U.S. Sec. of Education Linda McMahon

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon toured two Arkansas schools Tuesday as part of McMahon’s “Returning Education to the States” tour.

They were joined by Arkansas junior U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton and state Education Secretary Jacob Oliva on tours of Little Rock’s Don R. Roberts Elementary School and Saline County Career and Technical Campus in Benton.

“I wanted to be in places where I could actually see some of the things that I talked about at work,” McMahon said in Saline County. “Not necessarily everybody has to go to a four-year school. There are places like this that would be sponsored from the tech field, where students can earn dual credits, go right into community college, go right to work in the field. … This is the secret sauce.”

McMahon and Cotton both alluded to the need to rid schools of red tape and bureaucracy. President Donald Trump has said he plans on shuttering the U.S. Department of Education to give states more power over education and wants McMahon to put herself out of her own job — a plan McMahon has supported.

Sanders also touted the expansion of the state’s Educational Freedom Account program to around 50,000 students in Arkansas this year. The program, which is open to all Arkansas students for the first time this fall, provides state funding for allowable education expenses, such as private school tuition.

While Sanders and McMahon focused on the positive during their two stops, a handful of protestors outside Roberts Elementary held signs criticizing the state’s LEARNS Act and McMahon. The wide-ranging 2023 law made several changes to the state’s K-12 education system, including creating the school voucher program and raising the state’s minimum teacher salary to $50,000

“The parents of [Roberts Elementary] were incredibly upset when the letter was sent home yesterday … that she would be here,” said Courtney Jackson, a mother of two. She said she didn’t want her children to find out she just stood by while public education was under attack.

“The parents of this school do not want her here,” Jackson said.

Alison Metzler, another protesting parent, said she kept her kids home from school Tuesday because she didn’t want them to be used as “political pawns” by Sanders and McMahon.

“Sarah Huckabee and McMahon are actively trying to dismantle public education, and they do not care about public education. This is all for show, and it’s, it’s just disgusting,” Metzler said. “If Sarah Huckabee really stood with public education, her kids would go to public schools. Instead, they go to the private school a mile down the road, and she’s defunding these exact schools.”

Metzler also criticized Sanders and McMahon for visiting the “whitest affluent school in the Little Rock School District, a top school in the state.” She said she loved the school as a parent with a child who attended, but that if Sanders was really committed to public education, she would be visiting struggling schools in other parts of Little Rock.

“[Roberts Elementary] is not a representation of what the whole district is as a whole,” she said.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

it’s just disgusting