I'm not opposed to Gov. Sarah Sanders' voucher scheme because I dislike the idea of school choice. I've long been supportive of public charter schools, for example. And I waited two years before writing about the voucher plan so I could see if it worked on a statewide basis.

I oppose this plan, which was written by out-of-state special interests, because I'm a fiscal conservative.

The state likely will spend somewhere around $380 million on vouchers during the next school year. That's despite the fact that more than 80 percent of the students taking advantage of vouchers were already being privately educated. Do you remember what supporters of the scheme told us back in 2023? They claimed they were saving students from failing public schools. The numbers tell a different story.

We simply can't afford to waste hundreds of millions of dollars in a poor rural state. The money is being used to subsidize middle- and upper-class parents who frankly don't need the funds. What if we were to target this money toward rural areas with the most problems? In case you haven't noticed, rural Arkansas is dying. As people leave in search of work, school districts face consolidation due to low student numbers.

When a school district dies, the community it called home shrivels. There are few decent private schools in rural Arkansas. In most rural families, both parents must work to make ends meet. That means homeschooling isn't an option. Public schools are the only choice for the vast majority of rural Arkansas residents. They can't take advantage of the vouchers used by students in urban areas. Those urban families already tend to have far higher incomes than their rural counterparts. They don't need the assistance.

With Sanders as a lame duck and the state budget crisis more pronounced, perhaps a majority of legislators will have the courage to say this next year: "Our goal was to help poor children. We tried it for three years. Vouchers didn't work. I'm a conservative. Conservatism is all about spending taxpayer money wisely. Let's pull the plug on vouchers and find a better way to invest your money."

For legislators in search of a new approach, I have just the thing for you. It's an article that ran in The New York Times earlier........

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