Court to legislators: Looking good
The special masters in the Lakeview school case have delivered an interim report to the Arkansas Supreme Court on the legislature's compliance with the order for adequate and equal public schools.
The masters, David Newbern and Brad Jesson, seem to approve of most of what they found, but will issue a final report taking "judicial notice" of the actions of the current legislature.
The legislature, after dropping the ball in 2005, has produced an acceptable adequacy report and put education first in spending priority, they said They said the legislature had similarly improved measures to improve facilities, though they remained concerned about the "rigid" formula by which the state participation in construction finance is based on school district wealth, not needs of those districts.
They said teacher pay had made much progress, though the question of equality between rich and poor districts remained unsolved.
In short, sounds like, "So far, so good."
