Senate OKs higher ed funding formulas

LITTLE ROCK - Funding formulas for state colleges and universities based on need, not uniformity, were approved Monday by the Arkansas Senate.

The House narrowly approved legislation to limit the ability of school districts to hire the family members of school board members, as well as a bill to authorize certified nurses assistants with special training to dispense medication in Arkansas nursing homes.

Also Monday, Gov. Mike Huckabee signed into law legislation allowing imprisoned methamphetamine abusers serving time under the state's mandatory 70-percent rule to shorten their sentences with good behavior.

The higher-education funding formulas - one for four-year schools and another for two-year institutions - are based on the missions of individual schools, whether research or doctoral institutions, for example, as well as differences between programs offered and their cost to establish institutional needs.

Gov. Mike Huckabee has requested more than $100 million in additional funding for higher education over the next two years, though lawmakers faced with spiraling Medicaid costs, a burgeoning prison population and court-ordered improvements to public school facilities say the Legislature may be hard-pressed to fulfill the request.

With the additional funding, and budget requests two years from now, higher education funding would fully cover institutional needs within four years, higher education officials say. They say reaching equity would take six years or longer if the Legislature appropriates less than the current funding request.

In separate action, the Senate approved, 35-0, a scholarship-spending cap bill, sponsored by Sen. Jerry Bookout, D-Jonesboro, that would limit state-funded institutions to spending 30 percent of the tuition and fees they collect on student scholarships, beginning in 2007.

Officials say the measure is intended to reverse a trend of raising tuition for the majority of students to pay for the "discounting" of costs for those students receiving scholarships.

A blue-ribbon commission formed by Huckabee last summer recommended a 15 percent cap. An early version of Bookout's bill would have reached that level in stages. Higher education officials ultimately agreed on the 30 percent cap, though officials said several institutions wanted a lower cap.

The all three measures now go to the House.

The sponsor of the school-nepotism bill, Rep. Jodie Mahony, D-El Dorado, said the change is needed to end problems that have repeatedly surfaced in school districts throughout the state. The legislation, which needed at least 51 votes in the 100-member House, passed 53-39.

Some rural legislators opposed the bill barring the employment of certain relatives of school board members. The legislators said the change would make it difficult to find qualified employees.

Rep. Roy Ragland, R-Marshall, said that, as a former member of the Witts Spring School Board. he understood the problem of finding employees.

"This might work real good down in El Dorado but it's not going to work too good in places like Deer, Mount Judea, Kingsland, Oark and places like that. I cannot see the only thing that disqualifies a person is just being kin to a school board member. You are qualified in every other way and that's what disqualifies you," Ragland said.

But Rep. Rick Saunders, D-Hot Springs, said nepotism among school board members is a problem. Saunders state law gives the responsibility to hire and fire school district employees to the superintendent, who is hired by the school board.

"This is a problem from a practical standpoint. It's a big problem," he said. "Try going before a board with two candidates, one is more qualified than the other, but the other is a relative of a board member."

Some representatives also questioned why Mahony's bill did not restrict superintendents from hiring their spouses or other family members. Mahony said school districts needed to be able to hire superintendent's spouses to recruit superintendents.

"It's important to preserve a school district's ability to (hire a superintendent's spouse), that has been the judgment over the years," he said.

Mahony's bill would grandfather in existing school district employees who are related to school board members and would allow for waivers for districts that cannot fill positions with anyone other than the relative of a board member.