Arkansas LEARNS Act Referendum (2024)

Arkansas LEARNS Act Referendum
Election date November 5, 2024
Topic Education
Status Not on the ballot
Type Referendum	Origin Citizens

The Arkansas LEARNS Act Referendum was not on the ballot in Arkansas as a veto referendum on November 5, 2024.

On August 4, 2023, Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston determined that CAPES submitted 53,444 signatures, about 1,000 short of the required number of signatures, in 48 counties. Thurston said, "Therefore, since the proposed referendum referenced above did not meet the constitutional and statutory requirements, your petition is invalid, and this office is prohibited from continuing on to the verification process." CAPES said, "We had hundreds of volunteers all across the state who worked tirelessly for weeks to exercise their constitutional rights as citizens," Grappe said. "We know that almost 55,000 Arkansans expressed their desire to place this legislation on the ballot in a short amount of time. This indicates a strong desire across the state to do the same. We are going to continue to fight to ensure the democratic rights of our citizens are recognized and protected. We are going to continue to fight for our public education system in Arkansas."

Overview

This measure would have placed Act 237, known as the LEARNS Act, on the statewide ballot for voter approval or rejection. The bill, signed into law by Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), was designed to make changes to the state's education system.

The 145-page bill was designed to make various changes to education in the state. The acronym, LEARNS, stands for literacy, empowerment, accountability, readiness, networking, and school safety. Changes made by the bill include:

• creating the Arkansas Children's Educational Freedom Account Program, which is designed to allow parents or legal guardians of students to opt out of public schools, receive 90% of what the state would have funded the district for the student, and spend the funds on private school tuition or other eligible education expenses;
• raising the minimum salary for teachers from $36,000 to $50,000;
• requiring the Department of Education to review materials that would, according to the bill, "indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as Critical Race Theory," and other materials that would be defined as prohibited indoctrination;
• prohibiting sexual education before fifth grade;
• expanding high-speed internet access;
• expanding career exploration in schools; and
• repealing the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, which required school districts to notify teachers of dismissal before May 1 of each year.

Text of measure

Popular name

The popular name for this referendum is as follows:

“

A REFERENDUM TO APPROVE OR REJECT THE LEARNS ACT

”

Ballot title

The ballot title for this referendum is 8,154 words and spans 16 pages. According to the attorney general's office, it is the longest ballot title in Arkansas history. The full ballot title is below.

Full text

The full text of Senate Bill 294 (Act 237), which this referendum seeks to repeal, is below. Struck-through text would be deleted and underlined text would be added:

Background

Veto referendums in Arkansas

See also: List of Arkansas ballot measures and List of veto referendum ballot measures

In Arkansas, bills passed by the state legislature can be put before voters through a veto referendum petition.

• Signature requirement: 6 percent of the votes last cast for governor
• Result of a yes vote: targeted law upheld
• Result of a no vote: targeted law repealed
• Successful veto referendum petitions suspend the targeted law until the election.

Year	State	Subject	Measure	Outcome for target law
1994	Arkansas	Taxes	Referred Act 1: Tax on Soft Drinks	Repealed
1968	Arkansas	Elections	Referred Act 457: Require Voters to Declare Party Affiliation	Repealed
1968	Arkansas	Administration	Referred Act 306: Creation of State Dairy Commission	Repealed
1962	Arkansas	Administration	Referred Act 199: Creation of Motor Vehicle Commission	Repealed
1958	Arkansas	Taxes	Referred Act 19: Eliminate Additional One Percent Sales Tax	Upheld
1954	Arkansas	Taxes	Referred Act 285: Tax Increase on Alcohol	Repealed
1952	Arkansas	Government	Referred Act 242: State Government Purchasing Methods	Repealed
1934	Arkansas	Taxes	Referred Act 280: Extend Time to Redeem Delinquent Property Taxes	Repealed
1934	Arkansas	Education	Referred Act 78: Appointed State Board of Education	Repealed

Path to the ballot

See also: Laws governing the initiative process in Arkansas

The state process

Signatures for veto referendums must be submitted 90 days after the final adjournment of the 2024 state legislative session. If the secretary of state certifies that enough signatures were submitted in a petition, the initiative is put on the ballot. If a petition fails to meet the signature requirement, but the petition has at least 75 percent of the valid signatures needed, petitioners have 30 days to collect additional signatures or demonstrate that rejected signatures are valid.

• Signatures: 54,422 valid signatures were required.
• Deadline for 2023 bills: 90 days following the adjournment of the 2023 session. The legislature adjourned on May 1, 2023, so signatures for referendum petitions were due on July 30, 2023.
• Deadline for 2024 bills: 90 days after the adjournment of the 2024 session.

Details about this initiative

• Citizens For Arkansas Public Education and Students (CAPES) sponsored this initiative.
• The ballot language was certified by the Arkansas Attorney General on June 5, 2023.
• The group turned in signatures on July 31, acknowledging they were about 500 signatures short of the required 54,422 valid signatures needed. Arkansas allows for a cure period of 30 days to collect additional signatures if 75% of the submitted signatures are determined to be valid.
• On August 4, 2023, Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston determined that CAPES submitted 53,444 signatures, about 1,000 short of the required number of signatures, in 48 counties. Thurston said, "Therefore, since the proposed referendum referenced above did not meet the constitutional and statutory requirements, your petition is invalid, and this office is prohibited from continuing on to the verification process." CAPES said, "We had hundreds of volunteers all across the state who worked tirelessly for weeks to exercise their constitutional rights as citizens," Grappe said. "We know that almost 55,000 Arkansans expressed their desire to place this legislation on the ballot in a short amount of time. This indicates a strong desire across the state to do the same. We are going to continue to fight to ensure the democratic rights of our citizens are recognized and protected. We are going to continue to fight for our public education system in Arkansas."

Ballot language filings

In Arkansas, sponsors of proposed ballot measures must submit their ballot language to the attorney general, who examines the popular name and ballot title to ensure it complies with state law as interpreted by the state supreme court. The attorney general must certify the ballot language before proponents collect signatures. The attorney general can reject proposed ballot language if it is determined to be misleading. Ballot language must "accurately and impartially summarize the provisions of the law voters will be asked to approve or reject" and must be worded so that the outcome of a "yes" and "no" vote is clear— meaning a voter would not inadvertently vote for or against the measure with intentions of voting for the opposite outcome.

The first proposal was rejected for both of the above reasons. Additionally, Attorney General Tim Griffin wrote in his Apr. 24 rejection letter to sponsors, "While I understand that it is challenging to summarize a 145-page act, your proposed summaries are more like descriptive labels for some of the act’s component parts," and there is "no summary of several provisions."

The second proposal was rejected on May 11 for missing and insufficient summaries. Griffin wrote, "In response to your first submission, I noted that you had attempted to summarize six pages of new school-safety provisions with the vague phrase 'add additional school safety requirements.' You have attempted to resolve this with the following revision: '(g) Existing school safety requirements are expanded to include assessments instead of audits, collaborate with medical professionals and fire departments in planning for lockdown drills, require safety expert reviews of new school architectural plans, require mental health support, increase the presence of uniformed law enforcement, and require district safety and security teams.' In my own review of the school-safety provisions, there are roughly 17 specific additions to the law regarding school safety. While perhaps not every such addition needs to be summarized in the ballot title, your attempted summary continues to be more of a descriptive label rather than a summary."

On June 5, Attorney General Tim Griffin certified the ballot language submitted by CAPES. The ballot title contains 8,154 words and spans 16 pages. In his certification letter, Griffin wrote, "Now, in your third submission, your ballot title essentially cuts and pastes from nearly every section of the LEARNS Act. Therefore, I cannot conclude that it is misleading." He noted that the state supreme court has previously held that "it is possible for the underlying measure to be 'so expansive that it precludes the writing of an acceptable ballot title,'" and that this can occur "when the underlying measure to be summarized is so all-encompassing that to include every important factor of the proposal in the ballot title would cause the ballot title to be so complex, detailed, and lengthy that the Arkansas voter could not intelligently make a choice on the title within [what was at the time] the five minutes allowed in the voting booth.” Currently, in Arkansas, voters may be in the voting booth for a maximum of 10 minutes.

The length of ballot titles that the state supreme court previously considered to be too complex and lengthy ranged from 500 to 727 words. The ballot title for CAPES' referendum is about 1,022% longer.

See also

2024 measures

• 2024 ballot measures
• Education on the ballot
• 2024 petition deadlines

Arkansas

• Arkansas ballot measures
• Arkansas initiative laws

News and analysis

• Ballot measure lawsuits
• Ballot measure readability
• Ballot measure polls
• Ballot measure signature costs

External links

• Act 237
• Ballot language and attorney general opinion