Teach for America comes to Appalachia and Kentucky

This from John James Snidow at the Rural Blog:

When schools reopened last month, some in Eastern Kentucky began the second year of a grand education experiment that has been going on in underprivileged school districts across the nation for 20 years but which came to Appalachia only a year ago.

Teach for America recruits talented college seniors from highly ranked universities, gives them their first training as teachers, and makes them available to schools that are willing to hire them. This year it has 36 teachers in 20 schools in 11 Eastern Kentucky districts.

In Appalachian Kentucky, the coming of TFA teachers has stirred hope that their sharp minds, youthful energy, diverse backgrounds and fresh perspectives are invigorating rural schools where most teachers are natives who went to the nearest college – and giving fresh promise to the idea that education is the key to economic progress in the region.

“Any time you challenge the status quo – ‘the man’ – any time you challenge the man, you’re gonna put pressure on the whole system to do better,” said Terry Holliday, the state commissioner of education.

But TFA has its critics, and to some, it is just the most recent incarnation in a long series of well-intentioned but naive outsiders who try to help Appalachians who never asked for it; privileged, bored, 20-somethings who want to fight a war without dodging bullets.

Morehead State University Education Dean Cathy Gunn, who doesn’t support TFA, said some of its teachers might think “It will look good on my resume, and I want to take a break, and it’s like the Peace Corps.”

Lois Combs Weinberg and Alix Smith

People in the region have seen similar programs since the War on Poverty began in the mid-1960s; while some volunteers from outside the region stayed, most left. “People would say that they ‘popped in, popped off, and popped out’,” says Lois Combs Weinberg, who was a VISTA (Volunteer In Service To America) and whose father, Bert Combs, was governor from 1969-73.

But unlike some such programs, TFAers don’t organize. They don’t picket. In fact, they’re media-shy: Getting interviews with some of them was a challenge. They’re here to teach, and they want to make clear that TFA – at least as an organization – is here to stay for the long term.

“It’s basically been a boom and bust cycle of people coming in and leaving,” says TFA corps member Alix Smith, who teaches in Lynn Camp High School at Corbin. “Our goal here with TFA is to get the boom without the bust.”

TFA’s careful efforts at community integration seem to be working, based on interviews with some Eastern Kentucky citizens. “At first we were skeptical, but they won us over in the end,” one said. “Every one of them would have faced down hell with a water pistol if they thought it would help their kids.”

Principal Robbie Fletcher of Sheldon Clark High School in Inez shared a similar story about a TFA teacher. Several students’ parents “called me and wanted their kids out of her class,” he said. And inside that class, some students were equally irate, saying things like “I don’t know how things work wherever it is you came from, but this is just not the way we do things around here.” But in the end, Fletcher said, the teacher won them over, parents included –“except one,” he says, “and the pope himself couldn’t have converted that one.”

Another reason for TFA’s success is that it is meeting real needs. Many schools in Appalachia don’t have qualified teachers in foreign languages, special education or the sciences. TFA is filling desks that would otherwise be vacant or filled with long-term substitutes.

There’s another difference between TFA and past programs, too: 50 years of academic research. “TFA is specific. It’s much more targeted work,” says Weinberg. “With VISTA, we really didn’t know what [the volunteers] were doing,” she says. “We sent them there to ‘do good’ and gave them no training.” TFA now has a much more “sophisticated conceptual framework,” she says, “We now know that education equals economic development.”

Even if TFA members don’t see themselves as directly fighting poverty, they still are very much part of the poverty war, says University of Kentucky economist Ken Troske, who runs the Kentucky Center for Business and Economic Research.

“If you can just raise education levels in Eastern Kentucky,” Troske says, “you could eliminate almost all of the region’s problems because low education levels are responsible for poverty, poor health, smoking, obesity, crime, drug use.” Troske says TFA doesn’t have to work miracles: “Even if you can raise these kids’ achievement by just 1 or 2 years of quality-adjusted education, you can start to see some real results in these other metrics.”

There was skepticism that TFA could get the political support needed to open a region in Appalachia and start placing teachers. A starting teacher in Eastern Kentucky makes upward of $30,000 a year in a region where the per capita income is approximately half that, so local demand for teaching jobs is strong. But the need for qualified teachers overcame the politics.

“Right now TFA is very targeted in rural settings where they just can’t find the teachers,” Holliday said. He hopes to broaden the impact by making it a catalyst for better teacher quality throughout the state.

While TFA is a national program, its teachers are employed locally, at the same salary locals would have been paid. “None of the hiring/firing processes were taken away,” said Phil Rogers, who was executive director of the state Education Professional Standards Board until he retired this summer. “They still have to be hired by the site-based council” at a school, Rogers noted; the only difference is that schools get an added benefit from having a bigger pool of applicants.

Regardless of how much like normal, local teachers the TFA corps members may feel, they are still part of a national service organization and their career tracks are different. Many are delaying six-figure salaries. Altruism is at work here, to some extent, and the students respect that.

“They know that the other jobs we had are higher paying, salary-wise,” said Smith, who teaches Spanish at Lynn Camp. But they also wonder about motives. Senorita Smith said one of her students confronted her in class, saying: “I heard that Teach for America teachers are only here because they think that we’re poor and think we’re stupid and think we’re don’t wear shoes.”

Smith said she replied, “Do you really believe that I think you guys are stupid?” Smith’s eyes went glittery with tears for a moment in the retelling. She says the class murmured back, “No,” and finally one found the right words: “You wouldn’t work us so hard if you thought we were that stupid.”

Liz Selden teaches math in Leslie County

But for many of the TFAers, the question comes up over and over. “My kids think I’m certifiably insane for coming here,” says TFA teacher Liz Selden of Leslie County.

Her colleague, Tom Mitchell, tells me that his students thought his very presence in Eastern Kentucky was a sure sign that he couldn’t get a job anywhere else. “You must have done something really wrong to end up here,” he says they told him.

The students can play the Appalachia card another way, too. TFA teacher Marie Giezendanner said her students started out saying, “We’re from Martin County. You can’t expect us to always do our homework. I got so sick and tired of hearing about Martin County this, and Martin County that, that eventually I came down pretty hard on them about it. They don’t try that excuse so much anymore.”

When asked what causes low educational achievement in the region, TFA teachers say it is not so much poverty as “low expectations,” and this isn’t just armchair sociology. UK education and sociology Professor Alan DeYoung says this is deeply rooted in the history of education in Appalachia.

“Up until about 1960, the point of the high-school teacher in Eastern Kentucky was to keep kids in the area, to prepare them for local jobs. Now, it’s the opposite – it’s to equip kids to leave for college,” DeYoung said, and he thinks the schools have been slow to catch up.

The most common question TFA teachers in Appalachia get is “Are you going to stay?” It is often used as a “polite way to express doubts about TFA,” says Smith. Gunn, the Morehead dean, said confidently, “They’re not coming to Appalachia to stay, that’s for sure.”

TFA is a two-year commitment, but the hope is that many will stay longer. “Coming into the corps, only 10 percent of corps members say they want education to be their career,” says UK graduate Will Nash, executive director of TFA’s Appalachia region, but “Two-thirds of all TFA alumni who have gone through the program are currently in education, broadly defined,” some in school administration.

Coming in, some Kentucky TFAers couldn’t imagine staying. “Now,” says Smith, “I can’t imagine leaving.” Already, some of the corps members are making plans for the long haul. “I’d stay at Leslie County for the next 30 years, Lord willing,” says Selden, who is from Georgia and says she is now “queen of [her] very own single wide” mobile home.

The short-term commitment is a common criticism, and it’s an even bigger problem in Appalachia, Lynn Camp Principal Amy Bays said. “In our area, kids are used to people leaving them,” she says, “so they were especially wary of these people who would only stay for two years.”

Mitchell said likewise. “A lot of my boys don’t have stable male role models in their life,” he says, “so they’re often looking to me to provide guidance. I’m concerned about what happens when I’m gone.”

TFA teachers try to get their students to focus on their own futures. They say there is one topic that is “daily conversation” in their classes: college. But in high school and especially the middle grades, this can seem a far-off and distant goal. TFA teachers talk about their own experiences to make college more attractive, and administrators like that.

Bays says students are “star struck” by the TFAers’ experiences, which broaden their conception of what is possible. “They don’t get out of the county much,” she said, so this is important.

Holliday agrees. “One of the things that excites me most about TFA,” he said, “is that since TFA recruits from the top 10 percent of the top 10 percent, they’re great role models for these kids.”

But it may be more elemental than that.

It’s the last day of school in Barbourville and I’m on the bus with Stephanie Tanner’s Spanish class. I ask them what they think of their TFA teachers, Ms. Tanner and Mr. Roach, and I can barely hear for the shouting.

“They’re awesome,” they tell me. “Best teachers we have,” says one. When asked why, they tell me in gritty detail, pulling no punches, often giving me quotes about the shortcomings of non-TFA teachers that prudence makes unprintable here.

“She’s the first Spanish teacher to stay with us for more than a year,” says Chandler Smith, a ninth grader at Knox County High. “Only one of them that knew how to teach, too,” another kid interjects.

At lunch, I get 20 versions of the same response: TFA teachers just know how to connect. The same point is made more and more colorfully as I talk to more of the students.

“They’re basically really, really, really smart teenagers who know how to teach,” says one. “No, no, no,” another corrects him. “They just get what we like because they like those things too,” says another. And then, finally, “They’re great teachers for us kids because they’re really just kids themselves.”

The teachers seem to know what they’re doing: every piece of role-modeling is intentional, every allusion calculated. They know the value of a good pop-culture reference and they’re not above leveraging that if it works.

They’re scrappy educators – and scrappy is a good way of describing their feelings about TFA’s mission, too. Over and over again in interviews, the corps members tell me that “humility goes a long way.” They don’t think they’re here to save Appalachia or to end poverty in the state of Kentucky. For them, it’s much simpler than that: get the students to learn the material – by any means necessary. That’s hard enough. But if you can do it, TFA and its supporters believe, day after day after day, we might just be able to close the achievement gap in Appalachia.

Hat tip to KSBA.

Our First Education Commissioner Candidate?

Updated 5 June:
This from the Messenger-Inquirer by way of KSBA:

CBE President Shelton among applicants

for education commissioner

Daviess County Public Schools Superintendent Tom Shelton (vitae)confirmed Tuesday that he has applied for the Kentucky education commissioner post...

“I thought that at least one Kentucky superintendent should apply,” Shelton said. “After learning that Stu (Silberman) and Roger Marcum and other likely players were not going to apply, I thought I should at least throw my name into the ring.” ...

Shelton said he doesn’t know how many people applied, but he knows he passed the initial screening for qualified candidates...

The state board will receive a report from the search firm when it meets June 10-11,
and first-round interviews are expected to take place June 15-16...

Larry Vick, superintendent of Owensboro Public Schools, said Tuesday that he has not applied for the job. He was a finalist for the post in 2007 when Draud was picked...

Finalists could be announced either right before or after the scheduled interviews, depending on whether the board wants to go for a second round of interviews, [KDE spokesperson Lisa Gross] said.

Shelton was picked last year as president of the Council for Better Education, a
statewide nonprofit group that won a school funding court case leading to the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act.

In a 2007 interview with AASA, Shelton cited his Christian faith as the greatest influence on his career.

A native of Princeton in the Bluegrass State, Shelton holds an abiding faith in the power of spirituality and prayer. He’s the deacon chair at Owensboro First Baptist Church, where he continues to teach religious studies to 16 teen-age boys, not the least challenging of audiences. “Every time I teach I get as much out of it as the students,” says Shelton, several of whose forebears served in the ministry. His father is director of missions with Ohio County Baptist Association in Kentucky.

Paul Strahan, the Owensboro church’s pastor whose two children attend Daviess County schools, sees Shelton’s poise in front of others. “When I’m with him, whether he’s talking about school issues or Baptist history, Tom is the kind of guy who speaks from experience and confidence and makes you want to listen to what he has to say. ... He’s got a sweet spirit but great influence.”

Shelton’s own thirst for knowledge seems unabated. (“He reads four books at once,” marvels Mary Tim Griffin, the school board president.) Without prompting from the board of education that hired him over more traditional candidates, he is pursuing a Ph.D. in educational leadership at University of Louisville.

For most of his professional life, Shelton crunched numbers or managed the work of others who did. He was a certified accountant, whizzing up the competitive corporate chain performing internal audits and financial analyses for firms that manufacture aluminum products and garden tools. He worked with Stu Silberman for five years in the 11,500-student Daviess County school system before being named Superintendent in July 2004.

BIOGRAPHICAL STATS: TOM SHELTON

Currently: superintendent, Daviess County Public Schools, Owensboro, Ky.

Age: 45

Family: Shelton and wife Gwen have two daughters, Audrey, 10, and Abby, 14. He is the son of Rev. Thomas L. Shelton, a longtime pastor who serves as Ohio County’s director of missions for the Kentucky Baptist Convention.

Background: Shelton was assistant superintendent for finance and operational support for five years and director of business and finance for four years before becoming superintendent in Daviess County. He hasn't been a teacher or principal during his career. An alternate training program established by Kentucky lawmakers has allowed him to receive his superintendent certification, and to work on a Rank I in administration and supervision (at UofL) that will include an instructional supervisor certification. Before joining the district in 1995 he worked 10 years for private companies in the financial field, including almost seven years at Alcan Aluminum in Sebree.

Education: Bachelor and masters degree at Murray State University.

Religion: Baptist. Shelton is a layman from First Baptist Church, Owensboro; a deacon and former finance chairman and member of the Kentucky Baptist Convention's Cooperative Program Study Committee.

Greatest influence on career: My Christian faith. It sustains me during difficult times and helps me stay focused on my goals. After a strong heritage as a child, I made a conscious decision at age 19 to live a life of servant leadership based on integrity.

Best professional day: For a door prize at the opening day program, I offer to do the jobs of two staff members for a day during the upcoming year. Two winners last year were classroom teachers — a primary teacher and a special education teacher. These two days were especially memorable. I’ve reflected on those experiences many times to help me stay focused on why we do what we do.

Books at bedside in 2004: The Holy Bible; Change Leadership by Tony Wagner et al; Leadership on the Line by Ron Heifetz and Martin Linsky; and Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott.

Biggest blooper: After a meeting at a district facility undergoing major renovations that stressed the importance of keeping students and others safely away from areas where construction was taking place, I promptly drove right over a construction sign in the parking lot — earning me the nickname of “Crash” for several months afterward!

2009 eSchoolNewsTV Video: On tech-savvy school leaders.

Tech Stuff:

Follow Shelton on twitter - http://twitter.com/TShelton13
Blog at - blogs.dcps.org/tshelton
Join Shelton on LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/bike100
Skype name - bike1001

Snippets

Shelton supported SB 145 which sought to exempt elementary, secondary and postsecondary education construction projects from Kentucky’s prevailing wage. This from the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition:

“If SB 145 were the current law, in Daviess County we would have saved over a half million dollars in school construction costs from our facilities plan budget,” said Tom Shelton, Superintendent of the Daviess County School District. “If we were able to better utilize these extra dollars, it would have a great impact on our children’s learning environment.”

Jan 17 2007 --Daviess County Public Schools is poised to become the first district to sign a contract with The Learning Community, the grass-roots, nonprofit group working to brand the Greater Owensboro area as a region that places a high value on learning for a lifetime. "Their concept is what we should all be about -- an endorsement of learning at any level," said Superintendent Tom Shelton during a routine board of education luncheon Tuesday. "It fits us so well that we feel like as a school district we need to be a part of it."

July 17, 2007 - "Funding is still inadequate," said Tom Shelton, superintendent of Daviess County Public Schools. "The good news is that the judge in our case left the door open for another suit. We don't plan on going that route, though. These three agencies have a joint legislative agenda with the same focus on school funding."

May 5 2009 - Daviess will use Post-CATS Index: Daviess County Public Schools Superintendent Tom Shelton, who is also president of the Council for Better Education, has indicated his system will participate. And here.

no date - Supported CBE white paper on Sustaining the Commitment to assessment and accountability.

Feb 26, 2009: Opposed House Bill 346 which sought to allow school councils to set non-instructional hours for teachers.

Daviess County schools Superintendent Tom Shelton says school boards should determine teachers' work time beyond instructional hours. He says allowing each
school council in a district to set those hours would create too much inconsistency.

March 22, 2009 - Shelton gave SB 1 a mixed review.

..."There's some good and not-so-good sides to it," Daviess County Public Schools Superintendent Tom Shelton said. "I'm really surprised there hasn't been more outcry to this."Shelton, who was in Frankfort on Friday when the last-minute discussions on the bill were taking place, gave the Daviess County Board of Education an update at a Friday night board retreat held at the central office."Quite frankly, the legislature shouldn't be deciding this," Shelton said. "They should set the standards, and the department of education and local districts should be creating this."Shelton said he would have preferred to leave CATS intact until 2014, the target year for all Kentucky schools to have helped students achieve proficiency in the tested subjects."If I was among the public, I would be saying, 'You promised me proficiency by 2014. ... Now what?' " Shelton said.

Earlier, on Jan 6, Shelton told the Messenger-Inquirer, "If a new bill is anything like Senate Bill 1 from last year, we will fight it," Shelton said. "We believe that changes are needed, but a multiple-choice test and the components of SB 1 will not prepare kids for today's world." A better approach would be to take the recommendations from the task force on assessment and accountability and build on those, he said.

April 19, 2009 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Shelton opposed random drug testing for students and employees.

"We do not have any current plans to randomly test students or staff, other than the current policy requirement to randomly test bus drivers based on CDL licensing requirements," said Tom Shelton , superintendent of Daviess County Public Schools. The district requires all staff members that work with students to complete a pre-employment drug screening and has the ability by policy to require staff members to submit for testing based on reasonable suspicion, he said. "We have discussed random testing for students in the past but decided to wait on pursuing this until we were advised legally that staff could be randomly tested," Shelton said. "It is our understanding from our board attorney that the court cases indicate that this cannot be done at this time, and we do not feel we should subject students to any testing that we would not also do for staff."

Jan 17, 2009 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) On Daviess County performing better than expected on state achievement tests, according to a study from the Center for Educational Research in Appalachia:

Looking at data in a unique way, as with the survey, is always helpful, said Daviess County Superintendent Tom Shelton . "In Kentucky, it makes sense to break down the data by socio-economic indicators," Shelton said. "Kentucky doesn't have large numbers of minorities or large numbers of non-English-speaking students, although that population is growing. But socio-economic status affects all of Kentucky." The superintendent cautioned, however, against using the data as an excuse for students not achieving at high levels. "That's not what the study is saying, but some people may use it in that way," he said. "The study shows, however, that some low-socio-economic districts are high-achieving."

Feb 8, 2009 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Shelton supported Mike Cherry's bill to allow up to 10 disaster days for school systems who are in the federally declared disaster areas.

Feb 28, 2009 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Tom Shelton was chosen for membership in the Century Club 100, a national leadership development organization.

Dec 18, 2008 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Shelton received the Governor's Award for Outstanding Contribution to Kentucky Law Enforcement.

April 19, 2008 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Shelton opposed a "schedule reduction" plan that would encourage public schools not to schedule private schools in any sport.

Apr 9, 2008 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Shelton complained about lawmakers mandating a 1 percent salary increase for school employees.

"I understand that times are really tough and budgets are tight, but 1 percent is almost an insult," Shelton said Tuesday. "It doesn't even meet inflation, and they're taking a loss in buying and earning power."

Dec 25, 2007 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Shelton supported more preschool opportunities.

"The earlier we can get a kid started, the better off we are," said Tom Shelton, Daviess County Public Schools superintendent. "Some students who don't go to preschool come in two, three years behind, and if they do come in behind, sometimes they stay despite interventions."

Dec 21, 2007 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) During redistricting, Shelton supported small elementary schools.

Shelton said the board has agreed that 400-500 students is the best for Daviess County. "When you go much beyond 500, you have larger class sizes and it's taxing on the facility," he said. "There is a lot of research available on school size. ... 400-500 is the size for elementary schools cited in most studies."

Nov 29, 2007 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) ...and it can't hurt to have said nice things about Helen Mountjoy upon her being named Education Cabinet Secretary.

"I think her leadership was exceptional on the state board," Daviess County Public Schools Superintendent Tom Shelton said. "I think this is wonderful for Owensboro-Daviess County and the whole state." Mountjoy will be missed locally, Shelton added.

June 30, 2007 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) The Daviess County Board of Education gave Superintendent Tom Shelton a unanimous vote of confidence with an early contract renewal that includes a provision to roll over the agreement each year.

June 17, 2007 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Shelton initiates exchange visits with the Binhu District in Wuxi, China.

"I signed a memorandum of understanding of how our partnership will continue to move forward," said Superintendent Tom Shelton , who was among an 11-member
group of educators who visited Wuxi from May 25 to June 6. "There are definitely
things we can learn from them."

Nov 24, 2006 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Shelton supported high expecdtations for students in poverty.

"I fully believe that with the right resources, the right support and the right culture, all students can achieve at high levels," Shelton said. "I don't believe poverty, race or ethnic origin prohibits students from learning." It's a matter of creating expectations and securing the resources for teachers to help their students succeed, he said.

Oct 31, 2006 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Shelton commended the KEA for its work on the health insurance benefits.

June 27, 2006 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Shelton commented on student graduation speeches that encorporated a religious message or prayer.

Grant Todd, this year's Apollo High School valedictorian, used much of his speech to witness to the crowd - telling the assembly that it was never too late to find the meaning of life and encouraging them to read the best-selling book ever, the Bible. Todd prefaced his comments by saying it was his two minutes to use as he wished. Superintendent Tom Shelton said Daviess County Public Schools has let students who have been selected to speak at graduation write their speeches. "We never have listed prayer for graduation since I've been here," he said. "In the opening and closing by selected students, some kids have read poems, some have welcomed people, and some have prayed. It's left to the students...

Daviess County Public Schools has a Christian Student Union and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. "We require all of our co-curricular activities to have school sponsors, but these groups are student-led," Shelton said. "The sponsors are there to be liaisons between organizations and the schools." This year, the district issued excused absences for students to attend the National Day of Prayer ceremony. Each school council establishes its attendance policy, and those students' requests met the schools' guidelines, Shelton said. "I'm going on my 12th year here, and the only question we've had on religion was about prayer before a public meeting," he said. "Our attorney researched it and recommended we not do that. He said we could allow a moment of silence if we wanted to." The board opted to be conservative and change to offering a moment of silence.

June 6, 2006 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Daviess County Public Schools has been accepted into the Executive Leadership Program for Educators at Harvard Business School. The local district is one of four systems in Kentucky and among only 16 in the nation selected for the prestigious program, Superintendent Tom Shelton said. "I knew that once the Harvard folks got to meet our district staff and learned all of the wonderful things we have going on, they would be impressed, but I also knew the competition would be tough," Shelton said.

May 31, 2006 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Daviess Co plans to go tobacco-free. Shelton said the remaining schools want the district to step forward with a policy rather than having each school make the decision. "We feel comfortable moving ahead earlier with the district implementation," Shelton said. "It's up to you all." The smoke-free initiative has been highly successful at the four schools that have gone ahead with the policy, Shelton said.

May 15, 2006 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) Daviess County Public Schools goes beyond the requirements of the Open Meetings Act. The school district doesn't have a written policy but sends out agendas for regular and special meetings and also makes them available at its office, Superintendent Tom Shelton said. Still, the board doesn't send out agendas for its regular luncheons. "Those are just discussion," Shelton said. "We don't have an agenda for those."

May 14, 2005 - (SOURCE: Messenger-Inquirer) The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky filed a federal lawsuit against two Daviess County Public Schools officials, claiming they violated a student's freedom of speech when Apollo High School Principal Tom Purcell prevented a student from wearing a T-shirt with the Confederate flag logo. The lawsuit also named Shelton as a defendant. Shelton said Confederate flags have caused "tension" in county schools.

"We have had incidents in the past ... the best way to put it is tension," Shelton said. "I don't think we've had anything beyond some tension and individual fights. "There was no individual incident that led to this situation." School board policy allows principals to ban any item that could disrupt education in the schools, Shelton said. "There is not a policy per say that prohibits a Confederate flag," Shelton said. "That's not the issue. We're talking about something that disrupts the educational process. We believe there is a good reason (to believe) a disruption will occur. That's why our principals acted the way they do." T-shirts with Confederate flags have "the potential to create a situation that is not good to the (school) environment," Shelton said. "They don't always happen to be Confederate flags. It could be anything that's disruptive to the educational process." The same policy against disruptions is used across the state. "It's not a specific Daviess County policy," Shelton said.

Needs of low-income students being met

This from the Messenger-Inquirer by way of KSBA:

Kentucky’s system of elementary and secondary education faces many challenges. Two of them were highlighted in articles that appeared in this newspaper in recent days. One is the challenge of educating students who come from lower socio-economic circumstances while the other is the difficulty school districts face trying to make sure high school students are prepared for the rigors of post-secondary education.

There’s good news on the first issue. A study from the Center for Educational Research in Appalachia, housed at Eastern Kentucky University, found that a good number of schools in the Owensboro area are exceeding expectations. The Owensboro school district and Hancock County, McLean County, Muhlenberg County and Ohio County school districts are among the 35 districts the study identified as outperforming expectations. In other words, the districts are doing well even though their numbers of students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are high.

Students from lower income families very often face barriers in school that other students do not. Schools and school districts must exert a lot of energy to leveling the playing field for their students and making sure that all students have the opportunity and the assistance to perform at high levels. We have seen this demonstrated in strong CATS results throughout this region and are happy to see it verified by an independent study that focuses on performance by districts with significant populations of economically challenged students. Our congratulations go out to them.

News out of northern Kentucky underlines a problem that isn’t new to this state. For a long time, the number of Kentucky high school graduates needing remedial courses when they reach college has been too high and continues to rise. Northern Kentucky University is taking an approach that involves direct intervention before students reach its campus.

In Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties, NKU is working with school superintendents to develop an assessment of high school juniors’ basic skills in math and reading. Students who don’t measure up can take remedial classes before they enter college. That has obvious potential to really help them, and will be good for cash-strapped colleges if they can commit fewer resources to remedial instruction.

While the NKU approach is good, it shouldn’t be necessary. By the time a Kentucky high school student reaches the 11th grade, he or she should have long-since mastered basic reading and math skills. If they haven’t, their chances at succeeding in college, even with remedial help, is probably in jeopardy. This is a tough problem for Kentucky school districts and the higher education community. If left unresolved, the mandate that calls for significantly raising the number of Kentucky residents who hold college degrees may be impossible to achieve. We welcome the NKU approach but look forward to the day when it won’t be needed anywhere in Kentucky.

What’s new with higher education budgeting in Kentucky?

Here's a little follow up on the...

 

 

Panelists 

CPE Staff:

Bob King is the president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. Prior to taking this post  in in 2009, Mr. King served as the Chancellor of the State University of New York, one of the largest comprehensive systems of universities, colleges and community colleges in the world. Since coming to Kentucky, he has led statewide efforts to work collaboratively with K-12 education, focused on student success and encouraged significant reform in teacher and principal training.

Dr. Aaron Thompson is the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. Since 2009 Dr. Thompson has diligently served in this role by providing oversight and management for a variety of programs linking the academic programs of Kentucky’s postsecondary institutions with a public agenda addressing the needs of students, citizens our local communities and the overall economy. Dr. Thompson has an impressive track record as an accomplished author, educator, and higher education administrator during his tenure at both Eastern Kentucky University and CPE.

Legislators:

Representative Rita Smart has diligently served the people of the 81^st district in Madison County since 2011. A small business owner and supporter of civic and non-profit community organizations she works to move her district forward every day. With committee assignments in agriculture, appropriations & revenue, postsecondary education, local government, and veterans, military affairs, and public safety she has a broad scope of influence to shape our community and the state of Kentucky.

Representative Jonathan Shell represents the 36^th district which now encompasses Garrard, Rockcastle and part of Madison County. Elected in 2013, Representative Shell is the youngest member of the KY General Assembly at 25 years old. Representative Shell is a life-long farmer, entrepreneur and proud EKU alum. His committee assignments include agriculture, banking and insurance, local government, and rural issues. 

Representative Arnold Simpson proudly represents the 66^th house district which is part of Kenton County in Northern Kentucky. An attorney by trade, Representative Simpson has served nearly a decade in the House of Representatives. His distinguished service has earned him the  honor of co-chairing the budget subcommittee on postsecondary education. He is vice-chair for appropriations and revenue, and a member of the economic development, licensing & occupations, local government, transposition, and rules committees. Under his leadership, not only has his district prospered, but all of Kentucky. 

Senator Jared Carpenter was elected in 2011 to represent the people of the 34^th senate district. Growing up right here in Madison County, Senator Carpenter has been a life-long supporter of our community. He is a graduate of EKU with a major in communication, a minor in business administration. He is also a distinguished member of our athletic program. During his professional career he has worked as a banker, developer, and entrepreneur. Senator Carpenter has been a strong supporter of our local businesses, entrepreneurs, schools and community organizations. He currently holds committee assignments as the chairman of natural resources & energy, vice chair for banking and insurance, and vice-chair of the Senate education committee.

Index of Video:
 
(00:08) EKU Associate Professor of Educational Foundations Richard Day: 

Good afternoon. My name is Richard Day and it is my privilege to host this afternoon’s Forum which will attempt to answer the question: What’s new with higher education budgeting in Kentucky? 

Our program today will come in three pieces. Following introductions, we will learn about the higher education budget being proposed by the Council on Postsecondary Education. A moderated discussion with our legislators comes next, and I’ll be around with a microphone for questions from the audience at the end.

Any students who are eligible for course credit based on their attendance today can have the back of their program signed by any member of the Faculty Senate. And let’s have all faculty senate members stand. Thank you.

At this time I’d ask that everyone pull out their web enabled devices and silence them – but please don’t turn them off. Instead we hope you will join the conversation on Twitter at (hash tag) #EKUForum, which you will see reprinted on your program. That would be a nice way for you to participate in the discussion about higher ed funding.

Now, to bring greetings on behalf of the EKU Faculty Senate, it is my pleasure to call up our Chair, Dr. Sheila Pressley.

(01:45) EKU Faculty Senate Chair Sheila Pressley: [A]lthough President Benson is new to EKU, he is not new to this type of forum. And he jumped in full steam ahead, ready to help us put this on and we really appreciate him for that. We also appreciate the vision that he has for our institution. We all understand that higher education is important, but it's from the angle and the values that we all come from that make the difference. So, without any further ado, I want to introduce…President Michael Benson.

(04:30) EKU President Michael T. Benson:  I would argue that higher education is the worthiest of causes, because an investment in human capital, in people, particularly in educating our workforce, is the best investment a state can make…This is an important occasion for us to hear from [our legislators] about the budget. 

(06:40) Richard Day:  

Let me start by thanking our panelists (again) for being here today. (To Legislators) I don’t know if I’d want to be in y’all’s shoes right now. As the young Mister Truman Benson might say, “Too much problems.” Kentucky certainly has its share. If you will permit me a personal note - I am proud to say that my father served in the Kentucky House of Representatives in the mid-1950s. In the history of Kentucky public education, the Minimum Foundation Program passed by the 1954 legislature stands as Kentucky’s crowning achievement of the post-World War II years.  (Representative Simpson: He was in the old Kenton County 58^th out of Ludlow.) And as you might imagine, that was not the only thing going on in 1954. That legislature also faced great challenges, and had to decide how, and how much, to invest in its schools.

(To King and Thompson) As a College of Education professor, and former Kentucky school principal, I have a deep appreciation for the vital public service our state education agencies provide. CPE’s steadfast support for better educational opportunities for all Kentuckians is commendable…and we thank you.

(To audience) When I entered the University of Kentucky as a freshman in 1969, my middle-class parents were able to afford my tuition, room, and board. I worked full-time every summer, and part-time during the school year, to cover my additional expenses. I couldn’t afford a car, but I had a bus ticket home, and everything I really needed to get started in my chosen profession of teaching. I graduated in four years, without any debt…and have contributed to the economy for four decades now.

In those days America was focused on increasing the percentage of baby-boomers who were college educated. Higher education was seen as having a direct correlation to Kentucky’s economic prosperity, and Kentucky contributed as much as two-thirds of the cost of a college education in the belief that the state would realize a return in a more productive citizenry – and the state’s GDP soared.

For today’s students the circumstance has reversed. Revenue growth, which stood at 14% in the 60s, shrunk into the 2% range in the 2000s, and is estimated to be around 2.7% next year. The state now supports about one third of a college students’ costs, leaving Kentucky families to make up the other two-thirds.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics and Forbes Magazine, today’s average US college student graduates in just under 6 years and leaves school with an average debt of $27,253. That’s a 58% increase over the past seven years. At the same time, the median earnings for bachelor's degree-holders, 25 and older, have fallen by 3 percent, and delinquency on student loans taken out since 2010 stands at 15.1%...and that’s bad for business.

As Bill Ellis wrote in his History of Education in Kentucky, our colleges and universities have had difficulty balancing their budgets in the new century, with a full-fledged recession beginning in 2008. Public universities saw their endowments drop 20% - and faculty raises became rare.

Economists say the state’s antiquated tax structure is not responsive enough to changes in the economy, and we could face a $1 billion deficit by 2020, unless something is done. But it’s not clear what’s being done.

These facts will be of no comfort to our legislators who, as the Herald-Leader reported, will be called upon to address a host of challenges that include other legitimate public demands in healthcare, pensions, and other public services. Weak state revenues have limited legislative choices, while the state’s most recent blue-ribbon commission on taxation produced a report the nonpartisan Tax Foundation called a “disappointing grab bag.”

The preparation of the state’s biennial budget will be the lawmakers’ major task when the Kentucky General Assembly convenes in January. They must divide just under $20 billion, 45 percent of which goes to public education. The other 55 percent funds everything else, including postsecondary education. And public education funding, which has a constitutional mandate behind it, is expected to be a hot topic.

Fixing all of this is not an enviable job, but it is a critically important one.

Amid all of this turmoil, higher education budgeting may be taking a turn. The faculty has heard talk of performance-based budgeting, but lacks a clear picture of what that might look like in Kentucky. The leadership of UK and UofL sound supportive. 

Today’s Forum provides a unique opportunity to learn about, think about, and ask questions about, the Council on Postsecondary Education’s proposed budget.

To help us moderate today’s discussion, we have called upon EKU’s Exec Dir of Governmental Relations and Regional Stewardship David McFaddin. Prior to coming to EKU David spent 15 years with AT&T Kentucky where he was the regional director for legislative and external affairs. He is also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Communication at EKU where he teaches government relations and journalism. Please welcome with me, our Moderator, David McFaddin. 

(12:45) EKU Ex. Dir. Governmental Relations David McFaddin: Intros panel

(17:50) CPE Budget Proposal

CPE President Bob King: First, thank you so much for inviting Aaron and me to this forum. It is an opportunity that we don't often get, which is to meet directly with faculty and students. And we do get to see our legislators quite a bit, but we're delighted that the four of you are here as well. The budget that we're going to describe to you…is the work product of over six months of effort that involved the input, not only from our staff, but from our campus presidents, provosts, campus business officers, people in the governor's office, working together to come up with a proposal that we hope will be successful and effective in persuading the General Assembly to make further investment in public higher education here in Kentucky. What we spend a great deal of time on is trying to articulate first and foremost, for the operating budget, what would be the rationale that would be persuasive to legislators struggling with all of the challenges that they have to make these investments in higher education.

The recommendations…focus in three basic areas. The first is the operating budget, second are what we call our incentive trust funds. You would know them as investments in a program started back in the early 2000s, shortly after a higher ed reform was enacted called Bucks for Brains. And third is the capital needs of our campuses…

(21:15) CPE VP Aaron Thompson: Many of you know that…the 2009 version of Senate Bill 1 call[ed] on higher education and K-12 to work together…(and I see former Representative [Harry] Moberly here…was very much a part of that bill)…to get more K-12 students prepared for college, and then called on higher education specifically to get them through, once we get them there. So, we went to the legislature a few years ago, and asked for a little money…to kinda get us started, and we got a little bit…We were fortunate enough to get a few million dollars…(very few)…to seed universities [and] colleges…to do exactly that, and we have been very successful with that. And thanks to Eastern, we’ve done a lot of work in this part of the country…Appalachia…to help many of our students that are most disenfranchised academically. 

(23:21) [The budget] comes in three buckets, if you will. The first bucket is college readiness. And this college readiness bucket is going to kind of help incentivize our universities to work with K-12 members, districts, and they're region, to do some of the things that we started without a lot of funding…Items like transition courses. What we know now is about 29% of all the students that come to higher education now college ready, comes through the form of the Compass or the Kyote which was very much a part of the effort that higher ed and K-12 worked together, in addition to the ACT, to indicate that they were ready. [T]ransition courses. This money goes to that. It goes to dual credit. It goes to us working directly with our region in order to help those students become more academically prepared. The second piece of the bucket, if you will…is that of developmental education. Eastern, as well as several of our institutions, we still have a lot of students coming to us that are in academic need…I know that it's more than just the academic issues that you have to deal with…This money goes to think about redesigning our development ed program…The third bucket in this group goes to teacher preparation. So this part goes to a deep induction level process. Increasing clinical models.

Bob King: The next two pieces I'm going to talk about. Research and economic development is really a bucket of money targeted at UK and U of L to help them grow research in areas that are of particular interest to Kentucky…The third, and it's one that I'm hearing some concern about, is performance funding. Legislators have been saying to us for a number of years, coming back from the national conferences that they attend, that shouldn't there be some relationship between how we fund higher education and higher education performance? … this budget proposal…is focused on degree production and it assigns to each campus...and I'll use the word, points…Every degree that is awarded by a campus is worth a certain amount of points…determined, in part, by the value that that degree has in the economy measured in dollars, compared to other degrees… we said that if a degree is awarded in certain fields--STEM degrees, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or in health related areas--we will accord to those points a premium of 3/10 of a point for that. We also said that if the degrees are awarded to certain groups of students--low income students, underrepresented minority students--that the points awarded for awarding a bachelor's degree to one of those students would get a premium as well of 3/10 of a point. The last factor that was added in kind of late in the going is some recognition of the difference in cost of instruction. That in fact, the cost of instruction at a research institution is higher and more costly than at a comprehensive, which is higher and more costly than in a community and technical college.

(37:55) Bob King:  On capital projects…2007 study (updated this year) showed…across Kentucky’s universities…there is over ten billion dollars of need. About 55% of that is in asset preservation projects, about 45% of that would be attributable to new construction...asking the legislature for a 6-year plan…The request is $600 million…in this first biennium…(not cash but debt service)…$60 million in technology…

(40:40) David McFaddin calls for legislators’ comments.

(41:50) Rep. Arnold Simpson: Our economy has not rebounded (from the recent recession) to the point where we can invest the funds that we ought to invest. And that’s all born of a very simple notion. Our constitution creates our financing mechanism for taxation. It was adopted in the last decade of the 19^th century. Quite candidly, it doesn’t work. It will not provide the revenue to commit, in my opinion…to do the people’s work. (44:45) It’s not a line item. It’s a responsibility.

(46:20) Rep. Rita Smart:  “Kentuckians, we tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. We do need a modernized tax code. We don’t have the money. …there’s only so much revenue that we are able to garnish to do the kinds of things we want to do.” 

(51:30) Rep. Jonathan Shell: We have to have some kind of tax reform moving into this next session. From all of the reporting I’ve seen, it doesn’t look like we’re actually going to tackle that. Kick the can down the road for another year. Our Speaker in the House just said that he doesn’t know that we’re going to tackle that. I’m very disappointed in that.

(54:10) Rep. Jerod Carpenter:  The way Eastern does is the way Madison County does. Our economic growth is viable because of Eastern Kentucky’s growth and success…that’s why our commitment…has to be to help education because that’s our future growth and future opportunity…

(58:43) Q&A: 

EKU Emeritus Professor of History (retired) Bill Ellis:  Encouraged the legislature to spend smarter, reform the tax code… 

(1:02:45) Richard Day: You were talking about performance-based budgeting, and it seems like you all are drilling down pretty finely to determine what degrees are worth out in the work world…Then you were talking about how different institutions…might be funded based on their cost for producing that degree and you laid out Research 1s, Regionals, and others…How well do you drill down into that? Does it cost more to train a teacher at UK than it does at Eastern?

Bob King: Well, the argument at UK is, yes.

Richard Day: Yes, I’m sure it is.

Bob King: That particular element of the formula that we use is done by sector. And so we took…the average faculty salary...that growth. It’s not a very fine tuned element but it was something that the research campuses insisted be included in the model….the cost of instruction piece adds...say at the comprehensive, a bachelor’s degree…relative to the 1.0, is worth 1.2. At a research campus it might be worth 1.45…

Richard Day: I would probably buy UK’s argument in medicine, and perhaps a number of fields, but in teacher preparation, where I come from...I’ve taught at Eastern and I‘ve taught at UK. If there’s a difference there, I don’t get it.

(1:07:02) Rep. Arnold Simpson: I have a lot of opinions on performance based funding. A lot of the states are going to that. That doesn't mean we should do it, but I think we need to have a discussion relative to its merits. We applaud the CPE's proposal, but in some instances, that's the first time I've heard the proposal today, I think it's perhaps too complex…We want to know how many students you have coming out, how quickly they're coming out, what they look at, and are they working within their degree areas, for instance. Those are the information I seek, that is information I think that we need to create an incentives for all universities to achieve a higher and better outcomes, per se….

(1:13:21) EKU Faculty Regent Amy Thieme: I'm concerned with the formula that President King gave us that, with performance funding, that we could be on a slippery slope to doing away with programs that don't have to do with STEM or health. Is that a correct assessment?

Aaron Thompson: Well, no, it's not…What we're saying is that there are crucial areas that we have to concentrate on in addition to all other things that we're doing well. Even in professional degrees, employers are telling us all the time we need to create more critical thinking, problem solving, folks that can work with people on the ground sort of thing. So having that conversation in which we're having clearly doesn't indicate that…We're looking at incentivizing you extra, if you will, beyond the base performance funding to do those high impact, high employable and, in many cases, high wage, while at the same time getting more people who have been disenfranchised from higher education in the loop and us doing more impactful engagement to making sure that that happens.

(1:16:50) EKU Faculty Member Jason Marion (Environmental Science): We have to justify building cafeterias and residence halls. Agency bonding authority, has that been addressed in Kentucky yet? I know the honorable David Williams is more honorable now than before and… [LAUGHTER] agency bonding with Senator Damron had been going on for years and that gentleman was a roadblock on that. I think 46 of 50 states have got it now. So why should we be debating cafeterias and residence halls when we could be debating medical centers and research?

(1:18:07) Rep. Arnold Simpson: Well, this past session there was a bill introduced and passes that authorized specific projects for universities to fund. You referenced Representative Damron and his bill that would permit universities to use agency funds-- that's the funds generated through your cafeterias, your housing-- to bond your own projects. I've always been supportive of that. But, having said that, I understand very well President Williams' reservation. His reservation was born very simply of the notion that, notwithstanding universities are standalone, his concern was in the event of a default. If you use your agency bond authority haphazardly, the state would probably back you up. Therefore, his position-- although I disagreed- was, in order to be   responsible stewards of our revenue, we have to ensure that the universities do not overspend…Representative Damron's bill has never been passed. Now that President Williams is now a judge, perhaps it would.

(1:23:09) EKU Faculty member Nancy McKinney (former faculty representative to the Council for Postsecondary Education): I heard many times about the budgetary problems of higher education. One thing I remember Dr. King saying more than once was that two of the biggest reasons we don't have enough money for higher education or other education are that we spend a great deal on prisons and Medicaid. And I'm wondering-- this is mostly directed at the legislative representatives-- do you see any movement on prison reform such that we'll not incarcerate so many people for nonviolent offenses, which would presumably save a lot of money? And, also, if you have any comments about the matter of Medicaid, do you foresee any improvement in that situation as a result of the health care reforms going on right now?

(1:24:19) Sen. Jerod Carpenter: we actually did a couple years ago, had house bill 463 that was to try to slow down recidivism and also put less folks behind bars for crimes that were nonviolent. And it's made a difference in our budget across Kentucky. Unfortunately, we're not seeing a tremendous amount of that cost savings yet. But, I mean, it had major hold backs from our judiciary branches, our judges here locally and some of our prosecuting attorneys had concerns with it. But it has made a difference. Small steps, baby steps, because we're just, unfortunately, we have so many issues with incarceration in Kentucky with drug abuse and drug use and stealing now. But we're trying to make-- we tried with 463 to make those processes for people that did nonviolent offenses less so we didn't incarcerate so many people…Medicaid is just another major hurdle with Affordable Health Care Act. We're all on the edge of our seats trying to figure out what that's going to the bottom line of the budget. We all know that the health reform is like tax reform. It's needed but there's a cost associated with it that nobody understands what that cost is going to be.

(1:27:59) Rep Rita Smart: one of the things that I am hopeful…is that through that Affordable Health Care Act in Kentucky, with the number of jobs that it will create--private sector jobs in the health realm--that we can see some returns come in and additional revenues, therefore, that would offset that.

Rep. Arnold Simpson: we can talk about the increase in Medicaid and that's a very legitimate concern. I'm not dismissing that. It's going to increase the amount we are going to have to devote. But the fact of the matter is, the 600-pound gorilla is this. Health care, individuals without health insurance is a cost now. We don't see it. The cost is being transferred now to people who pay, or people with insurance.

1:29:16) EKU Dir. Of University Advising Benton Shirey:  I work with the most at risk students on campus. And I guess my concern is that, having worked with those students for about 10 years now, I know that our students are capable of doing as well as anybody else's students with the proper support. But they do require more support. More academic support, more social support, more emotional support, than other students out there at some of the flagship universities. And I would say to you that my concern going forward is that we'll somehow forget about those students in our effort to get more, and that we'll forget about the fact that it takes more resources to support those students to be successful…

(1:32:07) Rep. Arnold Simpson: I don't know if the portal that a lot of our students who are underprivileged are going through is really in their best interest. The best portal for higher education for those in need, in my opinion, is community colleges. One, it's less expensive. As we sit here, we're dealing with a country where our students are facing over a trillion dollars of student loan debt. Therefore, to funnel kids to traditional comprehensive universities when they better have a higher degree of success if they go to a community college, I think is wrong. I think that's ill advised….what we have to do is not only make the commitment to make the financial commitment, but we also have to adopt policies to ensure that we're going to create the most--the highest likelihood of these students to be successful.

Sen Jerod Carpenter: [W]e have to make sure when kids get out of school that they're debt load is not tremendous. I'm a banker by trade. I count dollars, that's what I think about how, it's how my mind works. But there's also lots of students right here in central Kentucky, and what our mission was directed at Eastern Kentucky University, the need to make sure that they have an opportunity to go to a university like this to experience things that they might not get to experience in their home communities, to make them better citizens for Kentucky.

(1:35:22) Dr. Aaron Thompson: think we do have to do a better job of having the pipeline to target our students to the greatest success opportunity to whatever campuses it is whether it's a community or technical college, or Eastern Kentucky University, or University of Kentucky…We also have to do a better job of figuring out how we get more money and state financial aid and federal financial aid. We run out of money fairly quickly by first of February…We have to do a better job internally to reallocate. And I appreciate the reallocation that happened here [referring to last spring’s strategic budget reallocation at EKU] that targets and focuses on those high impact strategies to help all of our students, no matter where they're at…we understand that. That's why we're adding the premium, that's why we have the college readiness pool. I mean, these dollars go a long way but we're going to have to reform developmental education, folks. I mean, we just have to. And I understand its heresy, me saying that, but the amount of students we lose in that process is huge. We have to figure out how to have high engagement, high impact, high rigor, high expectations…I'm an EKU graduate. You talk about disenfranchised? A black kid from Clay County, Kentucky. Illiterate father. People like Bill Ellis knows the story. I mean, people like him helped me get through. So faculty play an important piece and I would be remiss if I didn't call on faculty and staff to really understand the role that you're playing here. It's not just money.

(1:39:12) David McFaddin: [O]ne of the screens that popped up a minute ago was talking about, particularly our number one priority at this university, which is funding a phase two of our science building. That is a critical component for us as an institution to complete the STEM initiatives and be able to compete in that marketplace. Currently we have part of our science is located in phase one of our science building. We have biology, geography, geology, several of our other sciences that are not in that facility. As we're looking at this budget cycle, I think we know what the revenue projections are going to be. We're roughly a little over 2% for revenue projections. We still don't know what all the expense numbers are going to be. Do you feel like there's going to be an opportunity, in this legislative session, to fund some capital projects in the state of Kentucky for higher education?

(1:40:05) Sen. Jerod Carpenter: I think that there is opportunities for funding capital projects, and I think there's opportunities when universities and university presidents are willing to put themselves on the line and get out and make sure that they're raising money privately to help allocate money that's been put in publicly through our tax dollars. And I think that's what President Benson is doing now. I think he's out bringing some different revenues to the table. Because we see its private-public partnerships. We talk about that a lot in Frankfort because it's going to take those public dollars and private dollars to be able to see funding go forward. But being an alumni of Eastern, and what it's done for me, the opportunity its provided, I want to do everything I can to continue to see Eastern go forward. And we'll definitely be advocating to try to see those dollars come together…a sad time for me was a couple years ago whenever some of the other universities had some revenue sources to be able to see new capital projects be put into place, and Eastern Kentucky wasn't in a position because it didn't have some of the endowment and some of the revenue sources to be able to see those projects put into place.

(1:41:46) Rep Jonathon Shell: I don't have anything really to go on beforehand, but now, to this point that he's been the President of the University, and being able to see him throughout the community and getting in touch with those people and building partnerships with people like myself to encourage others to come in to the University and into Kentucky so that he can fund raise off of this and make sure that the University's put in the best position possible moving forward. That's my commitment to the university, is to be in contact and help with Dr. Benson and doing everything that we can ensure that the University is putting its best foot forward.

(1:42:20) David McFaddin: Representative Simpson...as to postsecondary in general from a budgeting standpoint, what do you think the 2014 session holds for postsecondary budget funding?

(1:42:38) Rep. Arnold Simpson: If we, collectively, don't have the courage to embrace new revenues by tax reform—and that's talking about tax growing areas, perhaps services…and the elimination of exemptions--it's going to be very difficult for universities to have bonding authority outside of agency bonds that we spoke of earlier. We have not bonded projects for, I think, for a couple budgets. And our budget this year is more daunting that it was last year because no one's talked about the fact that last year our budget was that structurally sound, which means that we use a lot of one time money to balance our budget. I mean, let's face reality. We get our public teachers--I mean, the teachers retirement system. They're asking for $400 million the first year, $500 the second year. It's not going to happen. But the fact of the matter is, they can ask. We have the challenges of funding our pension reform. We passed it last year, but we didn't fund it. So, in light of that, being realistic, I don't see it as a possibility unless we [address it] collectively as a state…Now the 6% debt cap, I'm not married to that. I mean, if the universities can make a good argument that it's going to move this state forward, I would advance our debt more. As long as the rating agencies that we spoke of earlier would not threaten to reduce our bond rate. But until we get the courage to do what we need to do, which is to provide necessary services, we're not going to have the luxury of funding these much needed projects. I just don't think it's going to happen.

(1:45:31) Rep. Rita Smart: I will assure you that if universities get projects, we will get ours. But it's pretty slim right now.

End

Forum Moderator:

David McFaddin is the Executive Director for Government Relations and Regional Stewardship at Eastern Kentucky University. Prior to coming to EKU, David spent 15 years with AT&T Kentucky where he was the regional director for legislative and external affairs. He is also an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Communication at EKU where he teaches government relations and journalism.

Forum Chair:

Dr. Richard E. Day  is an Assoc. Prof. of Educational Foundations at EKU. He joined the Curriculum & Instruction faculty in 2007 following a 31-year career in Kentucky public schools, 25 years of which were spent in school administration. Dr. Day was recognized for his Outstanding Scholarship during the 2010-2011 Academic Year, by EKU's College of Education. His 2003 Dissertation, "Each Child, Every Child: The Story of the Council for Better Education, Equity and Adequacy in Kentucky Schools" received the Dissertation of the Year award from the Education Law Association. His influential blog, Kentucky School News & Commentary, is widely read in state education circles.