Parkerman Stables in Fayetteville has found itself in the middle of a social media fracas over a Facebook post encouraging homeschool families to use their school vouchers on riding lessons.
“Our expert instructors will teach you everything you need to know about horse care, riding techniques, and more, while giving you hands-on experience in a group or individually with our well-trained horses,” said the post, which has since been deleted. “We now proudly accept Arkansas Learns!”
The Arkansas LEARNS Act, signed into law in 2023 by Gov. Sarah Sanders, created a voucher program that sends public money to private school families to use for tuition, fees and other expenses. This school year, the program is open to many homeschoolers as well. Homeschool families don’t have tuition bills to pay, but they’re able to use voucher funds for a variety of other education-related expenses, such as books and supplies, curricula, computers and other technology, and private tutoring.
Extracurricular activities are fair game as well. A list of 569 “education service providers” approved for participation in the LEARNS voucher program as of Nov. 18 includes climbing gyms, dance studios, jiu-jitsu instructors — and at least seven equestrian-related vendors, according to a cursory review by the Arkansas Times. Along with Parkerman Stables, the list includes Echo Valley Arabians (Gravette), JST Rockin B Ranch (Gentry), Pine Hill Ranch (Little Rock), Wofford Ranch (Vilonia), Equestrian Zone (Dardanelle) and TLC, Incorporated – Stable Connections (Hot Springs). At least one other vendor that has recently been approved is not on the list.
Some of those vendors appear to focus in whole or in part on “equine-assisted therapy” services for people with disabilities or trauma. Others appear to simply offer kids the opportunity to ride, interact with and care for horses. But all of them have been given the go-ahead by the Arkansas Department of Education to receive taxpayer dollars at a time when the state has cut inflation-adjusted spending in other areas.
Relatively speaking, equestrian centers are unlikely to eat up too much of the overall voucher pie. Each LEARNS voucher costs the public about $6,856 in the current 2024-25 school year, and there are about 14,000 students in the program this year, most of whom attend private schools. (About 3,000 are homeschooled.) The majority of the roughly $96 million that Arkansas spends on vouchers is flowing to private schools, such as Little Rock Christian Academy or Shiloh Christian School in Springdale.
The idea of publicly subsidizing horseback riding seems to be striking a nerve in a way that paying private school tuition does not. But one could argue there’s not a lot of difference between the two.
There are no income-eligibility requirements for either homeschool or private school households to receive a voucher. Well-off homeschool families who already paid out of pocket for riding lessons before Arkansas LEARNS can now get them comped by the state. In the same vein, families who paid private school tuition before LEARNS are now getting a taxpayer-funded boost to their bank accounts, freeing them to spend that money on whatever else they please (including horseback riding, if they wish).
Angela Walters, a representative of Parkerman Stables, said that the business has only recently been approved as a vendor by the state and that she was surprised by the negative reaction to the Facebook post. She declined to comment otherwise.
Asked whether the state considered horseback riding a valid use of funds, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education pointed to the most recent set of rules for “Educational Freedom Accounts,” the state’s name for the voucher program.
“The department reviews every expenditure to ensure it aligns with the rules linked below,” spokeswoman Kim Mundell said. “We investigate instances of inappropriate use of funds and encourage the public to report those to the department.”
The rules give little insight into what services can qualify for voucher funds. Tuition, fees, testing costs and school uniforms are on the list. But so are open-ended categories such as “instructional services” and “supplies.” (The rules are, at least, specific about “technological devices”: Computers are allowed, if they cost under $1,000, but TVs, video game consoles and home theater equipment are out.)
The education department’s website also provides some public-facing guidelines about what services and items can be purchased with voucher funds. The criteria are alternatively quite vague and surprisingly specific. Paper towels, Ziploc bags and Wet Wipes are on an “ineligible expenses” list, along with memberships to “museums, zoos, etc.” Music lessons, gymnastics and dance classes are explicitly allowed, though “no more than 2x/week.”
But the “eligible expenses” list also includes the catchall “instructional services” category, along with a caveat at the top that would seem to allow the department to greenlight almost any vendor it chooses: “Please note, this is not an exhaustive list.”
‘Too good to be true’
Borderless Horsemanship, a small riding school in Rogers, is not yet on the education department’s vendor list, but owner Sabrina Dobbins said she recently received approval from the state to participate.
“I had a parent reach out to me, and she’s like, ‘Hey, you should look into this.’ And I was like, ‘Hold up. This sounds too good to be true,’” Dobbins said.
The education department asked her questions about the services Borderless Horsemanship offered, Dobbins said, to ensure students would be taught functional skills. “They ask you, ‘What is the scope of your lessons? …What are the tools that you use? What are the terms that you use? How do you ride? How do you lunge? How do you handle the horse on the ground? How do you dissect equine behavior?’
“They wanted to make sure that … the student is actually learning something, not just getting on the horse and sitting there.”
Dobbins believes horseback riding, if taught properly, is a legitimate use of educational funds. “It does incorporate a lot of physical education, as well as mental benefits,” she said. Learning to ride a horse “allows you to problem solve in real time and get feedback from something that doesn’t understand human language. It’s almost like you’re becoming bilingual in a language that’s very sensory-based, if that makes sense.” Many colleges and universities offer equestrian programs, she pointed out.
Dobbins, who typically charges $50 per hour of instruction, has two students who were already coming to her for lessons before Arkansas LEARNS vouchers became available. “In fact, they were part of my program before I became an [Educational Freedom Account] vendor,” she said.
Those families will now pay her with voucher money, rather than out of their own pockets. And Dobbins expects a third to sign up soon.
Other vendors are focused squarely on the therapeutic benefits of riding. Equestrian Zone, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in rural Yell County south of Dardanelle, primarily serves kids and adults with disabilities, from Downs syndrome to cerebral palsy. Largely staffed by volunteer therapists and retired teachers, the organization is certified through PATH International — the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship — to provide occupational therapy, physical therapy, psychotherapy and other services.
“If you called me and said you had a child who wanted to learn barrel racing, I refer them somewhere else,” said Connie Holt, Equestrian Zone’s director and only full-time employee. “We do not do pony rides. We don’t do birthday parties. … Everybody with this team is a certified therapist.”
Heather Taylor, a regular Equestrian Zone volunteer, said the nonprofit was only recently approved as a voucher vendor and hasn’t “accepted one LEARNS dollar” so far. But unlike riding schools in Northwest Arkansas and Central Arkansas, the organization is serving a rural area where wealthy households are few and far between. “We hope that the families that we do attract are the ones that have been left out,” she said.
Still, is it fair for those services to be available to a child receiving a voucher when they’re not available to public school students? “The tax dollars are something that is being managed at a state level, so we can’t say,” Taylor said. “But what we can say is that this actually opens up for those families that were being neglected by the education system.”
Holt said there’s a world of difference between the therapeutic services provided by Equestrian Zone and a typical horse riding lesson.
“Can people paint any kind of physical activity as educational?” she said. “I’m sure they could. But please don’t broad-stroke us into that group, because we provide something very different.”
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