$3.2 Million from EPSB, including all KTIP funding

| Post by Susan Perkins Weston |

The Kentucky Teacher Internship Program (known everywhere as KTIP) is one of the 70 programs that would receive no funding under Governor Bevin's recommended budget.  Here's a summary of KTIP from the 2013 Prichard Committee Team on Teacher Effectiveness:

Teachers begin their careers in Kentucky under the Kentucky Teacher Internship Program (KTIP), which they must complete successfully before being eligible for certification.... Through KTIP each new teacher is assigned a beginning- teacher committee composed of the school principal, a resource teacher (generally with the same certification as the intern) and a teacher educator from a state-approved institution. The committee, based on evaluation and observations conducted over the year, decides whether a teacher should be recommended for state certification. 

The beginning-teacher committee also is tasked with helping the new teacher become an effective educator. The EPSB notes that KTIP “is designed to provide assistance to new teachers and support them in experiencing a successful first year in the classroom. The program strives to strengthen effective teaching skills and assist the intern teacher in recognizing behaviors that are ineffective or counterproductive to student learning.”

Defunding KTIP removes one support for teachers developing their craft and succeeding in a complex profession, and fits into a wider pattern of cuts that includes professional development, and other funding for educator learning, university-based centers that support literacy and math and middle schools, and scholarships for early childhood providers and teachers.

There is no separate KTIP figure in state budget legislation, and two different 2018 figures in documents from the Office of State Budget Development. KTIP is shown with funding of:

• $3.1 million of enacted 2018 funding in the 2016-2018 Budget of the Commonwealth released in 2016.
• $2.8 million of revised 2018 funding in the newly released 2018-20 Executive Budget proposal which reflects mid-year reductions ordered by the Governor.

It is possible that some of those dollars are coming from federal resources or restricted funds, so I'm not confident listing either of those amounts as the KTIP-specific general fund cut.

However, the picture is much clearer for the overall Education Professional Standards Board, which implements KTIP and also oversees teacher education programs, and governs educator certification. For the whole agency, the general fund numbers are:

• $6.8 million in enacted funding for 2018, showing in 2016's final HB 303.
• $3.6 million in proposed funding for 2019, shown in the recently filed 2018 HB 200.

That $3.2 million reduction seems very likely to cut more than KTIP within the EPSB's work.

For clarity, this proposed $3.2 million cut is in addition to the $198 million that will flow through the Kentucky Department of Education.