Steve Beshear on Education Democrat

We made cuts to survive; now let's assess damage

• We froze funding in our K-12 classrooms, despite rising costs.
• We eliminated funding for textbooks, going from $21.7 million in 2008 to zero. Instead of taking books home to study, students often must leave them for the next class.
• We cut school safety funding by 60% at a time in which we must be more vigilant, not less.
• We cut funding to our universities--causing tuition to go up an average of 4% a year at our community and technical schools and nearly 7% a year at our largest 4-year universities.
• At the same time, we reduced aid to needy students. In fact, we were forced to slam the door in the faces of some 73,000 would-be students--in just one year--who came to us asking for help to go to college.

Reinvest in SEEK: Support Education Excellence in Kentucky

• It will take up to $300 million a year to fully fund the ARC for the Kentucky Retirement System.
• Fully funding SEEK--the basic formula for classroom instruction--will also take substantial new revenues. We have protected SEEK from cuts.From 2008 to 2014, it grew zero percent--in a time when enrollment was growing, maintenance and other costs were increasing, and local support in some areas was dropping. Our schools aren't treading water. They are slowly sinking. If we had maintained that [previous average] 3.4% a year growth for SEEK, we would be spending right now an additional $550 million on classroom instruction.
• It will take $75.8 million to restore cuts made since 2008 to textbooks, ongoing teacher training, school safety, technology, and programs like after-school and tutoring that prevent drop-outs by helping struggling students catch up.

Alternative programs to reduce school dropout rate

High national rankings shows that education is good in KY