Kentucky School Advocate
October 2019

 

Join the board   
The Kentucky School Boards Association has four openings for directors-at-large to serve in the association’s board, with some exceptions. Nominations forms, which can be found on KSBA’s website, are due by Oct. 28. 

The nominees will be chosen by a committee of the board of directors. The committee will report its selections in January with ratification on Feb. 22 at KSBA’s annual conference. 

The seats are currently held by four members who are all eligible to serve a new three-year term. 

They are Steve Becker, Danville Independent; Diane Berry, Nelson County; Jason Reeves, Barbourville Independent; and Bill Robertson, Fulton Independent

The KSBA Board of Directors, which meets quarterly, sets association policy, legislative positions and annual budgets and also works closely with KSBA’s professional staff on issues important to Kentucky’s public school system. 

Your opinion wanted   
KSBA is committed to keeping you informed about your association and the important issues facing Kentucky public education. To help us better serve you, we are asking Kentucky School Advocate readers to provide us valuable feedback through a short survey. The submissions will directly impact how the Kentucky School Advocate magazine communicates with its readers. You could even win a KSBA prize pack for participating. Please take a few minutes to fill out the survey.

Funding cuts greet students  
As the new school year began, the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy analyzed the state’s SEEK per-pupil base guarantee, the state’s allocation for each student. Though some have called the current state budget’s $4,000 base guarantee the highest ever, that base guarantee is made up of both state and local funds. The state portion has decreased each year of the current budget – a decline of $122 between 2008 and 2020 - while the local portion has grown by $300. The numbers also do not account for inflation – the fact that $4,000 buys less today than it did in 2008. When inflation is factored in, the SEEK per-pupil guarantee is lower in 2020 than it was in 2008 by $667 per student, a decline of 22 percent. 

This funding trend will be a focus of the legislative session starting in January 2020, when decision makers will create the next two-year state budget.

School counselor survey required    
Senate Bill 1 (2019), the School Safety and Resiliency Act, requires districts to report information on their certified school counselors to the state. The law, KRS 158.4416 (3)(e), requires that by Nov. 1 of each year, districts must report to the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) the number and placement of school counselors in the district. The report also must include the source of funding for each position, as well as a summary of the job duties and work undertaken by each counselor and the percent of time devoted to each duty during the year. 

KDE has created a survey where districts can enter the information. The survey is broken up into elementary, middle and high school sections for entering time devoted to each duty.