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Herald-Leader
September 29, 2003
Personnel File: Education
Hazard Community and Technical College: Jay K. Box has been named president.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 26, 2003
Government & Politics: Academic Earmarks
Henderson Community College, $100,000 from the Department of Labor,
for educational and training programs for adults.
West Kentucky Community and Technical College, $471,913 from the Department
of Education, to train court-reporting students in captioning.
Courier-Journal
October 2, 2003
Coalition launches drive to get schools more state money
Public is urged to seek support, lobby politicians
FRANKFORT, Ky. — Saying revenue shortfalls threaten Kentucky's educational
progress, a coalition of advocacy groups and leaders launched a campaign yesterday
for more money for public schools.
To sell their message, Partners for Kentucky's Future is urging residents to
contact their legislators, send letters to newspapers and conduct civic meetings
to discuss the state's education progress, goals and funding.
The group also is co-sponsoring an Oct. 22 gubernatorial debate and this month
will release the candidates' responses to a questionnaire on education issues,
said Bob Sexton, executive director of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence
and a founding member of the partnership.
"Kentucky's future rests upon the shoulders of those who will stand firm
in their support of education," said Kathy Lousignont, coordinator of Partners
for Kentucky's Future, which includes representatives from all education levels,
as well as business groups such as the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
Further cuts to education could mean layoffs, program reductions and larger
classes, members say.
Such cuts also would endanger the progress the state has made — from gains
in national reading tests to increased enrollment at state colleges and universities.
"The education progress which has been made is substantial. Adequate funding
must be made available, and the damage caused by cutting this funding will set
us back immeasurably," Lousignont said at a Capitol news conference announcing
the group's campaign.
Lousignont also is the chairwoman of the Fayette County School Committee.
Three studies released this year have found that the state needs to spend an
additional $750million to $2.3billion each year to adequately fund elementary
and secondary education.
But partnership leaders did not say yesterday how much it would cost to fund
additional services, from early childhood programs to state colleges and adult-education
offerings.
"Our goal is to remind people what the need is," said Sexton, who
does not expect lawmakers to begin discussing education funding until a new
governor takes office in December.
The Democratic and Republican nominees for governor have given few details
on how they will increase money for education.
Republican Ernie Fletcher has said he will find the money by eliminating government
waste.
Democrat Ben Chandler has endorsed using slot machines at racetracks to raise
money for classrooms, while also saying he would reduce wasteful spending.
State education leaders question whether sufficient money can be raised without
additional revenue sources.
"I don't believe personally that you can cut state government enough in
a timely fashion to keep the momentum going that you have to have to be competitive,"
said Lee Todd, president of the University of Kentucky.
At the news conference, the partnership released a report laying out the educational
progress Kentucky has made over the past decade, while also noting that funding
at all levels had slipped.
The percentage of the general fund set aside for elementary and secondary education
has decreased from 48.2percent in 1994 to 41.2percent this year, although the
total amount spent on education has risen from $2.2billion to $3billion a year
during that time.
That percentage decrease is one of the reasons cited by the Council for Better
Education, a group of more than 160 school districts, when it filed a lawsuit
last month against the legislature for failing to adequately fund education.
The partnership's report also notes that since 1989 the postsecondary education
share of the general fund has dropped from 18percent to 15.3percent.
"We have started to slide backward, and we are going to continue to slide
backward faster and further unless the political leadership steps up and deals
with that challenge," Sexton said.
Speaking at the news conference, Carrie Jackman, a fifth-grade teacher at Northern
Elementary School in Fayette County, said legislative cuts have meant that she
had to spend more than $700 of her own last year to buy supplies for her students,
including books, plants, clipboards and other materials.
"Adequate funding is critical because the demands and responsibilities
for teachers are greater, as are our students' demands," Jackman said.
"When staff is strained, it directly impacts students. We end up doing
two or three jobs."
Courier-Journal
September 28, 2003
Higher education's jeopardy
Phony budget politics are threatening its progress
By Columnist: David Hawpe
Whatever else Gov. Paul Patton may be remembered for doing, his enduring legacy
will be House Bill 1 — higher education reform.
The proof that educators themselves "got it" was obvious in the recent
inaugural speeches given by University of Louisville President Jim Ramsey and
Jefferson Community College President Anthony Newberry.
What Gov. Patton did with House Bill 1 was impose a well-thought-out, ambitious
strategy for improving the life of Kentuckians. It included raising the aspirations
of our public colleges and universities, buttressing early childhood education
and preserving the momentum of elementary and secondary reform.
Then he linked this stronger educational system to a bold effort to develop
a new economy based on technology and information. And he funded all of it.
Now, despite all the nay saying by the cynics, things actually have changed
for the better.
It would be tragic if the next governor, with the encouragement of a pathetically
politicized General Assembly, were to sabotage Patton's achievement.
But this is what they will do if they take the easy way out of the current
budget dilemma: shortchanging higher education in order not to shortchange critically
important K-through-12 teachers and programs. This is what they will do if they
don't raise the new funds that clearly are needed to prevent surrendering the
last decade's hard-won progress.
The current politics in Frankfort have been built, in part, on a commitment
to no new taxes — on the fiction that no more money is needed, because
there's plenty of waste and inefficiency to cut.
But even our conservative Republican representatives in Washington, led by
Sen. Mitch McConnell, know better. They have been doing their part to find the
money that is so crucially important.
Thanks to the efforts of McConnell and others, Kentucky has risen to 15th position
among the states in the amount of specially earmarked federal appropriations
for higher education programs and projects — $135.6 million between 1998
and 2003. The figure for this year alone is $31.5 million.
Critics condemn these non-competitive allocations, but the money, along with
the private support prompted by Patton's "Bucks for Brains" program,
has restored hope for attaining the real academic reach and achievement Kentucky
needs — and, more important, the kind of preparation Kentucky students
need to compete in the ever-more-sophisticated new economy.
Some of their Washington colleagues, like the ones in Frankfort, don't get
it. They've taken their "spending is out of control" stick to colleges
and universities, flogging administrators because tuition has been going up
faster than the Consumer Price Index.
Of course, one of the chief reasons for that rise is that state support for
public institutions has been going down, down, down. Campus leaders have to
find the money somewhere to provide all the education citizens need. So they've
turned to private donations and they've had to ask students and their families
to bear more of the financial load.
Two House members, Howard McKeon and John Boehner, are pushing an awful bill
to penalize schools that raise tuition significantly faster than the CPI.
Such an approach would put a hammerlock on states like Kentucky, which traditionally
have kept tuitions low to make higher education available to more students.
As Murray State University President King Alexander told a congressional subcommittee
last week, "A policy based on an indexed percentage tuition growth would
simply give high-tuition, high-expenditure and more inefficient colleges and
universities a perpetual economic advantage over the institutions (like those
in Kentucky) that have done a better job of controlling student tuition costs
and per-student expenditures."
To those in Frankfort who would look to campuses for state budget cuts, I say,
"Think twice."
Think, for example, about the cutbacks that Murray State already has had to
endure over the past three years in order to serve a steadily growing student
body. Alexander outlined some of them for the committee in Washington. It's
a litany of lost opportunity:
Eliminating more than 10 budgeted faculty positions.
Eliminating more than 15 administrative, professional and support staff positions.
Eliminating 29 graduate assistantships.
Freezing 15 faculty positions and three librarian positions.
Cutting the general university operating budget.
Closing the university-operated TV station.
Reducing class and course offerings.
Reducing distance learning opportunities.
Reducing professional support and development programs.
Halting the upgrade of heating and cooling equipment.
Dramatically reducing professional travel expenses.
Restricting overtime to extraordinary events and priority projects with short
timelines.
So much for the claim last spring by Senate President David Williams, and "amened"
by others, that higher education, and other priorities, had been "adequately
funded without any tax increases.''
Actually, Kentucky's schools are succeeding not because they're well funded,
but in spite of inadequate funds. For example, while holding tuition and fees
to 24 percent less than the national public university average, Murray State
steadily has gained recognition.
Its programs have earned high rankings in the Kiplinger, Kaplan and U.S. News
& World Report surveys, and inclusion in the Princeton Review's listing
of best southeastern colleges. U.S. News lists Murray as the seventh best masters-level
institution in the South and 18th best nationwide.
Kentucky's gubernatorial candidates owe Murray, and other Kentucky schools
that have risen to the challenge, something better than "we'll try our
best."
But that's all that Democrat Ben Chandler and Republican Ernie Fletcher offered
last week to a room full of university trustees and regents, college presidents,
and members of the state Council on Postsecondary Education.
They refused to make any specific commitments. But, of course, they really
can't, since neither is willing to be honest about the state's real financial
needs. Both, however, did manage to worry aloud about rising tuition costs.
Perhaps they really don't appreciate the profound change that Patton set off.
But U of L's Ramsey understands.
He worked side-by-side with the Governor in budgeting for real educational
uplift before becoming the school's president..
In his expansive inaugural speech, Ramsey talked about the "course of
preeminence" on which the public system was set by House Bill 1 —
about the "direct correlation between advanced education and contributions
to the state tax base, between academic research and entrepreneurial development,
between reduced crime rates and social service costs."
Who would have thought we'd ever hear a U of L president talk to all of Kentucky
in the way Ramsey did when he said, "Our dreams must stretch beyond Belknap
campus, Health Sciences campus and Shelby campus. Our dreams must stretch not
only from Pleasure Ridge Park to Prospect but from Pikeville to Paducah....
We must demonstrate, over and over, that we bring benefits to everyone in the
state, not just people in Shively and St. Matthews but the people of Somerset
and Salyersville and Smiths Grove."
Here was a U of L president urging more partnership, not rivalry, with the
University of Kentucky, in order to make a difference "not just in Fern
Creek and Fairdale but in Floyd County and in Frankfort and all of Kentucky."
JCC's Newberry also talked about partnerships — expanding those with United
Parcel Service, Norton Hospital and the Kentucky Center, while reshaping others
to better serve the local job market.
How far this is from the old netherworld of turf protection, bureaucratic confusion,
poorly focused programs and lagging momentum that prevailed in the state's post-secondary
vocational and technical systems before House Bill 1. Once the great embarrassment
in Kentucky higher education, the new, combined system is, at the moment, its
shining star.
Maybe the candidates don't "get it," but here's the truth: Whoever
is elected will have to decide whether to protect Patton's great legacy in education
or to abandon it.
The next governor can partner with higher education, by raising the money it
needs to progress, or scapegoat the system, by using it as a convenient place
to cut.
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