Ark. Officials Gearing Up for School-Finance Overhaul

By Lonnie Harp

Gov. Jim Guy Tucker of Arkansas and state lawmakers were taking their places last week for a school-finance drama that is expected to dominate the state's three-month legislative season.

In an unusual move, the full House and Senate convened daily during their opening week to attend educational seminars on the terms, tactics, and terrors of school-finance reform. To cap off the training, Governor Tucker appeared before lawmakers and suggested a revolutionary new system that would drastically redraw the state's school districts and make teacher salaries a state expense. His plan moved beyond the recommendations of a task force he appointed to study the issue.

"You can look at the court issue of equity, or take the moral issue of equity or the separate issue of efficiency, but the Governor has taken all of that together, and he's leaped ahead of everybody," said Kellar Noggle, the executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators. "So naturally there are just a lot of questions about...