Kentucky School Advocate
May 2024
By Brenna R. Kelly
Staff writer
The two-year state budget that will go into effect this summer includes increased funding for Kentucky public education, including base SEEK funding, transportation, career and technical education and school resource officers.
“This is the best education funded budget in the history of the Commonwealth and I’m excited about what message we’re sending to current teachers,” Sen. David Givens, R-Greensburg, said as House Bill 6, the budget bill, received final passage in the Senate.
Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Andy Beshear, however, said the increases didn’t go far enough for public education.
“I wish we’d seen more, but I want to acknowledge it has gotten better,” Beshear said. “I would say I am currently disappointed that there is not mandated teacher raises and universal pre-K.”
The two-year budget will raise the SEEK base funding 3% and 6%, respectively. That amounts to $4,326 per student in FY25 and $4,586 in FY26. Transportation will be funded at 90% the first year and 100% in the second year.
“What I hope is with this additional transportation funding, that the districts are able to provide as much as they can in teacher raises, and I know our superintendents are already trying to do that,” Beshear said.
Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said he believed the SEEK increases and transportation funding would allow boards to “give substantial raises over the biennium.”
Based on the newly passed budget, some boards have already approved raises for the upcoming school year. Scott County Schools will give all employees an 8% raise with 5% of the raise coming from a property tax increase and the remainder from the increased state funding.
“We took every dime we got from the state, and that’s about 2.25%,” Superintendent Billy Parker told the Georgetown News-Graphic.
Bullitt County Schools Superintendent Jesse Bacon said the increased state funding would result in a 3% raise in his district but that the board may be able to push it a little higher using local funds, according to WHAS-11.
Lawmakers are hoping that the increased funding and resulting raises will help combat Kentucky’s teacher shortage and stop teachers from moving to border states which have higher salaries.
“Current teachers that may be thinking about retiring – don’t,” Givens said on the Senate floor. “Don’t retire. Number one, we need you in the classroom. And number two, we’re gonna reward you. These pay raises will have such a positive impact on your pension when you retire.”
The budget also increased funding for Tier 1 SEEK equalization, which will provide less-property rich school districts more state funding, from 15% to 17.5%. Also included was a provision to help districts with high growth in property assessments – which results in less state funding – by using the lesser of the current property assessment and the prior year’s assessment.
Other highlights of the new budget include funding for school resource officers, full-day kindergarten, nickel equalization, area technology center funding, increased funding for Family Resource and Youth Services Centers that serve more than one school and funding for specific school construction projects.
The budget includes $34 million for SROs with districts able to seek $20,000 per campus to help pay for an SRO. ATCs will receive $50 million with a $7.5 million cap for each center and restrictions for centers that recently received renovations. The budget also includes $3.9 million in each year of the biennium to go to FRYSCs that serve multiple schools.
The final budget aligned with many of KSBA’s 2024 legislative priorities which included:
• Increase the funding allocated through base SEEK.
• Increase reimbursement for student transportation costs.
• Increase funding to fully implement the School Safety and Resiliency Act (2019).
• Continue to appropriate the full actuarially determined contributions to the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS), and the full amount for school employee health insurance.
Not included in the final budget was language that threatened districts with state takeover or consolidation if they did not make progress in recruiting and retaining teachers. However, the final budget does include a requirement that districts post the percent of students scoring proficient in reading and math in 16-point type at the top of every page of the district’s website and the same test score information on every page of each school’s website.
In addition to the education funding in HB 6, public education received some funding in HB 1, the one-time spending bill.
The bill includes $20.5 million for school and athletic facility construction in six school districts. It also includes $2.5 million for automated external defibrillators in schools.