Education issues and the 2015 General Assembly

Season’s greetings! I hope that readers of this blog will take time over the next couple of weeks to relax and spend time with family and friends. The holiday season is an excellent time to recharge your batteries.  I plan to do just that, so this will be my last blog for 2014, but will return to the keyboard for a January 9, 2015 entry.

As we look forward to the New Year, the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) is preparing for a busy legislative session. Here are some of the hot topics we predict will be on the education agenda for the upcoming General Assembly.

     1)  Charter Schools – we will again see legislation to create charter "
     schools in Kentucky. Our state is one of only eight states without
     charters. I am hearing about the possibility of a small pilot of
     five to six charter schools in districts that have very low-performing
     schools with significant achievement gaps.

     2)  Teacher Pension Plan – the Kentucky Teacher Retirement System
     has asked the General Assembly to consider a plan that would require
     a $3.3 billion bond to shore up the underfunded retirement system.
     This system is critical for recruitment and retention of high-quality
     teachers.

     3)  School Funding – while 2015 is not a budget session, there are
     a number of funding issues that could surface. The Council for
     Better Education report recently released at the Kentucky
     Association of School Superintendents’ winter meeting will garner
     a lot of attention. The $2 billion-plus price tag is sure to get attention. |
     Also, KDE will be releasing a report on funding of the career and
     technical education programs in Kentucky. Finally, we may see
     discussion of impact of revenue shortfall and SEEK shortfall.

     4)  Dual Credit – a recent set of recommendations from the dual
     credit task force will generate discussion about how to ensure
     quality, access, funding, and transferability of courses.

     5)  Merging County Systems – several county school systems
     have been identified for state assistance and state management.
     Some county systems are very close to not having a 2 percent
     fund balance. The General Assembly previously enacted legislation
     that allowed a financially insolvent independent district to merge
     with a county system; however, currently there are no statutes that
     allow for the merger of an insolvent county system to merge with
     another system.

     6)  Closing Achievement Gaps – this issue will be part of the
     charter school issue but will also be an overarching theme of the
     Education Committees. The achievement gap in Kentucky begins
     before students enter kindergarten, continues throughout P-12,
     postsecondary, and is very obvious when we look at labor and salary
     studies for adults.

At the national level, KDE will be working to support reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) – most recently dubbed the No Child Left Behind Act – and the Carl Perkins Act which is the primary vehicle for federal funding of career and technical education. We are very excited about the potential of both bills moving forward very quickly under the leadership of Sen. Alexander of Tennessee and Majority Leader McConnell.

Supporting Kentucky’s future – or not?

This week, I was reading the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) legislative update and received an e-mail from Stu Silberman over at the Prichard Committee. Stu had been reading the same update. Here is the body of his e-mail.

The Southern Regional Education Board has released its most recent legislative update. As you will see in the chart below, Kentucky funding is falling behind and steps must be taken in this next session so we can be competitive.

State	K-12 Budget	Higher Ed Budget
Alabama*	Up 3 %	Up 2.4%
Delaware	Up 4 %	Up 4% (approximate)
Florida	Up 13.9%	Up 34.2%            (state universities)
		Up 3.1%            (state colleges)
Louisiana*	Down 1.7%	Down 10.0%
Oklahoma	Up 3.3%	Up 3.5%
South Carolina	Up 8.5% Charters up 40%	Up 9.4%       (4-year colleges & universities) Up 3.1%       (2-year colleges)
Tennessee*	Up 4.3%	Up 9%

*Also provided pay raises for teachers

In Kentucky, base student funding (SEEK) has remained flat in recent years, but an increase in the number of students has effectively cut per pupil spending. Basic grants (Flexible Focus Funds) that are used to implement Senate Bill 1 (2009) have been reduced by more than $61 million per year. The SREB report, however, shows other states are re-investing in education.

The Kentucky Board of Education is currently reviewing priorities for FY15-16 budget request. At a minimum KBE wants to see restoration of SEEK funding and Flexible Focus funding to 2008-09 levels. For SEEK, this would require an additional $60 million in FY15 and $90 million in FY16. This level of funding would only get us back to $3,866 per student which is woefully inadequate when compared to other states. To restore Flexible Focus Funds would require an additional $61 million in both FY15 and FY16. Flexible Focus Funds provide textbooks, digital resources for teaching/learning, extended school services, pre-school funding, and professional development to help educators implement Senate Bill 1 (2009).

Here is the big problem facing our legislators: there is no new money! Recently, the Consensus Forecasting Group, a non-partisan team of economists, predicted that FY15 state revenue would be fairly flat and indicated that with state obligations such as pensions and debt retirement, there is no new money for education.

Our schools have made remarkable progress in the last 25 years. More students are graduating from high school and reaching college- and career-readiness than at any point in our history. Our educators are taking money out of their own pockets to support children. Our parents are doing more fund raising to support basic needs in schools than ever before. However, this heroic effort by educators and parents cannot continue without a negative impact on morale. Teachers and parents will become extremely frustrated (if not already so) because they are being asked to fund items for students that should be provided through state and local funds.

The answer to this issue is NOT to pass on the reduced state funding costs to local property owners. Funding basic education needs through local property tax only exacerbates the inequities in education funding across 173 school districts (remember the Rose case). The answer to this issue is bold leadership from our state legislators.

As commissioner I am using this blog to announce my strong support for state legislators to address two possible funding sources during the 2014 session. I strongly support efforts at tax reform and also strongly support expanded gaming. These are not popular issues and they are extremely difficult to deal with during an election year, however, my job is to alert decision makers that without adequate funding, Kentucky educators will not be able to maintain current levels of student performance and certainly will not be able to continue improving student performance.

It is apparent from the SREB Report mentioned above that other states are re-investing in education because they know that education will have a positive impact on employment and the economy.

The upcoming session will be a make or break year for education in Kentucky. There are basically two choices – support restoration of funding for education so we can continue to make progress or don’t support restoration of funding. By not supporting restoration of funding, decision makers will be supporting the decline in outcomes for children that will have long term negative impacts on the futures of our children and the future of the Commonwealth.

Time for Bold Action to Ensure Fiscal Strength

As we prepare for the General Assembly’s 2012 session, the primary concern I am hearing from teachers, principals and superintendents is the challenge of doing more with less.

Certainly, this is a challenge that many families are facing every day. The challenge for Kentucky educators is that 2009’s Senate Bill 1 (SB 1) required major reforms in learning standards, assessments, professional development and accountability.

The vision of SB 1 is very important for Kentucky children and Kentucky’s future. We must graduate more students from high school who are ready for college and career. Education certainly drives employment opportunities for our graduates, and employment drives our economy. However, the challenge remains to implement the requirements of SB 1 at a time when we see dwindling resources for instructional materials, early childhood opportunities, Family Resource and Youth Services Centers (FRYSCs), extended school services, professional development and jobs.

I am proposing a three-pronged method to deal with the challenge.

1. Productivity and efficiency must be our first approach to dealing with fewer resources. Already, we are seeing Kentucky school districts decreasing energy costs through energy management and energy education initiatives led by the Kentucky School Boards Association. Recently, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke at a Kentucky conference that encouraged schools and districts to continue to look for ways to improve productivity and efficiency. The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) will convene school district officials in the early part of the year to decide upon four to five key support processes in our schools that we can look at to determine costs per student and develop best-practice strategies to reduce operation costs so dollars can be redirected to support teaching and learning.

2. Redirection of dollars also must be a key strategy. We must look at the hundreds of millions of dollars that flow through KDE and determine which of the programs add value to our vision of college and career readiness. During the 2010-11 legislative sessions, I asked for flexibility with these flow-through dollars. I will once again ask for flexibility and ask members of the General Assembly to focus dollars toward SB 1 and the college- and career-readiness strategies. Also, through the federal No Child Left Behind waiver, school districts will have flexibility to utilize federal dollars in more effective ways to increase student learning.

3. Finally, I believe it is time to look for additional sources of revenue. Over the last two years, KDE has implemented a strategy to seek foundation and grant dollars. While we were not funded fully from our Race to the Top grant, we will receive $17 million in Round 3 to implement SB 1 strategies. Also, we have seen significant support from the Gates, Hewlett, Stupski, Carnegie and Wallace Foundations. While external dollars are appreciated, they cannot be sustained. Kentucky must look for recurring sources of revenue to sustain our efforts. Kentucky can no longer cut funding for basic needs like preschool, instructional materials, FRYSCs and other core programs. For every dollar we cut today, we are damaging the future of children and the future of Kentucky.

While the 2012 session does feature key issues such as redistricting, and an election year is looming, I feel it is important to ask for collaboration of elected officials to support education. Pursuant to 2010 budget language, I have asked Governor Steve Beshear to utilize available funds to fill the SEEK shortfall that we have announced today.

I’ve notified our district superintendents that we believe the SEEK shortfall will be approximately $58 million, based on multiple factors including higher attendance/growth and lower property assessments.

I hope that readers will join me in advocating for children and for the future of Kentucky. Our Governor and General Assembly strongly support education, and they will need our support and encouragement as they tackle these three strategies for supporting education. No one strategy can stand alone. This must be a coordinated effort to implement all three strategies. I look forward to discussion, debate and action over the next few months.

Interesting Times in Frankfort

The final days of a “short session” are always interesting. This year is no exception. I informed superintendents via e-mail yesterday about the Senate budget language that would reduce education funding. Over numerous months and in many meetings, I have alerted educators to the Medicaid issue that would eventually have to be reconciled and its impact on P-12 education funding. (See earlier blog postings “Budget Facts and Effects,” “Budget Should Reflect the Needs of Children,” “The New Normal” and “Kentucky’s Moral, Economic and Civic Obligation.”)

Also, I have alerted educators on numerous occasions about the “funding cliff” that is approaching in 2012. I thought readers might be interested in the background about the budget process, and I found an excellent summary of events in the KEA Advocate. With permission from KEA, here are some highlights from the article.

Events
About 7:15 on Wednesday evening, the state Senate voted to cut school funding for the 2011-12 school year. The bill also removes class size limits, eliminates the requirement for kindergarten aides, and removes the requirement for preschool teachers to be certified.

The bill - HB 305 SCS - now goes back to the House to concur or not concur in the changes the Senate made to the bill. This bill will likely go to a conference committee of the two chambers.

Background
Because of less federal support than expected, Kentucky's Medicaid funding faces a significant shortfall. Governor Beshear proposed, and the House agreed, to a "fix" for this issue that did not require cuts in school funding. The House passed its bill - HB 305 - on Feb. 10, the 12th legislative day of this 30-day short session.

HB 305 sat in the Senate for more than two weeks with no action. Then on Tuesday, the 24th day of the session, after the Senate had already adjourned for the day, the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee adopted a substitute version of the bill that contains significant cuts in school funding.

About 24 hours after the bill passed Senate A&R, the entire Senate passed the Senate Committee Substitute (SCS) to HB 305.

Proposed Cuts
HB 305 SCS, as adopted by the Senate, contains these cuts in school funding:
SEEK: reductions of $38.6 million. When these cuts are added to the anticipated shortfall we already knew about, the total is $67.3 million for next school year, about a 2.3% cut.
NON-SEEK: other reductions in education funding amount to $9.4 million.

What Happens Next
On Thursday (3/3), HB 305 SCS will be returned to the House of Representatives. The first vote to occur will be whether or not to concur with the Senate's changes in the bill. If the House does not concur, it will inform the Senate. Then each chamber may appoint a joint conference committee to try to work out the differences. House and Senate leadership each appoint members of the conference committee. This process will probably take most of the day Thursday.

Next, the conference committee will meet and try to negotiate a compromise that both chambers can pass. If the committee is a "free" conference committee, other bills can be added to the committee's recommendations so literally, anything can happen. Making this situation more difficult is the legislative calendar. The General Assembly is scheduled to recess after its session on Monday, March 7. They will then reconvene on March 21 and 22 and then adjourn. All this means there is very little time for the General Assembly to consider and act on this crucial issue.

As commissioner, I am extremely concerned about any cuts to public education; however, I also know that the budget situation is extremely complex, given the Medicaid situation. I also realize that the situation was made even more complicated by the unexpected increase in students that resulted in a $28 million shortfall for the Support Education Excellence in Kentucky (SEEK) funding in 2012.

I am also concerned about the impact of budget cuts on our children’s future. We are in the middle of major education reform with 2009’s Senate Bill1 implementation. This reform focuses on improving the college and career readiness of Kentucky students. This reform will mean an improved economy for Kentucky and improved futures for Kentucky children. Budget cuts will have a significant impact on our ability to deliver on the promise of this reform legislation.

I hope that the budget conferees will consider the future of Kentucky’s children as they make difficult decisions in the next few days.