State Education Leaders Prepare to Fight Stumbo Plan

Kentucky's educational organizations for superintendents, school boards and school administrators have drafted a sample resolution for schools to protest House Speaker Greg Stumbo's plan to seize school contingency funds.

The resolution notes that the contingency funds come from local tax dollars in many districts: "taxpaying voters and property owners who reside in within the boundaries of this school system have contributed their local tax dollars to meet those local education expenses, which in turn have been incorporated both in the district’s budgeted allocations and planned contingency funds."

The point is that Stumbo does not seek to transfer state funds between state agencies, but rather to take local funds to give to the state. It's sort of like one level of government exercising eminent domain on a lower level of government.

The resolution takes a swipe at the Beshear administration for mandating schools to raise salaries -- but not providing any state money to help pay for the raise. That forces schools to use their contingency funds to pay for this and other unfunded mandates. To be sure, teachers should be well paid. But Democrats in Frankfort have dictated the timing and amount of the raises, without contributing any state money, and now Stumbo seeks punish those schools who tried to budget around his ham-fisted use of unfunded mandates.

Accordingly, the resolution criticizes Stumbo's plan to punish schools for having built contingency funds "through careful and effective financial management and effective budgeting, planned for unexpected expenses and the elimination of federal stimulus funds with conservative budgeting of reserve monetary resources."

Finally, the resolution urges citizens to contact their state senators and representatives to protest the Stumbo plan and fight to retain local "community control of this district’s vital financial resources for the teaching and learning of our children."

Stumbo is going to wish he'd thought of a different place to raid for money than local school districts. Even if he can muscle the votes, he will have bought himself a law suit. And he will forever be known as the guy who tried to steal the schools' contingency funds.

Greg Stumbo Wants to Steal From Our Schools

School superintendents are beginning to push back against House Speaker Greg Stumbo's plan to raid school districts' contingency funds to make up for the state's budget shortfall.

The most outrageous thing about Stumbo's plan is that it punishes those schools that were fiscally responsible, to bail out a state government that was not.

State law requires schools to maintain a contingency fund between 2 to 5 percent of the school's budget. Some districts, on the advice of their outside auditors, maintain a little more than five percent.

Thus, a district with a Category 4 or 5 school -- that is, decrepit -- might put aside extra contingency fund money in case the boiler blows, the roof leaks or it needs to build an addition. Likewise, a school with an experienced staff of teachers should have a contingency sufficient to pay its share of the unused sick leave a teacher gets to cash out upon retirement.

And if geniuses in Frankfort or Washington decide to pass an unfunded mandate, the contingency fund is the school's safety net.

Rather than commending these schools that have scrimped to prepare for such scenarios, Stumbo wants to punish these schools by confiscating their contingency funds. He may be a little more subtle than just taking the contingency funds outright; he may reduce SEEK funds -- the State per pupil allocation to the school -- and tell schools to make up the difference from their contingency funds. But the net affect is the same. That's why schools were asked to provide information about their contingency funds last winter: Stumbo has been planning this for months.

Stumbo's tactics reflect what his party does at the national level: punish responsibility and reward profligacy. Just take from the school's who planned and saved and award a bailout to whomever Stumbo deems deserving.

One Small Step for Kentucky Schools

Once and while, even in Frankfort, an issue comes along to which the answer is clear-cut even to to those who come from different political parties and philosophies. Buried beneath all the rancor of competing proposed budgets for Kentucky is such an issue.

The Senate's proposed budget includes language that would give schools flexibility in how to publish certain required information; the Senate version would allow schools to use the Internet to meet their public notice requirements.

Kentucky law requires schools to notify members of the public that they can review their school district's annual financial statement and school report cards of aggregate CATS test results. At present, schools must publish these legal notices in the newspaper with the largest circulation for the area.

For a small school district in proximity to a big newspaper, that is a very expensive -- and unfunded -- mandate. The Courier-Journal, for example, charges thousands of dollars to publish these notices.

The Senate proposes language that would let schools continue to publish in the newspaper, if they so choose, but also would allow publication via the Internet. The Kentucky School Board Association has urged the legislature to make this change for many years.

In the earliest days of the Internet, perhaps legislators justifiably could worry that not enough members of the public were on-line to satisfy the purpose of the notice requirements. That is no longer the case.

If anything, the success of the Internet has jeopardized traditional print media to the point where even Old School newspapers publish on-line. There's an irony: schools are forced to pay to appear in newspapers that then publish on-line, when the school could skip the newspaper as middleman and get the same result for free. Consequently, the current publication law enriches the newspaper industry to the detriment of our children.

Moreover, residents who want to review information about the local school are far more likely to click on the school district's web site than to get out magnifying glasses to read the legal notices in the newspaper.

This is not a hard call. If the Senate, the General Assembly and the Governor can at least agree on this small change, then at least this legislative session will have produced one good thing. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.

Bill Proposes Collective Bargaining -- Just for Schools

It's bad enough that the Beshear administration has proposed cutting school funding for such frivolities as teacher training and text books. Now, a proposed bill would force schools -- and only schools -- to enter into collective bargaining.

The proposed bill that Joni Jenkins and Rick Nelson (both Democrats) introduced in the General Assembly differs from other collective bargaining bills in that this one only applies to schools rather than all public employees. As if Kentucky school districts have extra money to spread around to the teachers' unions.

Perhaps the most offensive aspect of House Bill 650 is its utter contempt for local school boards. The bill would gut the ability of those community members who sit on school boards -- whose children attend the school -- to make fundamental decisions about the cost of labor, even though that constitutes nearly 75 percent of a typical school district's budget.

Specifically, the Bill would destroy a local school board's right to decide whether it wants to enter into contract negotiations with employee unions. At present, according to the Kentucky School Board Association, fewer than a dozen of Kentucky's 174 school boards have chosen that option. If House Bill 650 is enacted, collective bargaining for schools will no longer be optional.

The bill suffers from numerous other flaws. It fails to define what constitutes an illegal strike. It forces any contract negotiations that cannot be resolved within 30 days to be mediated by the Department of Labor. That's a pretty short fuse, given that school boards meet monthly. It allows teachers to strike over non-contract issues, such as sick leave and refusal to perform assigned duties.

Given that our state government, for all practical purposes, has ceased to function, this is not the time to take away local control. House bill 650 is poorly written and poorly reasoned. It is a disservice to our students and an insult to local decision-making. Republicans need to ensure that it does not become law.