Photo courtesy of the Kentucky Lantern.
By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
As the Kentucky General Assembly draws to a close, the eyes of numerous organizations — both those in favor and in opposition — are watching the progress of Kentucky House Bill 2, which would amend the commonwealth’s constitution allowing the legislature to “provide financial support” to those students who do not attend public schools.
Barren County Director of Finance Joe Murley added a voice in opposition to HB 2 saying it could create two sets of education funding that could get “expensive” and siphon away state funds from rural public schools.
“The position I have from the public school perspective is that rather than diverting money from public schools, let’s better fund them,” Murley said. “There’s only so much money the state has to allocate, so if they divert funds to private schools that’s less they can use to fund public schools.”
Murley said state funding was “a big driver” of the school’s budget with 61.5 percent of Barren County Schools’ general fund coming from the commonwealth, according to their most recent audit. That trend is much the same throughout Kentucky’s more rural regions, Murley said, with more urban public schools getting funded by community-based means moreso than from the commonwealth.
According to the Kentucky Department of Education’s SEEK, or Support Education Excellence in Kentucky, calculations for this year roughly $4,200 is guaranteed per pupil but, as Murley said, that amount would need to be increased by approximately $1,300 to keep up with inflation.
“In schools around here most of your funding comes from the state,” Murley said. “We’re very dependent on the state for our SEEK dollars.”
It is primarily due to this shortcoming that Murley joined in the sentiment expressed by Bob Rowland, director of government relations at the Kentucky Association of School Administrators, who said the constitution should “forbid” public money going to private schools.
“From a financial point of view, there is only so much money to go around…[t]o suddenly have a significant percentage of private school students suddenly asking for their tuition to be funded by the state would make it even more difficult for public schools to be funded in a manner that allows us to attract and retain classroom teachers,” Rowland wrote in an email. “From a policy perspective…the General Assembly has made it clear that schools should not indoctrinate students to any political, religious, racial or sexual viewpoints…under HB 2 the state would be giving money to religious schools that indoctrinate as part of their core mission and to private schools on which there would be no restrictions on any kind of [political] indoctrination.”
“Basically HB 2 forces taxpayers to fund religious and private school beliefs in which they may disagree,” he added.
Similar sentiments have been expressed since the bill was first introduced to the House committee on committees in January — like Kentucky Education Association President Eddie Campbell who called the measure “a dangerous bill that is bad education policy, bad fiscal policy and bad public policy.” Though, as with nearly ever issue, many have also risen to its defense — like Jim Waters, president of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, who said, “We know from other states that the more choice parents have, the better their K-through-12 system performs.”
According to the Legislative Research Commission the bill, entitled “an act proposing to create a new section of the Constitution of Kentucky relating to education funding,” was delivered to the Secretary of State for inclusion on the ballot this November where Kentuckians will either approve or refuse the proposed amendment.
Murley said the proposed amendment will be “interesting to watch” as November draws closer.
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