Arkansas: The Kids "School Choice" Didn't Choose

Arkansas taxpayers spend $41.5 million on private schools with published policies allowing them to exclude LGBTQ students

The following is a guest post from Reed Karkula

How did we get here?

In 2023, Arkansas’s LEARNS Act gave families public dollars to spend on private education. “Choice” was the selling point. By the end of the 2024-25 school year, $68.2 million had flowed from Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) to 128 private schools.

As applications open for 2026-2027, the program is expanding. But which families actually get to use it?

Take Garrett Memorial Christian School. Their handbook lists “promoting or participating in a homosexual or transgender lifestyle” in the same discipline tier as bringing a gun or knife to school (a five-day suspension and possible expulsion).

I wanted to know how common that was. So I went through the handbooks and admission policies of all 128 private schools participating in the EFA program during 2024-25. I read statements of faith, discipline codes, and enrollment agreements. I pulled exact quotes and archived copies of everything I could find to classify schools into four categories.

What I found was that 60.8 percent, about $41.5 million, went to schools whose published policies allow them to exclude or remove LGBTQ students. Not through vague language. Through specific rules. Baptist Preparatory School lists “homosexual orientation” alongside illegal drugs as grounds for refusing admission. Harding Academy expels students for “behavior suggesting a romantic relationship with a person of the same sex.”

Beyond that, sixty-four schools say nothing at all; their handbooks don’t mention sexual orientation or gender identity, or I couldn’t find their handbooks. Saying nothing is not the same as being inclusive.

On the other end, nine schools explicitly protect LGBTQ students in their non-discrimination policies. Nine out of 128. Those nine schools are located in just seven cities.

The Geography of Exclusion

Forty-eight other cities in Arkansas have EFA-participating schools. Not one of them has a confirmed inclusive option. If you live in North Little Rock, Jonesboro, Conway, or dozens of other places, you’re out of luck.

For families with LGBTQ children in these cities, public money leaves their wallets to fund institutions that refuse to accept their children. And for those in the most rural areas, the danger goes beyond exclusion. In many parts of Arkansas, public schools are the only real option close to home. If voucher money helps build up private alternatives elsewhere while public schools face long-term strain, rural families could be left with the worst of both worlds: a shrinking public option and nowhere else to go

Public Money, Public Access

Private religious schools have a First Amendment right to operate with the exclusionary rules of their choice. But that balance changes when an institution accepts state funds.

Unlike public schools, which are legally and morally obligated to accept every child, this parallel, taxpayer-funded system filters out the students it doesn’t want.

And this isn’t just an Arkansas problem; other states have the same issue. Schools that exclude LGBTQ+ kids are being funded with vouchers in Texas (Texas Observer), Wisconsin (Wisconsin Watch), and Florida (Orlando Sentinel).

If a school accepts public money, it must open its doors to the public. All of them. Without that guarantee, “school choice” will continue to leave some kids behind.

Reed Karkula is a Junior studying Economics at Grinnell College with an interest in education law. He created efamap.org to track LGBTQ+ policies at schools receiving voucher funding in his home state of Arkansas.