As lawmakers prepare for the 2026 General Assembly session and the new state budget that will come from it, public education advocates are asking the legislature for a dramatic increase in school funding.
Protect Our Schools KY, the nonprofit group that helped defeat a proposed amendment to Kentucky’s constitution on charter school funding, has called for $718 million in new spending for public schools. That would include a 14 percent increase in per-pupil funding known as SEEK, as well as money for textbooks, professional development, and full funding of student transportation
“Every dollar we invest in education today is a dollar that we are investing in our workforce of tomorrow,” said Rockcastle County Schools Superintendent Carrie Ballinger at a press conference announcing the plan in early September.
Republican leaders in Frankfort were swift to reject the idea, pointing to record levels of funding they’ve already appropriated for K-12 education in state, including the highest amount of SEEK dollars ever and massive investments to shore up the Kentucky Teachers’ Retirement System.
“Now we’re being handed a hyper-partisan request that doesn’t merit serious consideration from lawmakers,” said state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-Ryland Heights), chair of the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee.
State Funding and School Spending
The current state budget allocates $3.3 billion a year for K-12 education, which includes $4,586 in SEEK funding. Under the proposal for Protect Our Schools, per-pupil funding would increase to $5,747.
Rob Clayton, superintendent of Warren County Public Schools, says he and his fellow superintendents are grateful for the money lawmakers have allocated. But he adds the appropriations haven’t kept pace with inflation, especially since the 2008 recession. Meanwhile, the state has also cut back on other aspects of school funding, like textbooks and bus services.
For Warren County, Clayton says the state used to provide about 60 percent of the funding needed to operate the school system there. Now that’s down to 46 percent.
“The needs that we see amongst our students have significantly increased but yet we’re seeing the flat budget” from the General Assembly, says Clayton. “The reality is we’re now leaning more heavily on our local taxpayers for ensuring that public schools have the funding necessary to not just only transport students but ensure their success.”
Generating more local tax revenues for public schools is one thing in a rapidly growing area like Bowling Green. But Clayton says many districts around Kentucky aren’t as fortunate and won’t have a sufficient tax base to draw from to supplement their budgets.
Republican leaders question why they should allocate more money to public education when, they say, many schools continue to produce poor academic outcomes, including children who can’t read or do math at their grade level. House Speaker David Osborne (R-Prospect) says educators should be focused on what’s happening in the classroom rather than on asking for more money.
Andrew McNeill, President of the Kentucky Forum for Rights, Economics and Education, says he understands the frustration of lawmakers who have provided record education funding while also cutting taxes and balancing the state budget. He also says he sympathizes with superintendents saddled with unfunded state mandates, like a requirement to hire officers known as SROs to patrol school buildings. But McNeill contends children would be better served if lawmakers and educators examined what schools spend their funding on rather than how much money they get.
As an example, he points to a model that schools had used to teach reading. An investigation by the Louisville Courier Journal found it to be inadequate and led to poor reading skills among students.
“Hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars have been spent on a strategy that was incapable of delivering results,” says McNeill.
Under a 2022 law called the Read to Succeed Act, schools are now required to use a phonics-based approach to teach reading. McNeill says educators should examine their teaching models on all subjects to determine which strategies actually work and replace ones found to be lacking. Once that process is complete, he says lawmakers could then consider appropriating more money for schools.
Other critics want to hold schools more accountable for all of their spending, including central office personnel. Rhonda Caldwell, CEO of the Kentucky Association of School Administrators, says the claims of bloated administrative salaries are overblown and aren’t supported by the state’s own data collected by the Office of Education Accountability.
But she does say low teacher pay continues to be a challenge for schools. She says the average salary for a starting teacher has increased from about $35,000 a year to about $40,000, but she says many educators still have to work multiple jobs to cover their bills. Low pay also makes it hard for districts to attract and retain quality teachers, she says.
“The research does show us when teachers are paid more, student achievement increases,” says Caldwell.
Gov. Andy Beshear and legislative Democrats have called for an across-the-board pay raise for Kentucky teachers. Republicans have resisted the idea of a statewide increase but have encouraged districts to offer pay raises to their teachers based on the costs of living in those communities.
Funding for Charter Schools
While lawmakers consider the new funding request for public schools, the Kentucky Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of allowing state tax dollars to flow to charter schools. House Bill 9 from the 2022 General Assembly session created a funding mechanism to send public dollars to charter schools, but the law was struck down by Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd in late 2023.
The state constitution says public tax dollars can only go to a system of traditional public schools known as “common schools.” Education choice advocates say the rules governing charters qualify them to be considered common schools and therefore they should be eligible for public funding. Opponents contend those rules allow charters to operate without the same level of accountability and oversight required of public schools, so charters should not receive tax dollars.
Gus LaFontaine, a party in the case before the Supreme Court, operates a private school in Madison County that serves about 175 students from kindergarten through fifth grade. He has applied to convert his school to the first charter school in the state.
“We just seek to innovate and be at the tip of the spear when it comes to best practices,” says LaFontaine. “We do some really neat work and hopefully one day we can expand that work to serve more families.”
Charter advocates say the schools would provide a crucial alternative to public schools for parents who are dissatisfied with the quality of instruction their child is receiving as well as for children who have special needs. LaFontaine says he welcomes students who need different kinds of instruction as well as children from low-income families. He says becoming a publicly funded charter school would allow him to serve even more of those children.
Clayton, who is president of the Council for Better Education, another party in the Supreme Court case, admits students can have positive experiences at charter schools. But he adds public schools have to take any and all students while charters can select the children they admit. He says charter school data from other states indicates that the children who struggle academically tend to remain in the public school system. Clayton argues that allowing state tax dollars to go to charters will take funding away from public schools that are already struggling with inadequate funding.
“When we look at the greater good for the commonwealth and educating all students, the reality is we need additional funding in public schools before we entertain funding other mechanisms that will not be serving the total population,” says Clayton.
