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| Budget Cuts Hurt Students & School Employees As budget discussions move to the Senate and pick up steam, KEA encourages all members to contact their state Senator to advocate for no cuts in education spending or in school employee health care funding. Time to influence the Senate budget is short, so please act today to contact your senator. |
| Cuts in Instructional Days = Cuts in your Salary Reducing the amount of time children are in school hurts their education, just as we are raising standards and expecting proficiency of all students. Besides these academic benefits, too many students are safest and healthiest during their time at school. If the House budget’s reduction of two instructional days remains in the final budget, some superintendents have said they will fund those two days with local money. This would only increase the inequities between richer and poorer school districts, something the Commonwealth has been fighting for more than twenty years. Cutting instructional days would reduce almost all school employees’ salaries by more than 1% annually. This relatively minor initial reduction in pay would actually amount to thousands of dollars over an employee’s lifetime, including reductions in retirement. Cuts would not be mandated for the salaries of school administrators who work an extended calendar, another way this budget is inequitable. State employees’ salaries would not be cut either. |
| An Alternative Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday and the members of the Kentucky Board of Education are encouraging the Senate to enact a budget with more flexibility than the House budget. Instead of mandating a reduced student school year, the KBE and KDE suggest making any necessary cuts more general and giving local school boards the flexibility to determine how to absorb any cut. |
| Cuts in Employee & Retiree Health Care The House budget also contains insufficient funding for school employees’ and retirees’ health care. For 2011, that budget funds health insurance at about the same level as this year and contains a mere 2% increase for 2012. This amount is far less than medical inflation – expected to be about 10% annually. This would result in employees picking up the difference – either through increased premiums or increased out-of-pocket expenses. This could mean as much as a 35% increase in school employees’ health care costs – clearly unacceptable. By contrast, the Governor’s budget contained sufficient funding to absorb at least 7% medical inflation. KEA believes that might have made for a tight budget but the House budget is so much worse that it is way beyond tight. |
| Principal Selection Bill Rears its Ugly Head Again After being defeated in the House Education Committee last week, House Bill 322 is back, this time in the Senate. On Thursday in the Senate Education Committee was scheduled to hear an innocuous bill (HB 239) that would have designated a day in August as Kentucky Literacy Day. At the last minute, the committee attached an amendment containing the provisions of HB 322. HB 322 (sponsored by Rep. Kent Stevens, D-Lawrenceburg) would give authority to select principals to superintendents and take that authority away from school councils. It would reverse a major provision of KERA and remove one of the primary responsibilities of school councils. KEA is particularly troubled to see principal selection attached to HB 239, a good bill promoted by the state’s reading association and supported by KEA. KEA is now asking legislators to defeat HB 239 since it contains the bad provisions of HB 322. Even if this bill is defeated, KEA fears that the Senate will try to attach HB 322 to other good bills. KEA’s Lobbying Team will be vigilant to watch for this, let legislators know, and ask KEA activists to contact both House and Senate members to oppose this step backward. Please contact all House and Senate members, asking them to oppose any bill with an amendment rolling back school council authority to select principals. |
| Stay Connected In addition to the weekly publication of the KEA Advocate, KEA also provides legislative updates through our legislative advocacy site www.keepkentuckylearning.org and you can befriend us on Facebook at “Ky Education’s Advocates.” Please keep connected and stay engaged. KEA members and supporters are our best lobbyists. Leave a message for your legislators by calling the toll free legislative message line at 800-372-7181 or send an email by visiting www.keepkentuckylearning.org and click on the “Contact Legislators” link. |
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