Kentucky Education Policy Blog

House Bill 133 is another bad deal for education.  It unfairly targets and would place limits on the ability of local boards of education to raise local funds for education. This is especially damaging at a time when the state has failed to keep the promise of fully supporting public education funding.   Since 2008 an increasing burden of education funding has fallen to the local level due to diminished state support.  For example, according to the Council for Better Education in the western Kentucky area the burden of local revenue has shifted in Bowling Green from 39 percent in 2008 to 47 percent in 2020, in Daviess County the shift of local funding was from 35 to 54 percent.  House bill 133 would deliver a double whammy by limiting the ability of local taxing authorities to make up for waning state support.   The current statute provides a reasonable process for communities to respond to tax levy proposals by local boards of education. The petition...

 The Kentucky Association of School Administrators issued the following call to action today that may reflect the urgency of education funding:  “Increase SEEK base funding in HB 192, the FY22 budget. The SEEK program is the mechanism we use to fund Kentucky’s public schools. Raises for teachers and support staff, program enhancement for students, and providing adequate operational expenses for school districts are best achieved by a funding increase provided in the base SEEK program.” KASA’s legislative priority for P-12 education funding during the 2021 session of the General Assembly is:  Commit all growth in state revenues to increasing the SEEK base and restore SEEK and all other flexible focus funds (professional development, safe schools, textbooks, FR/YSC’s, etc.) to levels that provide constitutionally adequate funding to support academic improvement for all Kentucky students.   Adequate funding for elementary and secondary education is a constitutional mand...

In this third post about the importance of money in public education, we will examine the impetus and rationale for a comprehensive P-16 approach to education funding from the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence .  It is appropriate that such a bold plan should come from the Prichard Committee-- they played a significant role in the push for reform from the Rose decision through Kentucky Education Reform Act in 1990 and the reforms to higher education in the late 1990s.  Kentucky has made impressive progress in education over the past generation.  After vaulting from near the bottom to around the middle, P-12 metrics have hit a plateau , even moving backwards in some key areas – from preschool to postsecondary – with persistent gaps for those historically underserved. These plateaus were seen before the COVID-19 pandemic, and now, nearly one year since many students have seen the inside of a classroom, we now face learning loss like never seen before . Th...

Don't be deceived by the name.  House Bill 149 , an act creating "opportunities in education" is bad legislation at the worst possible time. HB149 was drafted with the intent of providing tax credits to wealthy donors to give families the ability to use public dollars for private school tuition and for education-related expenses for all families. It is potentially devastating for public education in a state that is already financially sick. Anyone that works in or supports public education should oppose the bill for the following reasons outlined below from Abby Piper of the Jefferson County Public Schools and the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents : First, contrary to what many supporters will say, the bill does not target low-income families. Households making $96,940 per year for a family of four would be eligible – that number becomes $121,175 in income in the second year--which, as the chart illustrates, is over two times the median income for Kentuckian...

 Exactly a year ago, Governor Beshear and members of the General Assembly were beginning the work on what was billed as an "education first" budget.  Unfortunately, the pandemic interfered with the budget process and Kentucky-- like all other states-- went into fiscal survival mode.  Flash forward one year, the Governor and legislature have an opportunity-- despite the continuation of the pandemic-- to move forward with a budget that focuses on adequate funding of public schools.  While both the Governor and Republican controlled legislature will be touting education as a priority in this budget session, it is worth closely examining what an "education first" budget really means.  To really understand, we need to explore the debate about the idea that money really matters in education.  One of the most deceptive strategies of education reform over the past 20 years has been to sow doubt about the importance of school funding.  The approach has been adv...

As we look ahead to the upcoming session of the Kentucky General Assembly, the issue of teacher pensions has started to make news again.  The headlines alone have caused many educators to nervously contemplate how they will get through another pension struggle on top of the stresses of COVID, the challenges of virtual learning and the threat of potential student learning loss.   The debate over teacher pensions in 2018 led to widespread protests, teacher walkouts and a significant political pushback that led to the election of Democratic Governor Andy Beshear in red-Kentucky the following year.   The question is whether the GOP, with a comfortable veto-proof majority in the legislature, will approach the topic any differently given the lessons of 2018-2019.    We got a glimpse of that this past week.  Rep. Ed Massey (R) from Boone County has emerged as a voice of reason for Republicans on this issue.  Massey has been working on a bill that wi...