave of enthusiasm ebbed as counties realized how much hard work it would take to address a problem of this magnitude, only these applications remained.
Which applications will in the end be accepted and which rejected remains to be seen. For there’s still many a slip ’twixt cup and lip. And sure enough, the inevitable scandal is bound to erupt in even the best chosen and well-managed programs. But if Arkansas continues to make haste slowly, deliberately and responsibly, the same combination of compassion and practicality being shown in meeting this long-simmering crisis with new crisis centers will redound to the credit of both political parties. Not to mention all branches of state government and the taxpayers who pay for it all.
Steady as she goes, Arkansas, because this state has only begun to show the rest of the Union how it’s done - whether in education, economic development, or mental health. For one goal does not exclude the others but rather meshes with them. Given union, justice and confidence, there’s no limit to what Arkansas can accomplish for her people. And if her own people don’t build Arkansas, who will?
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Southwest Times-Record. July 16, 2017.
July 1 was the date when public schools across the country had to share with parents and the community their policies on what to do when a child can’t pay for a meal.
We’ve heard before about the high percentage of children in Arkansas who qualify for free and reduced meals from schools. According to State Board of Education data, an average of 61 percent of students in each Arkansas school district qualified in the 2015-16 school year, with some districts close to 95 percent. (Fort Smith was at 71 percent.)
We’ve also been told before that too many children who qualify for free and reduced meals aren’t enrolled in the program because their parents don’t want to fill out the paperwork.
Now that school districts across the country are required to make their policies on “lunch shaming” public, it will be interesting to see what happens going forward. “Lunch shaming” is a school district’s practice of letting a child know he or she does not have enough funds to pay for a school meal, and it can include anything from giving a child an “alternate” lunch of a cold cheese sandwich to stamping his or her hand with a message that says parents must pay. On occasion, hot meals have been removed from a child’s hands and thrown in the trash. Children have been made to sweep the cafeteria or wipe down tables after lunch in order to “pay” for their meals.
In other words, the children were humiliated. The real shame is that districts have long been allowed to get away with it.
Oklahoma has come under fire for its own new policy, which also took effect at the beginning of the month, where districts are allowed to carry students’ unpaid meal charges into the next school year. Previously, the charges were written off as bad debt, and schools were not allowed to deny a meal to a student in a new school year based on prior debt.
Proponents say this will help an Oklahoma school system in dire need of financial assistance. But at what cost to students, who face embarrassment and perhaps won’t be fed a nutritious meal at all throughout the day? A child’s welfare cannot be pushed aside because of a situation out of the child’s control.
Throughout the country, there are wide variety of practices on school lunch debt, we’ve discovered. This spring, New Mexico became the first state to outlaw shaming students with meal account debt. School officials have been directed to work with parents who have debt and find a way to avoid shaming at schools. Meanwhile, in states like Pennsylvania, parents are being sued by districts over unpaid meals.
Arkansas leaves its lunch policies up to individual districts. According to the Arkansas Department of Education, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service “… encourages schools to provide a reimbursable meal to all children who want one. Providing children with a ’regular’ reimbursable meal prevents the singling out of children with unpaid meal charges, provides children with the nutritional benefits of a reimbursable meal, and ensures the school receives the applicable Federal reimbursement for the meal.”
The Fort Smith School District policy is one that allows children to have a meal even if he or she has debt, and the situation is handled privately with a child’s parents. “We are not in the business of humiliating children,” Deputy Superintendent Gordon Floyd said recently.
In our area, the move toward free breakfasts for all students could be helpful for districts trying to avoid financial problems both for parents and for the districts. Fort Smith began offering free breakfasts a few years ago and voted in the spring to make that a permanent part of its budget. In Paris, where 77 percent of students qualified for free and reduced meals in 2015-16, both breakfast and lunch will be free for all students beginning with the upcoming school year. Other districts throughout Arkansas are doing the same.
The best solution to the meal-debt problem, we believe, is making sure all children who qualify for free and reduced meals are enrolled in the program. If fewer children are required to pay for meals, there will be fewer outstanding balances at the end of the school year. We hope our area schools are making their best efforts to identify these children, whether they are in kindergarten or high school.
We encourage anyone with a child in school to consider enrolling in the free and reduced-price meal program. Take the time to fill out the paperwork, even if you think your child doesn’t qualify. We encourage all school districts to consider applying for programs that allow its students to eat for free. And we encourage all districts to end any form of “lunch shaming” that’s allowed within schools. It’s hard enough to be a child these days. Don’t make it even more difficult.
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The Jonesboro Sun. July 16, 2017.
The Craighead County Quorum Court is happy to dole out money - unless you’re a first responder.
Area firefighters recently made an urgent plea to justices of the peace, stating that first responders and the public are endangered by the antiquated radio system used by firefighters to communicate with dispatchers.
Firefighters asked for $13,000 to upgrade the current equipment that Sun reporter Pat Pratt described as “essentially an old truck radio” - located on the other side of a room filled with modern equipment.
The county’s 911 calls are dispatched through Jonesboro E911, and police and sheriff calls are handled through a single modern console.
Fire calls, however, are handled with technology that’s more “Hee Haw” than “Star Trek.”
“Every day that we use this existing radio system the way it is we are rolling the dice. It is going to cost somebody their life,” said Jonesboro E911 Director Jeff Presley. “Not only a loss of life, but there are going to be lawsuits. One loss of life, one lawsuit, would pay for 10 radio systems.”
Justice of the Peace Josh Longmire, who is on the finance committee, asked if providing the radios would drop the county ISO rating and save residents money on insurance, Pratt reported. Longmire said he would like to see a survey completed before granting the funds from the county coffers.
“We would like to see an actual study done so that way we will know how much it will affect the ISO rating for each community to see exactly how much savings will be passed on to the taxpayers before we move on with something like this,” Longmire said.
Longmire also said he would like to see the firefighters raise the money on their own if possible or perhaps “meet the county half way.”
“There is the option of seeing how much they can raise on their own rather than using taxpayer funds. I would like to see that, but that is what I also proposed meeting in the middle. We could match. If they could raise $6,500 on their own and we could match $6,500 that would be great.”
Finance committee member JP Dan Pasmore was also in favor of raising the money privately if that could be done. He said he would see if volunteers could raise the cash or a web-based fundraiser was an option.
In the end, the quorum court sent the $13,000 request to the finance committee without taking action.
Sounds like good, fiscal conservatism in action, right? Not so fast.
On June 27, these same penny-pinching JPs were more than happy to spend $42,500 on a whim, without even knowing how much they were spending.
That was when the quorum court decided to go off-agenda and give all 310 county employees an extra Fourth of July holiday.
Pratt reported that the quorum court approved a motion made by JP Jim Bryant, and seconded by JP Terry Couch, to give county employees Monday, July 3, off with pay. Tuesday, July 4, was a regularly scheduled holiday for county employees.
Bryant said it’s just a “good gesture” for the employees. He was unaware of the cost to county residents.
“I don’t have any idea what it costs,” Bryant said. “I was just doing it as a good gesture, and I’ll do it again.”
As for whether he felt a closure of county services for an extra day might inconvenience residents trying to do business, Bryant was indifferent. He said most residents will be celebrating the holiday and not doing business on Monday anyway.
The impromptu holiday caused confusion at the courthouse, where cases had to be rescheduled.
Bay Assistant Fire Chief Kevin McMasters, who approached the quorum court with the request for the radio upgrade, said he is not concerned with how the county raises the funds but that something needs to be done soon.
“I think that anyway they want to come up with the money is going to be fine,” McMasters said. “The fire departments of Craighead County have financed this for 26 years. I think it’s time somebody else put some skin in the game. If they want to do it with a boot drive or a GoFundMe page, that’s great, as long as we get the money so we can get this on the console.”
The majority of the county’s firefighters are unpaid volunteers, so that must make them less worthy of respect than the county’s full-time employees, at least in the quorum court’s eyes.
Not only is it ridiculous to expect these volunteers to go out and beg for money to buy county equipment, it’s insulting.
Here’s an idea.
County Judge Ed Hill is paid $82,230 annually by the taxpayers.
The 13 justices of the peace each get $9,432 a year for a total of $122,616 siphoned from the taxpayers’ teat.
Maybe Hill and the JPs should conduct a boot drive for their pay, and we put that $204,846 we’re spending on their salaries toward other expenses like making sure our firefighters have the equipment they need to keep the county safe.
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