NSLA funding, also known as school poverty funding, is the part of the state-funding package for schools that is targeted to low-income students. It is named NSLA after the National School Lunch Act program. The number of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunches in each school district is used to set the NSLA funding level for that district. That money is then used to provide programs and services to benefit low-income students.

NSLA funding per student did not increase at all in the last legislative session, even though the need has grown. When programs are flat-funded in this way, they are actually falling behind. Program ex­penses increase with the cost of liv­ing. Without increased funding, these programs can’t keep up with demand.

NSLA funds are a critical strategy for providing resources to meet the additional educational needs of low-income students. They are essential to reducing the opportunity gap low-income students face, improving their educational outcomes, and closing the achievement gap between them and higher-income students.

Research by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, the Bureau of Legislative Research, and the University of Arkansas’s Office of Education Policy has reached the same conclusion.  The allowable uses for NSLA funds are too broad and have resulted in too many districts spending the funds on strategies that are ineffective in reducing the achievement gap for low-income students. There are 19 allowable uses in statute and another 12 added through rules adopted by the State Board of Education.

These funds must be focused on evidence-based programs with proven track records for improving achievement of low-income students, such as pre-K, high-quality after-school and summer programs, and school initiatives that promote student health.

AACF proposes that it is not necessary to distribute all NSLA funding through schools districts. Funding for pre-K, school health, and for after school and summer school programs could also be distributed through grants to community-based organizations that might, in some cases, more effectively meet these critical needs for low-income students. The grant amounts would be based on the number of low-income students served rather than the number of students who are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches.

This would help target the programs to low-income students more effectively than school districts have done in the past.  At the same time, the grants for these purposes would maintain the state’s level of effort in the benefit of low-income students for adequacy purposes. This strategy would also alleviate school district’s concerns that they don’t have adequate facilities for pre-K programs or that they can’t attract students to participate in after-school programs.

Read AACF’s new brief “NSLA Funding in the 89th General Assembly” to find out more