Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders joined Fox and Friends to discuss signing Arkansas LEARNS into law and new social media legislation. We are taking a massive, comprehensive approach to look at education. We didn’t just tinker with the system — we are flipping it on its head and making major investments into education and the success of our kids. A lot of the focus has certainly been on the education freedom accounts that allow parents and students to have more power about where and how they are educated, but that is only part of the puzzle. We are going from the bottom of the country, at number 48 for teacher pay, to the top five by the start of the school year. We are also putting major investments into literacy in the state be-cause we know it is a huge indicator and a major benchmark for success of students. If they can’t read by the time they are in third grade, we are setting them up for failure. We are also hiring through the state 120 literacy coaches that will be deployed to schools to help catch those students up and put them on a pathway to success. ”Sanders on new social media legislation: “I am a parent of three young kids and the world that they are growing up in can be pretty terrifying. We know in study after study, the data suggests that the more kids are on their phones and ex-posed to the things that they can see on social media, that we’re seeing a massive increase in de-pression, anxiety and suicide rates, particularly among teen girls. What we are pushing for in legislation here in the state of Arkansas is that any new user under the age of 18 has to have parental con-sent in order to be on a social media app. It doesn’t mean you can’t be on there, it just means your parents need to know if you are. That process also heightens awareness so parents are paying closer attention to what their kids are doing, and will hopefully limit the amount of time kids are spending on social media in our state.”
Thu. Apr 25th, 2024
srchronicle11