Almost $40 million already cut from SEEK program

Kentucky is sending districts $39,723,567 less in SEEK funds this year than the state provided last year.

Five districts are receiving more than ten percent less than they received last year :

• Murray Independent: 21 percent of its SEEK allocation and $1,065,487
• Frankfort Independent: 15 percent and $533,212
• Lewis County: 12 percent and $1,451,375
• Jackson Independent: 12 percent and $268,275
• Lyon County: 10 percent and $252,727

Eleven districts are receiving more than $1 million less:

• Jefferson County: $5,237,711 and 2 percent of its SEEK allocation
• Pike County: $1,615,926 and 4 percent
• Letcher County: $1,512,569 and 9 percent
• Lewis County: $1,451,375 and 12 percent
• Floyd County: $1,357,355 and 5 percent
• Harlan County: $1,303,802 and 7 percent
• Hopkins County: $1,253,451 and 4 percent
• Perry County: $1,253,250 and 7 percent
• Daviess County: $1,247,349 and 3 percent
• Christian County: $1,214,699 and 3 percent
• Murray Independent: $1,065,487 and 21 percent

Only 36 of 174 districts received a funding increase, and sixteen of those received increases of less than one percent.

So, let's stop saying the state hasn't cut P-12 funding yet. We've actually seen cuts to the Department of Education, the Education Professional Standards Board, and to smaller state funding grants, and we've seen nearly $40 million cut from SEEK itself.

To see figures for your own school district, click here to download a complete list.

To see my original sources, download KDE's 2008 2009 Revised SEEK Final Summary (dated 3/12/09) and 2009-10 SEEK Tentative Summary.xls (dated 9-16-09). In the 2009-10 file, notice that the "adjust to appropriation" column shows dollars that are coming from the federal stimulus legislation: I've added those into the amounts I'm counting as part of state spending.