Second Lady Usha Vance joins Sanders in Arkansas Tuesday for literacy visit and teacher merit-pay reception

LITTLE ROCK — Second Lady Usha Vance will spend Tuesday in central Arkansas with Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders for a day built around childhood literacy and teacher pay, the governor’s office said in a media advisory Monday.

The two will visit Glenview Elementary School in North Little Rock, where the advisory says they will stop in classrooms, hold an education roundtable and lead an assembly for the student body. Later in the day they will host a reception at the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock for Arkansas educators who received bonuses through the state’s Merit Teacher Incentive Fund.

The advisory did not list times for either event.

Vance’s reading push

Vance, a Yale-educated former litigator who became the first Indian American second lady when her husband, JD Vance, took office as vice president in January 2025, has made childhood literacy her main public project. Her Summer Reading Challenge, which ran June 1 through Sept. 4 this year, asked kindergarten through eighth-grade students to read 12 books and turn in a reading log in exchange for a certificate, a letter from the second lady and a prize from the program’s partners. Students who finished were also entered in a raffle for a White House visit.

She has promoted the challenge with reading events at schools and military bases in Florida, Colorado, North Carolina and Texas, and at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The advisory does not say whether Tuesday is her first official trip to Arkansas.

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Sanders and LEARNS

Sanders has made reading scores the centerpiece of her case that the 2023 LEARNS Act is working. The law requires public school third graders who do not meet reading standards to be held back unless they qualify for an exemption, a rule that took effect for the first time in the 2025-26 school year, and the state has placed more than 120 literacy coaches in D- and F-rated schools.

In June the governor’s office reported that third-grade reading proficiency on the state ATLAS exam rose from 35% in 2024 to 43% in 2026, and that English language arts proficiency across all tested grades rose from 33.8% to 39.5% over the same period. Kindergarten reading proficiency rose from 50.2% to 66% in a single year, the office said.

Glenview Elementary serves about 270 students in prekindergarten through fifth grade on East 19th Street in North Little Rock. Its principal is Dwight Kelly. The school uses the Wilson Reading System, which the North Little Rock School District adopted districtwide, and the district was released from quarterly state reading-instruction check-ins after its 2024 ATLAS results, according to the district. The district rose from an F to a C in the state letter grades released Sept. 17.

The merit-pay reception

The afternoon reception honors teachers paid through the Merit Teacher Incentive Fund, which LEARNS created to reward educators for student growth, for mentoring aspiring teachers in yearlong residencies or for working in shortage subjects and regions. Classroom teachers, library media specialists and school counselors are eligible.

For the 2025-26 school year the state awarded about $15.9 million in bonuses, or $19.5 million including benefits, to 4,857 educators, the governor’s office said in June. The average bonus was about $3,300. Nearly 900 educators received $5,000 or more, and 80 received the maximum $10,000. Over the program’s three years the state says it has paid more than $50 million to more than 12,000 educators.

Sanders cited the fund when she brought her cabinet to Texarkana for her Capital for a Day visit on July 15. “That’s real money. That’s life-changing money,” she told a crowd at Zapata’s downtown.

How area districts fared

The Department of Education’s 2026 distribution map, built by the University of Arkansas Office for Education Policy, shows how the bonuses landed in southwest Arkansas:

• Genoa Central: 26.7% of teachers received a bonus, averaging $3,938.
• Fouke: 24.4%, averaging $2,816.
• Lafayette County: 9.5%, averaging $2,875.
• Hope: 8.1%, averaging $3,167.
• Spring Hill: 16%, averaging $4,125.
• Blevins: 16.1%, averaging $1,500.
• Ashdown: 2%, averaging $2,000.
• Foreman: 38.5%, averaging $3,800.
• Nevada: 27.8%, averaging $3,250.
• Prescott: 1.6%, averaging $5,500.
• Nashville: 28.4%, averaging $2,711.
• Mineral Springs: 23.4%, averaging $2,455.
• De Queen: 19.9%, averaging $3,543.

The map lists the Texarkana Arkansas School District among 12 districts statewide with no 2025-26 recipients. A year earlier, 22 TASD educators shared $73,000 in merit bonuses. The district has not announced a 2026 list.

The visit comes two weeks before the Nov. 3 election, in which Sanders is seeking a second term. Early voting began Monday in Miller and Bowie counties.