Local school superintendents are still hoping for movement in Frankfort to free up additional attendance-based funding as the legislative session enters its last few days.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit schools three years ago the Kentucky Department of Education could no longer effectively track attendance, which it uses to divy up Support Education Excellence in Kentucky (SEEK) funds.
Schools had the opportunity to lock their attendance numbers to pre-pandemic levels, which had financial consequences for districts like Warren County and Bowling Green that continued to grow in enrollment since districts are allotted a base guarantee of $4,100 per student in SEEK money.
“There is still another week or two in the session to take action,” Bowling Green Independent Schools Superintendent Gary Fields said. “... I don’t know if in the history of funding Kentucky education the state has ever not funded extra kids in the building. I would hope that won’t happen.”
Fields said there was language in House Bill 448 that would allocate excess SEEK funds, but nothing so far has come to fruition.
“Earlier in the week there was language in a bill that had been added to provide that funding,” Fields said. “It was pulled from the legislation or pulled from the calendar, not sure why. Obviously we’re not in the room.”
A proposed house substitute for HB 448 stipulates that “any unexpended SEEK funds in the fiscal year 2022-2023 shall not lapse” and be distributed in the amount of $10.5 million to districts with greater average daily attendance than the frozen COVID numbers.
“The reason they froze the funding on those COVID numbers was they knew districts were losing students, they didn’t want to penalize districts for that,” Fields said. Warren County Schools Superintendent “Rob (Clayton) and I supported that. We were team players.”
Fields shared recently updated calculations for how much local districts would receive in funding based on their higher attendance.
At this point in time, WCPS would need $2.7 million to match actual attendance figures. BGISD and Glasgow Independent Schools would need almost $500,000, and Russellville Independent would need $240,000.
Clayton gave a quick SEEK funding update at WCPS’ board of education meeting Thursday night.
“We’re continuing to monitor what’s happening up in Frankfort, it’s very difficult because there’s things that are happening that don’t make a lot of sense, for lack of a better description,” Clayton said. “...We’re going to hold their feet to stepping up and doing the right thing, I don’t know if that’ll happen during the legislative session, we’ve given them the opportunity to do that.”
Fields says the situation “seems like such a simple fix”, leading to frustration.
“We have the kids. We have the additional kids, more kids than you said we have so why is the funding not following? It’s almost so simplistic that I think that’s what makes it frustrating,” he said. “...The money’s there, they’re going to have excess SEEK funding at the state level.”
If nothing comes to pass during the current session, growing districts will be left in the lurch.
“We have another year of this budget, they don’t touch the budget until next January. We just keep operating on the status quo,” Fields said. “It’s really put us in a bind. As we’re putting together our budget for next year – I know Rob would say the same thing – We’ll have to make decisions on staffing, can we give raises.”
Fields said he is depending on Sens. Max Wise, David Givens and Mike Wilson and representatives like Kevin Jackson, R-Bowling Green, a former WCPS Board of Education member, to lead the charge.
“We feel like in our conversations with our local representatives and senators, they understand the urgency of this,” Fields said. “... We have a lot of hope and confidence they will support us.”
Kentucky’s legislative session comes to a close on March 30.
