Kentucky’s Moral, Economic and Civic Obligation

I recently read a very disturbing report. Incarceration and Social Inequity by Bruce Western and Becky Pettit was published in the summer 2010 Daedalus. Here are some interesting facts from the report.

· Incarceration rates are currently at eight times the historic average.
· Men make up 90 percent of those incarcerated.
· African-American males are seven times more likely than white males to be incarcerated.
· More than 70 percent of the prison population are high school dropouts.

Put in real numbers, for every 100 African-American males who enter high school, only about 50 will graduate, and about 25 will be incarcerated at some point. African-American males born into poverty have a 1 in 4 chance of being incarcerated and a 1 in 17 chance of getting a college degree. More than 10 million people are incarcerated every year locally, and over 700,000 are incarcerated at the state or federal level.

The impact on African-American families is that 1 in 10 have a parent in jail. We have the highest incarceration rate among industrialized countries, and Kentucky has one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation. In the United States, incarceration costs us more than $70 billion each year.

We have a moral obligation, an economic obligation and a civic obligation to do something about this. What can we do?

· We need more early childhood programs.
· We must improve alternative education options.
· We must improve our ability for early identification of at-risk children.
· Our poor communities should have access to more jobs programs.
· The dropout age must be raised.

We can invest now at about $10,000 per child, or we can pay much more later. The Transforming Education in Kentucky Task Force report that will be released next week will provide recommendations addressing many of the suggestions from the report mentioned in this blog.

Let's take resources from programs not working and focus on strategies that will work. Now is the time for bold leaders. Let's get to work making a difference.

Budget Facts and Effects

At a recent Kentucky Board of Education meeting, we had a presentation from Dave Adkisson, president and CEO of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. Rather than take a position concerning the presentation, I thought some of the facts were very interesting and should be part of any future budget discussions.

Corrections Spending in Kentucky
· Spending has seen 44 percent increase since 2000, as compared to 33 percent increase in General Fund.
· It costs $19,000 per year to incarcerate a prisoner and only $9,200 a year to educate a child in P-12.
· Could we not save money on corrections by reducing our dropout rates and investing in early childhood education?

Medicaid Spending in Kentucky
· Medicaid budget is growing twice as fast as the General Fund budget.
· Medicaid enrollment increase is three times the predicted and budgeted amount.
· There will be a significant decrease in federal funding support for Medicaid in FY11.
· Medicaid moved from 6.5 percent of the state budget to the current 13.7 percent.
· Is there not a correlation that better-educated citizenry has better health?

Public Employee Health Care
· Increasing five times faster than General Fund budget (174 percent increase, compared to 33 percent General Fund increase since 2000).
· Health care for public employees currently comprises 12 percent of the state budget and 16 percent of the P-12 education budget.
· Health care costs are 17.2 percent of salary for public employees, compared to 10.8 percent for private companies’ employees.

I don’t envy the General Assembly as the members reconvene to deal with budget issues. These are difficult times that will require lots of collaboration and consideration of many ideas for improving efficiency and effectiveness of all programs.

I asked today if we thought Santa would drop a sack of dollars for Kentucky into the General Fund, and I am afraid that the answer will probably be “no.” However, no matter the funding, we must educate our children and ensure their future.