Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders proposes big investment in ‘promise’ of education freedom

Arkansas would invest heavily in its growing school choice program under Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ 2025-2026 budget proposal.

“Budgets show our priorities and deliver on the promises we all spent years campaigning on: education, maternal health, efficient government, public safety, and child well-being,” Sanders told the state’s Joint Budget Committee. “We all ran on improving these systems. Through this balanced budget, we can deliver on our promises.”

Her $6.5 billion spending plan for the fiscal year beginning next July 1 would increase the state’s Education Freedom Account program by $90 million to a total of $187 million, according to the Associated Press. 

The number of students able to attend the school of their families’ choice would more than double, from the current 14,000 to nearly 40,000. 

Sanders’ budget “directs half of new spending” in the state budget to Education Freedom Accounts – further bolstering Arkansas’ status as a national leader in school choice – even as such programs have sprouted in 33 states, according to educational freedom nonprofit EdChoice. 

Sanders’ plan comes in the wake of a new study that shows religious education has the potential to reduce both suicide and crime, in particular rape. 

Arkansas’ education freedom accounts offer funds for private school and even homeschooling. Approved only in March 2023, the accounts were designed to pay for private and home schooling at about 90% of the per-pupil cost of public schooling – which at that time was $7,413, according to the AP. 

Sanders’ budget, which provides a blueprint for the legislature to work from when its session begins Jan. 13, also provides $13 million in new Medicaid money to address maternal health, plus state employee pay raises and increased spending on corrections. 

Even with all that, the state expects to amass a $300 million surplus next year, on top of a projected $280 million surplus during the current fiscal year, demonstrating that school choice can go together with and even contribute to state fiscal health.