Feature Photo by Lori Sparkman
Halfway through her first term as Arkansas’ first female chief executive, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders enters Year 3 eager to continue her platform of educational reform, tax cuts and funding for prisons. So far, it has been a successful platform. Even those who might not agree with Sanders’ policies would have to concede that her historic term as Arkansas governor has thus far been successful from a political standpoint.
With a GOP lock on the state legislature, Sanders hit the ground running in 2023. Her signature legislation, the Arkansas LEARNS Act, breezed through both chambers, introducing school vouchers, dramatic pay raises for teachers, and other initiatives designed to bolster and improve public education in Arkansas.
The Education Freedom Account component to the legislation is a school voucher program that enables parents to use those public funds that would have been provided to a local district for their student(s) for private school tuition or homeschooling. More than 14,000 students participate in the program. Though participation currently is capped at 3 percent of students in the state, all Arkansas students will be eligible to participate beginning with the 2025-2026 school year.
The LEARNS Act also raised teachers’ pay in Arkansas, taking it from 48th nationally to fourth. All teachers received at least a $2,000 annual raise, and starting teachers’ salary rose from $36,000 to $50,000. Plus $10 million was set aside for teacher merit pay, and the legislation funded the addition of 120 literacy coaches in state public schools.
Three tax cuts have been passed since Sanders took office. The individual income tax rate dropped from 4.4 percent to 3.9 percent, effective with the 2024 tax year, and corporate taxes were cut from 4.8 percent to 4.3 percent. The Homestead Property Tax Credit increased from $425 to $500, as well, and modest property tax reform passed.
On the prison front, Sanders announced in late December that almost 1,500 new prison beds had opened since she took office. Plans for a new state prison to alleviate crowding at county jails is underway. In November, the Arkansas Board of Corrections approved plans for a new state prison set to hold 3,000 inmates on 815 acres in Franklin County. The state set aside $330 million for the project with another $75 million, originally intended for expansion of another prison unit, available for the new facility.
Sanders also prioritized mental health care. In 2024, the state issued $45 million in grants aimed at improving access to mental health care in Arkansas. The governor sat down with Arkansas Money & Politics to look back at what has been accomplished and ahead at what is to come.
The CliffsNotes version: She still has no plans to rejoin president-elect Donald Trump in the White House and beams with pride when the subject is her father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, being selected by Trump to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel in his second administration.
Swept into office with 63 percent of the vote, empowered by a friendly red legislature and confident that her team executed “at a high level” in Year 2, Sanders is just getting warmed up.
AMP: After a whirlwind first year in which you passed tax cuts and the LEARNS Act, did you get everything accomplished you set out to do in 2024?
Sanders: You know, I’m biased, but based off what we’ve been able to accomplish in a really short amount of time with an incredibly productive first year, we were able to build a lot in Year 2 — more tax cuts, returning a lot of money back to Arkansans’ pockets. We’ve now had the chance to cut taxes three different times for the people of the state since taking office, and we continued the implementation side on a lot of our big priorities in the first legislative session.
AMP: Is it too early to gauge the effectiveness of the LEARNS Act?
Sanders: We made no secret that the LEARNS Act was the big priority that I had going into Year 1, and that part was passing the legislation. Year 2 is, frankly, where the really heavy lifting comes in because that’s where you actually have to make it work, so that’s what we’ve been doing. Really leaning into the implementation side of Arkansas LEARNS has been a big priority for our team, and I feel like that’s gone extremely well. We hear a lot of anecdotal pieces as we travel around the state. I’m hard-pressed to go into any single community, both big or small, where I don’t run into a teacher who thanks me for the investment we made into public education and teacher salaries. It’s not just the salary piece; it’s a lot of the other things that don’t get talked about as much. We were able to put $10 million in the pockets of around 3,000 educators in merit-based pay for our highest-performing and highest-achieving teachers. It’s a big deal, and something that’s never happened in our state was being able to invest in the literacy programs. We’ve talked to a number of parents when we go into places, and these kids are recipients of that one-on-one attention from literacy coaches that have been deployed to different schools and districts around the state.
AMP: The school voucher piece of the legislation seems to be popular, with participation capped out before it opens up to everyone next school year.
Sanders: That’s 14,000-plus students and families who are impacted by their child now being in a school where their kid is thriving. Many of them were struggling or not getting quite the education or access to education that they needed, but then there’s some more tangible things. I was at an elementary school within the last year where one of the things they were really proud of about Arkansas LEARNS was that the “S” in LEARNS stands for safety. We went out and saw the new fencing, the new gates that had been not just funded but actually installed. We’re helping keep kids safe on a daily basis. There are a lot of similar things we get to see that you often don’t hear about but are part of the execution and implementation of LEARNS. It gives you a great point of pride, knowing kids are getting a better education, they’re safer while they’re doing it and that the people who are performing those tasks, like our teachers, are being rewarded for their hard work.
AMP: Jail overcrowding has been a big issue for a long time in Arkansas. Talk about the momentum gained toward addressing that problem.
Sanders: The public-safety piece was another big priority — building up our police force, getting the [prison] site location, and starting to more aggressively get to a place where we’re building the prison and not just talking about it.
AMP: Talk about your efforts to increase student access to mental health care.
Sanders: We’ve put a significant amount of money into mental health programs and coordinating the various services and, I would say, modernizing the way that we approach the mental health crisis we see taking place not just in our state but around the country. One of the other things outside of just investing money in programs has been creating a more streamlined system and a focus on stopping some of the things contributing to the mental health crisis before it continues to get even worse. We know that one of the biggest causes for an increase in problems from suicide, anxiety and depression rates skyrocketing is the access and amount of time that kids have to smartphones and social media.
AMP: Your father nominated to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel, [Stephens CEO] Warren Stephens nominated as ambassador to the United Kingdom — aside from the fact that your dad was chosen, how cool is it that a rural state like Arkansas will likely supply the new U.S. ambassadors to a pair of our nation’s strongest allies?
Sanders: It’s amazing, and I think a great reminder that Arkansas has such an incredible success story and that you can do and be and build and create literally anything. Being from Arkansas, we have the largest company on the face of the planet here, and they choose to be here. And great success stories alongside them, whether it’s J.B. Hunt and Tyson or Stephens Inc. and Dillard’s and so many other industries that have been built. Now you have Arkansas with the No. 1 steel-producing county in the country. Yeah, here in Arkansas. We’re continually, I think, outkicking our coverage and showing that we can do just about anything that we set out to do. As for my dad, I’m obviously extremely biased, but I don’t think the president[-elect] made any better pick than him, and it will be the No. 1 selection he makes.
These are two of the most coveted and influential ambassador positions when you talk about Israel and then the U.K. and the special relationship we share with them and the importance of that allied friendship going back decades and knowing that we will have a friend and a leader in Warren Stevens helping support and tell Arkansas’ story, that’s a big, big deal for our state.
AMP: Are you concerned about what your dad will be walking into if he is confirmed, and what has the nomination meant for him?
Sanders: We teased my dad a little bit. I said, ‘No pressure, just world peace, so hopefully you can figure that out.’ The Middle East is literally the epicenter of so much of the conflict going on around the world, general stability in Israel being the heart of that, so for him to take that on is not only exciting; it’s a huge point of pride for our state and certainly for our family. I feel like it is kind of a culmination of all of my dad’s life coming together in one moment, in one role. It’s something he’s so passionate about and will pour himself so wholeheartedly into, absolutely. I don’t think there’s anybody [Trump] could have picked who will be better.
AMP: Did the family see this coming?
Sanders: It was something [my dad] was certainly very interested in. I think he felt like, maybe, it was more of a long shot, but he has a great relationship with the president. He has been one of his most outspoken and biggest supporters, but also one of the biggest and most outspoken supporters for Israel and the people there. He’s still got to go through the confirmation process, but it’s a pretty historic moment to have an evangelical Christian potentially as the ambassador to Israel. He’d be the first one.
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