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Report: Kentucky Spending on Public Education Lower Than Recession Levels

The shock of the recession still lingers in public schools across Kentucky.

In fact, the results of a recent report from the Washington D.C. based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that the state spends $561 less per student in fiscal year 2015 than in fiscal year 2008. Adjusting for inflation, the rate is about 11 percent less than than the 2008 rate.

Credit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

State legislators are slowly turning the rate around, said Brad Hughes, a spokesman for the Kentucky School Boards Association.

The mostrecent budget passed by the General Assembly allocated $6 billion in state funding for K-12 education, affixing about $200 million more than in the prior budget.

That adds up to about $37 more being spent per student in FY2015 than FY2014, according to the report.

Hughes said it’s a move in the right direction.

“One budget increase is not going to help us make up for the loss of fund since the recession hit in 2008,” Hughes told WFPL on Friday.

He added that the current budget presents some serious challenges for school districts across the state.  Mandatory 2 percent teacher raises are set for the 2015-2016 school year, which will put a hurt on even the mightiest school districts, like JCPS, he said.

Superintendent Donna Hargens has alluded to the need of a maximum 4 percent boost in property taxes next year to support the mandatory raises.

In August, Hargens said the budget for the 2016 fiscal year will “depend” on a 4 percent revenue boost.

How Did We Get Here

Hughes said the current state of education funding results from the “flatlining” of past budgets.

“The bottom line was while the cost of teaching kids was going up and the resources applied by the state in the state budget was going down,” he said.

And what is happening in Kentucky is not an anomaly, the report points out.

Nationally, about 30 states are allocating less funding in the 2014-2015 school year than they did prior to the recession, according to the report.  Of those states, 14 have cut spending by more than 10 percent.

Credit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Like Kentucky, most states are now on the upswing.  At least 27 states have increased spending in FY2015 compared to FY2014, according to the report. 

“We know that public education is going to have keep going, as they did in 2014, again, again and again to the legislature to say ‘it cost more,’” Hughes said.

Reports like this, which rank Kentucky a dismal 37th out of the 47 states reviewed, aren’t enough to spark an immediate fire under legislatures to allocate more funding for public education, Hughes said.

“It’s probably not going to be much more than a blip on the screen,” he added.

But, if enough blips appear on the screen by the time the next General Assembly budget session rolls around in 2016, it could have an impact, Hughes said.

“We can’t stop meeting the needs of kids when it comes to the resources that are in the classroom,” he said.

Copyright 2014 89.3 WFPL News Louisville

Jacob Ryan is the urban affairs reporter forWFPL.
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