6-20-2302. Legislative findings.

6-20-2302. Legislative findings. (a) The General Assembly recognizes that: (1) Intelligence and virtue are the safeguards of liberty and the bulwark of a free and good government; and (2) Arkansas Constitution, Article 14, § 1, requires the State of Arkansas to ever maintain a general, suitable, and efficient system of free public schools and to adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education. (b) The General Assembly finds that because of the decision of the Supreme Court in Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee, 351 Ark. 31 (2002), it is the absolute duty of the State of Arkansas to provide all public school children with an opportunity for an adequate education. (c) The General Assembly finds that a suitable and efficient system of public education should: (1) Assure the availability of substantially equal and constitutionally appropriate expenditures by the state for the education of each similarly situated child in the public schools, regardless of where that child resides within the state; (2) Assure that each school-age child resides in a school district that offers a competitive minimum salary for classroom teachers; (3) Assure that: (A) All students graduating from high school are able to demonstrate a defined adequate level of competence in: (i) English, oral communications, reading, and writing; (ii) Mathematics skills; and (iii) Science and social studies disciplines; and (B) An adequate level of competence evolves over time to higher levels; (4) Assure that students with disabilities have the opportunity to graduate from high school by demonstrating alternative competencies or alternative levels of competency; (5) Assure that students who are not on track for high school graduation are identified at a sufficiently early date so that they may be provided an opportunity at a reasonable cost to achieve the minimum levels of competence necessary to graduate from high school; (6) Recognize that graduating from high school requires that the students, as well as the parents or guardian of the students, work hard and assume appropriate responsibility for the students' success or failure; (7) Encourage parental involvement in the public schools and in public school activities; and (8) Recognize that early attention to and correction of student deficiencies are substantially less expensive and more effective than remedial efforts in the later school grades. (d) The General Assembly recognizes that the supervision of public schools and the execution of the laws regulating the schools shall be vested in such officers as the General Assembly provides. (e) It is the intent of this subchapter to provide a system of school funding that provides to each public school child in the State of Arkansas an opportunity for an adequate education.