Keeping Kids First: Advancing Education in Kentucky Through Legislative Action

The Kids First KY Legislative Agenda was built around three pillars:  unleash lifelong learning in every classroom for every student, recruit and retain high quality public school teachers and staff, and a focus on Kentucky public education funding that allows us to achieve the first two.  Recent legislative sessions, including 2024, produced significant progress towards each of these goals and showed that when elected officials and school leaders work together, we can advance shared goals and elevate the quality of education across the Commonwealth.

We have seen significant steps to unleash learning in every classroom for every student with the passing of the Read to Succeed (2022) and Numeracy Counts Act (2024) to focus on fundamental priorities as well as providing some funding to begin implementation.  In addition, the legislature continued to fund the Dolly Parton Imagination Library and Dual Credit Scholarships as well as establishing funding for school resource officers.  Safe schools enable greater learning for every student.  These measures will have a lasting impact on students across Kentucky. 

The 2024 session also enabled significant progress towards recruiting and retaining high quality public school teachers and staff.  We believe every classroom deserves a high quality teacher.  Every school deserves a high quality principal.  And every district deserves a high quality superintendent.  To that end, the legislature continued to fully fund (and provide even greater investments) in the ARC for the TRS and MITF (retiree health insurance & shared responsibility) as well as funding educator health insurance, creating student teacher stipends and educator scholarships, and allocating funding through SEEK to give local districts the authority to provide raises for staff. 

The 2024 budget policy was a positive step forward for our schools.  Included in that budget was an increase to SEEK in both years of the biennial budget, adjusting the Tier 1 rate to address disparities in school district funding, increasing transportation funding, continued funding of full-day kindergarten, and codifying and funding CTE programs and facilities.  With the loss of significant federal dollars, the decision to fund our schools enabled local school districts to maintain a steady financial footing as stewards of taxpayer dollars.

The Kentucky Association of School Superintendents are grateful for these steps and celebrate the work we were able to accomplish, together, with our legislators.  While progress has been made, our three pillars remain the same, and even with only 24 days left in this legislative session before concurrence, there is still much we can accomplish together.  Over the next few weeks, the focus with our legislators will include:

Unleash Lifelong Learning

• Build momentum for the need and possibilities for a new accountability system aligned with the Kentucky United We Learn Framework
• Study and make recommendations to identify outdated, redundant, and/or unnecessary mandates imposed on schools and districts
• Continue to support and fund the Read to Succeed and Numeracy Counts Act
• Improve homeschool provider qualifications and eligibility requirements to include a “stay-put” provision prohibiting homeschool enrollment for students in truancy or pending disciplinary issues

Recruit and Retain High Quality Public School Teachers and Staff

• Support EPSB with reviewing and reforming certification limits to broaden options for schools and districts to maximize the talents of their teachers to meet the needs of their students. (eg. K-8, 6-12 certs) Consider changes to the gatekeepers of certification to provide multiple paths to demonstrate competencies for earning certification (“weed in” vs. “weed out”)
• Align educator professional development requirements with educator contracts to emphasize job-embedded training and personalized learning to enhance instructional and leadership capacities. 
• Support a “grassroots campaign” through educator rising chapters in every middle school, high school and education preparation program in the state including a robust slate of student activities to cultivate their knowledge and interest in the education career pathway.
• Continue to explore ways to build the education pipeline for the long term

A Focus on Kentucky Public Education Funding

• Closing the SEEK shortfall to ensure the budget cycle and long-term planning continues for school districts across Kentucky.
• Improve school facility construction funding and administration process, namely to codify the construction administration provisions passed in HB727 of 2024 that reduced redundancies and enhanced efficiency
• Requiring a fiscal note of financial impact statement for every education bill to ensure we have no unfunded mandates.
• Fix the language in the budget bill to ensure districts can be reimbursed for all SRO’s and ensure safe schools for every student

At KASS, we believe deeply in our state motto, “United we Stand, Divided we Fall.”  We have shown what happens when we come together to truly put Kids First - our students, our schools, our districts, and our communities have the ability to thrive.  There is still much work to do but now is the time for us to continue doing that work.  Our children and future generations deserve nothing less.