Beech Tree News Network

Week in Review: School Funding, Tobacco Settlement Funds, and mental health issues facing Kentucky’s children

With less than 50 days until the 2022 Regular Session convenes on January 4, legislators found themselves in Frankfort for another week of committee meetings. While almost a hundred bills have been prefiled for consideration next session, many more are still being drafted to address issues facing our commonwealth. We had a full week of committee meeting, including the conclusion of a task force created to study current kindergarten through 12th grade public school funding and develop recommendations; an update on how our state is investing our portion of the Tobacco Settlement Agreement Fund; and how the pandemic has impact the need for mental health care for Kentucky children.

School Funding Task Force: The coalition of lawmakers and industry leaders studying how Kentucky currently funds public education for grades K-12 signed off on nine recommendations aimed at better ensuring school districts receive equitable and efficient resources. This comes after six months of research and input from stakeholders. The most prominent recommendation—recalculating how Kentucky funds education by measuring how many students are in a school district rather than a student's daily attendance—serves as the biggest change since the passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) in 1990. Other initiatives laid out hold fast to the legislature's commitment to historic investments in education, like state funding for full-day kindergarten and a slew of wraparound services. I was proud to support a budget that included the highest per pupil education funding in state history, as well as additional funding for full-day kindergarten.

Tobacco Settlement Agreement Fund Oversight Committee: Committee members met this week to hear an update from the Kentucky Office of Agricultural Policy, which highlighted the most recent projects approved for grants from the tobacco settlement fund. In addition to the regular grant awards, the agency also made a quarterly appropriation to the On-Farm Energy Efficiency Incentives Program, which grants funding to Kentucky farm operations for the purpose of updating energy infrastructure. Legislators on this committee also heard testimony from representatives of the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood, as well as the cabinet for Health and Family Services, regarding the programs being utilized as a result of tobacco settlement funds and the current statistics for the state regarding early childhood development. Programs discussed involved early childhood development initiatives that focus on; mental health, dental hygiene.

IJC on Banking and Insurance: According to testimony presented at this month’s meeting, many hospitals throughout the United States are overwhelmed by patients who delayed psychiatric treatment because of the pandemic. According to the Wall Street Journal, doctors shared that it could be years before we see the full impact of the pandemic on mental health, but a host of studies indicate how strained the system has become. Related to this issue, children in the commonwealth have been hit hard with the school closures during the pandemic. Many of those school closures allowed mental health issues to go unnoticed. Presenters shared that in Kentucky, there are roughly 900,000 individuals with an eating disorder. Of those, 900,000 there are 29,804 children with this life-threatening condition. Currently, there are no acute care programs, residential programs, or partial hospitalization programs in Kentucky. Residents of the commonwealth are forced to go out of state to receive the care they need above an outpatient level.

Legislative Oversight and Investigations Committee: Lawmakers reviewed a staff report on the County Attorney Traffic Safety Programs. The report detailed the process used by county attorney offices and vendors, as well as potential improvements. Members also heard from representatives of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). MADD is raising concerns about the need for more guidance over how bail is used to grant pre-trial release. Specifically, MADD brought to light a pattern of third-party organizations that provide bail without any clear responsibility for the person’s actions once they leave jail.

As always, I hope you will feel free to contact me with any questions or issues. I can be reached here at home anytime or through the toll-free message line in Frankfort at 1-800-372-7181. Please feel free to email me at [email protected]. If you would like more information about any of these committees or legislative actions, you can visit the Legislative Research Commission website at legislature.ky.gov.