K-12 Education Cuts of $198 Million

| Post By Susan Perkins Weston |

[Alert: As shown in the column headings, this post uses 2018 figures from the "revised" column of the Governor's Executive Budget, released on Tuesday night, which reflected reductions recently ordered by the Governor. The later posts in this series rely on 2018 figures taken from the budget enacted in 2018 without those reductions. This note was added to the post on January 20, 2018.]

Governor Bevin’s proposed Executive Budget cuts just short of $200 million from the Kentucky Department of Education for next year. Here's the short version, to be followed by more detail:

For SEEK, the main SEEK reduction is a giant cut to pupil transportation, combined with smaller reductions to the state share of base funding and (for the first budget year only) retirement costs for the first year of the budget. 

With in SEEK, the Governor also proposes increases: state contributions to facilities costs would grow and so would the Tier 1 dollars the state pays to equalize funding for districts that voluntarily go above the minimum 30¢ tax rate.

The rest of the Department budget is shown under the Operations and Support and Learning and Results headings. The biggest proposed cut reduces state funding for health insurance benefits to teachers and other school employees. 16 other education programs are also proposed for elimination under Next Generation Schools and Next Generation Learners (and yes, I'll post the list in a few minutes.)

Very small increases are proposed for the Department's leadership (Commissioner & Board) the Kentucky School for the Deaf, and the Kentucky School for the Blind.