Beech Tree News Network

Local educators will be watching state lawmakers closely in 2019 as they take another shot at fixing Kentucky’s strained pension system and possibly grapple with a charter schools funding mechanism.

Although lawmakers won’t consider a state budget this year, Kentucky’s Department of Education will ask them to let K-12 funding follow students to a charter school of their parent’s choice.

That notion has drawn mixed reactions from some lawmakers, including Sen. Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, who told regional superintendents in a meeting last month that he doesn’t see much eagerness among lawmakers for that concept.

“I don’t have an appetite for doing that. I think there’s a lot of us that don’t have an appetite for doing that,” Wilson said.

Lawmakers passed legislation in 2017 to clear the way for public charter schools in Kentucky, but so far they’ve failed to approve a permanent funding mechanism that would allow them to open.

Some lawmakers, however, seem open to considering a charter schools funding mechanism this legislative session, which begins Jan. 8. Sen. President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, and Sen. Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, have said they support passing legislation to get that done, according to The Courier Journal.

Bowling Green Independent School District Superintendent Gary Fields told the Daily News on Thursday that, with state spending on K-12 education stagnating over the last decade, the time for discussing charter schools funding “isn’t now.”

Although lawmakers included a modest increase in per-pupil funding in the two-year budget they approved last spring, Fields said those kinds of increases aren’t enough to keep up with the growing cost of educating Kentucky’s students.

“We’ve seen no change in our funding model at the K-12 level,” over the last decade, Fields said, adding that the state is increasingly sticking local districts with the bill.

“It puts more burden on the local taxpayers to pay the bills for the state,” he said.

Despite that, charter school advocates have continued pushing for a permanent funding mechanism they say would ultimately level the playing field for disadvantaged students.

Among them is Kentucky Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis, who told the Daily News in November that affluent families already have school choice by being able to buy a house in the right neighborhood.

“The folks that don’t get the opportunity to make those types of decisions are poor people,” he said.

Gary Houchens, a WKU professor and charter schools advocate who sits on the state’s board of education, shares Lewis’ view.

“It’s a social justice issue really,” he said, adding he doesn’t see why lawmakers can’t consider a charter schools funding mechanism in 2019.

“To me, this is not an appropriations question. I personally don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be dealt with this year.”

Houchens further argued that recipients of some public services can already choose where to spend taxpayer money, such as Medicare dollars or Pell grants for college students.

“K-12 should not be regarded any differently from that,” he said.

However willing or reluctant lawmakers are, reforming the Kentucky’s beleaguered pension system may be too much of a distraction. The state is at least $38 billion short of the money it needs to pay retirement benefits over the next three decades, according to The Associated Press.

Although Republican Gov. Matt Bevin and the GOP-legislature have boosted pension spending, giving the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System $2 billion over the next two years, that doesn’t leave much for spending on other services.

Lawmakers passed a pension reform bill in March only for it to be ruled unconstitutional by the Kentucky Supreme Court last month. The law would have moved all new teachers into a hybrid pension plan and restricted how teachers used sick days to calculate retirement benefits, according to the AP.

Before retiring at the end of 2018, state Rep. Jody Richards, D-Bowling Green, called for an amendment to the state’s constitution that would require all pension reform bills to be put out for public review 24 hours before a vote.

“It’s simply an attempt to have all sides heard before a pension bill is finally passed,” Richards told the Daily News.

Lawmakers hastily passed their pension reform bill in the final days of last year’s regular legislative session, a move that drove thousands of teachers to Frankfort to protest.

Teachers also lobbied lawmakers for greater K-12 funding, and although the General Assembly did spare schools from some cuts in its budget, it left in a 6.25 percent cut to higher education spending.

The cut didn’t help Western Kentucky University. Facing a steady decline in state funding and student enrollment, WKU ultimately decided to eliminate nearly 150 positions last spring as part of a $27 million budget balancing plan.

The university will consider cutting academic programs this year and phase in a new budget model by July 1. The new system promises to be more transparent and less top-down.

To accomplish that, the model creates several new committees with faculty representatives and other stakeholders who can help develop new budgets.

Ultimately, the goal is to help the university manage limited resources more efficiently.

“The model needs to be responsive to the market changes that we’re going through as opposed to the past model, which was more stagnant,” Andrew Laws, managing director of the Chicago-based Huron Consulting Group, which WKU has hired to help develop the model.

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By Aaron Mudd
Bowling Green Daily News
Date: 01-01-2019

Kentucky Press News Service