Kentucky Legislature Special Committee Meetings, 9 Aug 2021

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From YouTube: School Funding Task Force Committee 08/9/21

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This is the second half of this mornings Task Force meeting

A

Good morning, everyone and welcome to the third meeting of the school funding task force on monday august. 9Th 2021 want to welcome everyone- that's here today and in attendance, either in person or remotely I'd, also like to remind all the members that are present in the room. If you would please turn your cell phones to silence or vibrate, we would greatly appreciate that we do have a few members that are participating with us remotely as just reminders. We do every meeting when the role is called.

A

Please indicate if you are home or if you're in your annex or your district. When you join the meeting, your microphones are automatically muted. So please remember to unmute your microphones before speaking. If you have a question or comment during the meeting, please indicate that in the meetings chat function and also a link to all meeting materials was sent to members, and they are also available on the task forces page on the lrc website at this time. Chris, if you would please call the roll.

B

Senator gibbons senator thomas senator wilson, representative bonta.

C

Here in the 63rd district, thank you.

B

Representative bo janowski, I'm.

D

Here in the room.

B

Representative johnson, here in the room co-chair wise president.

A

B

Co-Chair attempted president in the room.

A

Senator thomas president, we do have a quorum, uh so at this time since we do have that quorum, I would like to ask for a motion for the approval of the july 19th minutes with motion by senator thomas. We have a second.

C

Second, by banda, we.

A

Have a second about representative banta. Thank you so much all those in favor of accepting the minutes. Please do so by saying aye motion carries. Thank you all. We have a couple of presentations for this morning and let's get right to those. Oh first, I want to recognize my co-chair chairman tipton. If you like any comments, mr chairman.

E

Well, thank you co-chair-wise. I just wanted to uh thank the members who have agreed to participate on this. This has been an educational process and we've got. We've got a few meetings more and look forward to our conversation today.

A

Thank you so much, mr chairman, any other comments. Many other members perfect, seeing none, let's jump right to the presentations.

A

The first is uh what came about from our discussions from last month's meeting and possibly when the meeting before that an overview of school transportation, funding and non-resident student funding, and so our previous meeting, we had some members that expressed some interest uh in in hearing more about state funds, transportation for schools, and so today we have with us uh no strangers uh to this committee and to all the other uh committees that we have here in frankfort, robin kenny and also shea ritter, they're back to discuss the methods that katie uses to disperse those funds out to school districts.

A

So I welcome both of you and if you would please identify yourselves for the record, please, and you may begin.

F

Thank you very much share wise. It's a pleasure to be in front of you again today to talk about another aspect of school funding for our local school districts. Here in kentucky, we are going to talk about transportation and how we distribute those funds, how it's used as part of the overall funding formula for our local schools.

F

I have with me chay ritter, I'm director of district support services and chase going to do most of the presenting on transportation. We were also asked to present just a little bit on house bill 563.

F

So we've got a few slides at the end of our presentation to talk about 563, which is the uh recent legislation that was passed about non-resident students. So I'm going to turn it over to chanel and uh walk you through the the world of transportation funding.

G

Good morning, everybody thanks for uh inviting us back and now we'll make you suffer through my transportation slides. Let me share this screen. Real quick.

G

And please, let me know if that's showing up on your all side.

A

It is shade everything was okay, great.

G

Thank you. So of all the things my office does transportation's, one that um obviously, when you're transporting students um the devil's in the details. But you know when we see all these numbers and uh dollars that we're going to discuss here in a few minutes.

G

The bottom line that we talk a lot about, especially with a branch that covers transportation, is about those students and drivers and their safety. So a lot of what we talk about is cost really gets into. You know: training these drivers, training, the mechanics and also making sure these buses are safe to be on the road.

G

There's a lot of inspections and we'll talk about that just very briefly, but it's a very, very important thing that these folks out there do in these districts and I'll, give a shout out to transportation, directors and mechanics and inspectors, because I think they do some amazing work. I've met a lot of them and they're all incredibly professional people and know a whole lot more than I do and ever will about school buses.

G

So with that, we're going to start and kind of jump into this, and I try to keep this a relatively high level, but as always, if you have any questions, please stop me and also send some links you're always way. So you can look at specific district numbers and it's a little overwhelming when you see it but we'll get into the house and the wise a little bit more here in just a few minutes.

G

So just to give you some context, our buses in this state travel over 90 million miles a year, and when we talk about, you know how many drivers and buses there are basically over 8 000. Each we've got over 500 bus inspectors over 7 000 bus routes over 362 students transported and that accounts for roughly a bit. I think over half of our you know: total student population, jefferson county. I just checked with them the other day, because I know anytime. I ask them for a number.

G

It's always something very, very large, but they do about a hundred thousand miles per day in jefferson county. um So, as you can imagine, um you know, cost efficiency. uh You know routes everything matters, um so these districts spend a lot of time and effort making sure they're as efficient as possible.

G

So to start with, we've of course got a statute that drives everything we do, no pun intended krs 157 370.. This is a relatively short statute for such a big program. It's basically, these districts are going to be put into groups based on density and density is pretty important key here. So when we look at our districts um and I'm going to pull up some numbers on another screen here, so I can actually give them to you. Our most dense district is jefferson county.

G

So, roughly speaking, they have about 141 pupils per square mile that are transported so by county districts. They're the most dense, the most dense independent district is bowling green at about 259, 260 students or so per square mile transported. The least dense county district is owsley with about two students per square mile. So this matters in the sense of, and when I say efficiency, I don't want to imply that districts aren't obviously doing their best to be efficient, but geography matters, the size of your county will obviously matter and the roads.

G

If you don't have a straight line to your you know: students, home and you've got to go around a mountain that impacts. How many miles you put on your bus or, alternatively, if you have to drive around a big lake to get to your students, that's a lot more miles per year. um So this is the when we talk about seek a few weeks ago. We talked about that student population that comes into the formula that kind of sets the foundation. Well, the same thing happens in transportation, except it's the ada transported.

G

These are the kids who are actually transported by the buses, so that kind of comes into the formula is sort of the start of it, and then the county and independent districts actually kind of split uh they're, determined separately, and this last sentence is a little confusing and I'll. Try to explain this a little better in a few minutes, but no independent district receives an average cost per pupil day in excess of the minimum received by any county district and I'll. Explain that a little more detail here in a few minutes.

G

So this is uh what we call the tentative calculation and I apologize for the size of this it's very hard to read, but I wanted to give you an idea of, and we've got this magnified in the next slide. So it's not quite as bad, but this is basically step one of our calculation.

G

So the beginning of this, we look at the square miles in the district and, of course, the area not served and for some context, franklin county schools serves a certain area, but within that there's frankfort independent schools. So that's the area that franklin county schools would not serve.

G

I believe I looked at lyon county yesterday just to see I think they have something like 88 point something square miles not served because of a very large lake that happens to be sitting in their district.

G

So then we get this net square mile served and then you start getting into that student population, who's riding the bus, and then you have a another factor in here that actually the disabled students that are required to ride the bus will be multiplied by five, and this goes into this gross ada and you go through the kids who are what we call non-seek transport, and these are typically your private school students.

G

They do not generate funding through the state, but many districts. I know franklin county. When I was growing up. We always had private school kids on our buses as well. Now that is not budgeted through the kde. That's actually done through the transportation cabinet in a line item, and then you get into that density again toward the end. Here, you'll see 4.1 miles in this case and then their net transported pupil density per square mile is about 4..

G

So if we go back to the previous slide, where I said they're put into groups, this district, which happens to be a dare county, would be in a group, and most of them would have a density roughly in that area of four five, maybe six, depending on the math, so the next part of the bigger long spreadsheet, that's where we start getting into cost and that gross amount spent per pupil transported. Now, if you think of it, when we're talking about dollars that go out the door, you know you can't obviously yeah.

G

We don't run it like seek where it's 4 000 times the student count. This is really starts to be based on how much they've spent- and it gets into this. You know, density and you'll also see bus replacement, which is essentially buying buses, obviously, and there's also depreciation on the buses that they own and we'll go through that in just a minute and then there's a total seat, cost 1.8 million. In this case, and then you start doing some dividing. What's your cost per pupil?

G

How many days are you transporting so what's your per pupil day and it keeps going out and eventually you get to this 1.8 million dollars. This is sort of. uh If you remember, this is step one of our process, so this is sort of the what I would call the draft or tentative you know cost, and if I had a blank check and we stopped right now, you know I would pay them 1.8 million, but you'll notice too. This calculated cost per pupil day, which is 615 and a graph adjusted cost per pupil day.

G

Now this would get into the weeds a little bit, but this is important to understand. So when you calculate all these districts, you always have some. We've got 171 districts, a handful really don't transport. um They. They will special ed students, uh if they're required to if they have it on their individual education plan. But a few districts, don't transport- and these may be your- you know- neighborhood schools, obviously that their kids live within a mile.

G

But one thing that's important is to understand. If you just do the math and you this graph adjusted cost allows us to kind of squeeze everybody down and kind of fit them into this box, because you have some districts whose cost is really high. You have some that are really low. Then you have this large chunk in the middle.

G

So when you see calculated costs per pupil day, that's dollars and fifteen cents times 172 days um that we have a piece of software that basically changes that to 637 based on what everybody else has done, what other districts have done, the more efficient you are, which is you transport, more students over the same area, the the better off you'll be in this formula?

G

Typically, now, if I'm jefferson county and all of a sudden, I found a way of saving a ton of money through some operations or something so it's going to cost me less to transport the same number of students that will essentially help them in the formula. Alternatively, if you have kids that move out to the far end of the county and you're having to burn more gas, wear out more tires, your drivers are on the road a lot more, but you're it's the same number of students.

G

Then it's going to cost you more it'd, be a little less efficient and again not the district's fault, it's just where kids live and how the counties are on the map, for example, pike being the largest geographically in our state. They put a lot of miles on their buses every single day. I believe they told me eight nine ten eleven thousand miles a day and, of course, their schools.

G

uh They just you know, have to drive around mountains to get to their schools, and it may not be a straight line so they're they just cannot be more efficient, uh it's just very difficult for them. So, as I said, we get finally to this cost and for adair county in this cycle. It looked like 1.8 million.

G

So when we talk about the students who ride the bus, um there are different codes that will I'll probably end up, saying t codes 52 times in this call, but it's transportation codes. So if you go back to seek how we talked about each student is something the transportation form is the same way. You can ride the bus over one mile twice a day and t-ones. If you think of it, are kids who live a little further out from the school, you also have.

G

Maybe you ride under one mile twice a day you live closer, but you go back and forth and you also have some that will ride one mile once a day or under one mile once a day uh either somebody picks them up or they somehow get home and then finally, the what we call the t5s are. These are your special education students that the individual education plan requires some transportation, accommodations and districts will provide this so those those codes.

G

This is how we sort of, if you will uh group our students that go into this formula and then because of the t3 and t4. Let me skip back here. So you can see, t3 is once daily and t4 is once daily. One is over a mile. One is under a mile.

G

The formula will actually take half of that and put it into their count, so they do get some credit for those kids that aren't quite riding back and forth every day and then the remainder of students, those who don't ride the bus are going to be non-transported.

G

They don't generate any funding, they're, not really part of the formula except their accounts. In their say, these are kids who do not ride the bus. Now the rule is generally speaking. What does a student ride every day now? We know, and the districts know obviously, that kids don't stick to the same thing. Every single day they may go to grandma's one day or their aunts, so districts typically check their t, codes or transportation codes a couple times a year, sometimes probably three times a year, just to make sure they've got it.

G

Kids do move, and one thing many districts do. For example, when school starts, especially with new students, they have software that actually will help them figure out pretty quickly. You know they'll upload these addresses and say: well, these kids are t1s t2s t3s and they will you know, kind of filter and scrub their codes to make sure they're correct, because it does make a difference.

G

So we talk about gross amounts spent for transporting, which is part of that formula, and this is like the bulk of the money. If you will, it is to and from school only we we don't include field trips, there's a separate set of codes in our chart of accounts that they would code field trips to and also athletic events, and things like that. That's not included in this gross amount spent for transporting.

G

So obviously it's going to include things like supervision and training for your drivers, just your routine operations, bus monitors and bus maintenance, and if you just grab the total cost, it's about 382 million dollars by you know by every district. But to give you some further context, I've checked around on tires cost about four hundred dollars apiece and they last about ten to fifteen thousand miles.

G

And if you recall, many buses have obviously more than four tires, so that's pretty expensive proposition and if you're jefferson, county and you're doing 100 000 miles a day I'll, let you kind of figure out the math, but that gets very they're buying a lot of tires. Basically another thing that was interesting to me: I checked with a transportation branch and buses.

G

The cost of buses has basically doubled since 2000, so we're about 10 11 years out from there, but they used to run about 45 to 57, 000 and now, depending on the engine you're going to run about 89 to 95 000 and we usually just say a hundred thousand dollar bus, just to keep it simple so and even more recently we do know the cost of steel has gone up, and this is, you know, we're kind of expecting the prices to jump up a little further as well on buses and, of course, tires probably will too, and if you talk to your local transportation directors, I'm sure they will tell you as well that the cost of parts labor everything sort of slides up.

G

um You know as time goes on so bus purchases districts have a couple options here. uh Some obviously just use cash if they've got it to buy buses, there's also kista pretty popular program and it's a kentucky. Interlocal transportation association.

G

But kesta is basically a they'll issue, a bond, so the districts will jump into this bond pool and maybe buy three buses, and then they make their payments through kista and you know, pay off the buses and the bonds are designed to kind of line up with depreciation, uh like I said pretty popular program and then also they can do a capital funds request, which is basically they'll come through our office, and the commissioner of education will actually can approve a district to spend some facilities money on school buses.

G

So right now, I think we've got about 9 300 diesel buses about 106, propane, 106, hybrid, but we're still very heavy in the diesel buses, um and I think, there's probably various reasons why maintenance, uh just the familiarity of diesel buses to mechanics.

G

Obviously- and you know, I think districts- this is something I know we just had a presentation last week with another committee about the volkswagen settlement uh and I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but some of the older buses were replaced uh through the volkswagen settlement money and we have. If you look through the inventory, if you really get bored and that's actually online, you will see dailies and spares so as it's a fleet management system.

G

That's all these districts do is run a big huge fleet management system and I'll pick on hardin county hardin county may have x number of buses that are dailies, that are on the road every single day, but they'll keep some spares in good shape just in case, because, obviously they can't say well, you know our bus broke down, so we're not picking you up today that usually doesn't go over too well, so they've always got to kind of be prepared for those situations where you cannot, um you know predict when a bus is going to break down or something like that.

G

You need a replacement, so depreciation. There's a schedule in the regulation for depreciation if you'll notice this goes out to 14 years. So if I'm a school district that buys a bus as part of that formula, they're going to get some credit back over a 14-year period and it runs up to about 124 percent, which sounds like a great deal, but there's a caveat to that, and the depreciation is really important for a couple reasons.

G

One is we really really really- and this has been long before I was here- emphasized- proper maintenance on buses um that we want these buses to last. These are really serious investments. You know when you're dropping 100 000 times. However many buses, you need it's a very large expenditure for districts, so we want. um You know very good quality maintenance and we get it so part of that incentive.

G

Is this depreciation, because if a bus breaks down and is pulled off of inventory, no depreciation, so this actually helps a district and if they're, on a schedule where they will buy, let's say four buses a year to replace the ones that are, you know getting a little older and you know starting to fall apart or starting to get too expensive to fix it's hard for them to stay on that schedule, because it's it's quite a bit of an outlay every year to do that.

G

But the ones that do they'll have a pretty consistent depreciation rate and, as I said 14 years, these buses can stay on the road actually much longer than that. Some of the buses- and I cannot recall- but I know- we've had a few that are upwards of probably 19 20 years old on the road and still safe, and you know still running fine. So if they can keep them going by all means, they will so part.

G

One of that calculation is what we just covered in part, two again, a whole stack of numbers, um but this one's a little easier to understand because there's just a few components of this- and this is what we call the final calculation, and this includes growth and, if you're, if you'll recall over in the seat, calculation in the fall, we'll run a growth factor comparison, and this is taking a snapshot of one number in the current fall. And then we look at the prior year. Well, in transportation, we look at two transportation codes.

G

One is their t1 kids, which are the ones that are over a mile twice a day and then also the t5 students, which are your special education students. So we look to see, have they grown, you know? Are they transporting more students and if they have there's some additional funding for them and if they haven't, it doesn't hurt them. So we check for every district, and also in that final calculation is the daily travel to kentucky school for the blind or kentucky school for the deaf in danville.

G

So if I'm franklin, county or anderson and I'm taking a student back and forth, there is some reimbursement there for them on that part of the formula.

G

So one thing that always comes up during the budget process and probably will in this meeting and if it hasn't already, is about the funding. So if you look back historically about 2004 was the last year we had quote full funding and you'll see where we started sort of slide down into the 60s and eventually the 50s.

G

Now there's several years, if you look at the appropriation amount as a matter of fact, pretty recently 18 and 19, where some additional money was pushed into the appropriation so that actually got us up to like 66, for example- um and you know for the record that money means a lot uh when you all do that, obviously that money gets out to the districts and that obviously you know helps it out. But historically you know right now we're running about 55, funded or so, and if I can't remember, I think I started about 0.708 there.

G

So it's been, you know, uh underfunded, since I've been here anyway, but about 2005 is when it started.

G

So not part of that formula um and let me back up just for a second, because I do want to mention this. So when we're looking at this, the 214, 000 or excuse me, 214 million uh is the appropriation and then the 389. This is what the cost would be.

G

So if you gave me a blank check, I would write it for 389 million and that's where we're getting that 174 million dollar gap, or so that's what I meant to cover that I'm sorry so, outside of all these formulas and outside of that calculation, there's another two more appropriations, that's that are very important to us: vocational transportation, so districts that transport from high school, typically to a vocational school down the road or even job sites or a hospital. We have this happen.

G

They can submit some information to get reimbursed for part of that and many districts do pretty consistent program and pretty popular, of course, because vocational transfer vocational schools are humming right along so the as they transport these students, either to the vocational school from the high school or to a work site. There is an appropriation for that and then there's residential transportation for students at the kentucky school for the deaf and kentucky school for the blind.

G

If you'll recall just a minute ago, I talked about the daily transportation, that's usually for like your anderson, county and franklin and uh maybe boyle and a few others in the surrounding area or even bullet. If they take have a student, that's vision impaired to the school for the blind, but often if I'm in paducah.

G

Obviously, if I'm a deaf student, I will have a hard time doing a daily trip, so they will have residents at these school for the deaf end school for the blind, so it allows districts they can actually work together and sort of piggyback if I'm in fulton county- and I take my student over to mccracken and that mccrack can take some to wherever and they keep piggybacking all the way to danville or to louisville. uh We can actually reimburse part of that as well as our one of our co-ops actually helps out with this too.

G

They sort of worked out an arrangement a million years ago, a long time ago, where they do this transporting for the districts kind of on behalf and they sort of corral. It make sure it's. You know the students get there and everything and if I recall correctly, the students come home on fridays and go back on sunday evenings.

G

And that's transportation in a nutshell, were there any questions.

A

Shea, thank you so much uh it's one of the beauties of being in these positions is constantly learning all the intricacies that happen within education, especially as it relates today with transportation. um One question that I've got and then we've got some other members that do have some other questions. When you talk about trends, you talk about maybe growth.

A

What have we seen? Maybe from your institutional knowledge over the past 10 years previous years before that, as you get into students actually being transported on the bus today as it compares with years ago? uh I I just look at this as a parent, I rode the bus as a child to public school, but I and my wife transport, our children today than having them be on the bus. uh That's just a parent choice that we do.

A

I didn't know if we've seen an increase or decrease or if it's leveled about the same, if you would have that type of information uh say over the past, you know foreseeable years as compared to today.

G

Sure what I'll do is we can take a look at specific numbers. I think off the top of my head. It seems like the last couple years we've been fairly consistent. I know we provide that data to some kind of survey. It seems like once a year because we always talk about that and I think it's been hovering around 350 360 for several years, but we'll take a look at that and get you some specifics, but it's a good question.

A

Thanks shane, I'm gonna move on to other members, representative johnson.

H

Thank you, mr chairman. Just a quick question. I think uh kista is a new term to me. Is that a government agency, a private agency and more specifically, who backs the bonding for that where's. The funding for that.

G

So kiss is actually managed by a group called rsa or ross sinclair. It's been in place for many years, it's sort of a private entity that helps, I think, issue the bonds they're a physical agent, and they do obviously facility bonds. You'll you'll hear their name mentioned a lot when a school district is getting ready to build a high school or middle school. Things like that, but they've ran kista, uh which I believe, if I remember correctly, this.

G

There are superintendents who are actually involved in the uh the group itself, and I think the fiscal agent is just there to sort of execute the bond uh as much as possible and I'm sorry. I couldn't hear the last part of your question.

H

Who's responsible for backing the bond is it.

G

Those bonds, I believe, are the the same as facilities bond because the schools have issued those. So, ultimately, the responsibility is the school district and we can double check that to make sure, because that's not something we I've looked into for quite some time to see how that responsibility is laid out. But I believe it's the same as the facility bonds.

H

Yeah, if you get a chance, I would appreciate it.

G

Sure I'll take a look at that representative johnson.

H

Thank you very much. Thank you, mr chairman. You're.

A

Welcome representative bojanowski.

D

um Thank you, sir, so I looked up which I think is real interesting. I had a lot of conversations at the doors when I met with constituents about how concerned people were about how much money jefferson county, spends on transportation.

D

But what's interesting to me is that our per pupil transportation is 977.

D

While there are many counties that spend significantly more than that um livingston county at 1707, a student, not county, 1385 lewis, county 1344., so I just wanted to kind of bring to the conversation when we think about jefferson county and how much is spent on transportation that we really are maybe being more efficient with the money than a good number of counties in our in our state.

D

um My question is so on the historical transportation funding costs have increased, but appropriation has not. So you mentioned um the costs of the buses and I'm sure maintenance of the buses. What other factors are leading to that cost number increasing so significantly.

G

Well, insurance is another, that's always uh probably more of a creeping cost and if I had to guess- and of course labor is a little different and I'm sure many of you all have heard that there is a either bus driver shortage or just a retention problem to keeping bus drivers, and you know just in conversations with districts. This is statewide a statewide issue, certainly not just jefferson county, um and you know just that- every cost I think from parts you know when you get down into the weeds of this filters, tires nuts and bolts.

G

Then, when you're looking at bus cost, you know there are standards that you know we require on these buses. Epa has standards, uh but the steel that goes into them. The manufacturers. You know the cost, it's just something that you know creeps up pretty quickly, uh so that you know I you you're not going to see a straight line, because if you go back and look at the unprorated costs it bounces around a little bit. You know it was at 365 million.

G

It drops to 362 million down to 351 and now we're back up to 389.. So there is a little bit of swing in it, but I think most of that is just operational cost sort of like when you have a facility, your you know: electric cost insurance, which includes property. Of course, many districts have fleet insurance, you've got liability, insurance and some of the technology they use too, obviously to help them save money. Like routing software, we've sat down with some districts, specifically one. I sat down with franklin county.

G

The routing software a is pretty amazing to see how it works, but it saves them a whole lot of paperwork of tracking where their routes need to be based on where the students live, because, obviously the students sometimes don't stay in the same place, so they they need to be incredibly efficient, and that saves them it's hard to tell how much money that would save them a year, boone or jefferson if they have inefficient routes, their cost.

G

Would you know skyrocket, but that efficiency is incredibly important and these folks work really hard to make sure their routes are really efficient.

A

You're welcome chairman tipton.

E

Thank you coach here. Why shay? I appreciate this presentation. You mentioned that the vocational transportation is based on a per mile rate. What is that per mile rate at this time.

G

I knew someone would ask that, and I don't have it in front of me. I will get that for you, though. Thank you.

E

It stands to reason, I know a lot of times when we do travel, it's based on a reimbursement rate determined by the federal government for an auto, but I'm confident that a bus is her mile rate would be much higher. So that would be interesting to know a follow-up question to that is on some of these routes. It could be. There could be just a very few students who might go, maybe from the primary school to a on a field trip or to the vocational school.

E

Our buses are school districts, looking at alternative types of vehicles versus the traditional big bus that maybe a smaller type vehicle, a van smaller bus to to accommodate this is this: is this factor into their uh how they're purchasing buses and doing their business model.

G

Yeah, so we're restricted to some degree because of safety about vans. um If I remember I'm trying to remember numbers, I have to ask my transportation director, I believe it's they can do a 15 passenger van, but there are some limits because these buses are built to be safe. Obviously, uh the the the kids that they're transporting the way that the buses are designed. You know it's a large vehicle, it's built with steel, so if something does hit it, it's going to react differently, hopefully better than you know your passenger car minivan.

G

uh So I know that we've gotten some emails over the years like hey. Can we buy a van? I know there's some limits on that and let me get a little more information on that representative tipton. I want to make sure I'm telling you right about the passenger number and what other options they have, but they're pretty restricted to bus or what we would call like. Bus type vehicles. Basically.

E

Okay, thank you, mr could. I continue to.

I

E

Briefly, could you refresh my member memory on the volkswagen settlement? We wound up. That was a 50 50 match. uh Did I notice there's some part of that was for fuel efficiency, uh how many buses were the districts able to purchase? Could you know the breakdown on how many were high efficiency, diesel versus propane or other alternatives.

G

I'm gonna pull up.

G

Just one moment, let's see if we can.

G

So you sh, I think you all can see the uh it's another slide that says bus inventory and impact, so the volkswagen settlement removed 169 buses from 93 school districts, so these are 2001 and older.

G

And that left about 350 to 400 still in our inventory now some of these are daily. Some of these are what we call spares uh that are 2001 and older.

E

And one final question: if I may just looking at the raw dollars, I understand that in recent years we've seen fuel costs go up. We've seen fuel costs go down right now they seem to be trending upward, with all the other factors, increased labor costs and everything do you all have a projection or an idea? What our 22 fiscal year uh appropriation for transportation total would be a round. Ballpark figure.

G

Not yet um we'll actually in the next probably two months or so, where we kind of start that actually friday uh conveniently enough, we started our conversation about uh projecting a lot of these seek numbers and transportation numbers. So as we go forward in the next couple of months, we'll start to kind of jail up a rough guesstimate of where we think transportation might be. uh Generally speaking, though, um at this time off the top of my head, I have no reason to think it's gonna.

G

You know skyrocket or anything like that until we actually right now, we're also collecting annual financial information from the districts and when those come in we'll look at those and it's if it's you know, say 400 million or 405, or you know 375.

G

That gives us indication that, because a lot of years, districts may or may not replace a lot of buses or for whatever reason they just didn't, use as much fuel that year. Maybe they changed their routes and didn't use thousands of gallons of fuel. So we'll take a look closer look at that, probably in the next couple weeks or months, and if we do see some kind of information that says you know this is where we think it will be. We'll certainly share that with you all representative chipton.

A

Senator wilson.

J

Thank you, chairman wise. um Of course, I missed out on the very first had a big detour getting here. So um sorry that I didn't catch the first part jay of your presentation. So I have a question in regards to like schools using buses for sports and field trips, and things like that. How is that funded.

G

So the the the groups can pay for it through their budget, but that's actually kind of set in local board policy, so there's generally a cost per mile calculation, and I'm just going to throw a number out. For example, uh let's say it's two dollars and 25 cents a mile. uh The board may sort of subsidize that if they wish it's again a local decision, um the the finance folks in the district will determine what their true cost per mile is. You know, based on their what it cost them to.

G

You know, operate these buses but they'll. Typically, the local board makes that call.

J

So it's paid through the local district and not through the state. Then.

G

Correct yeah, it would be on the locals right.

J

Okay, one one more question mr chair: please.

I

J

As far as like gas, and does the school districts get any kind of exemption on state and federal fuel taxes, I.

G

Believe they do. I will double check on that and make sure, but I believe they do much like you know we would, at the state level, with fuel purchases.

J

Okay, well, I believe that, of course, the state fuel tax is about 27 cents per gallon, I'm not sure what the federal tax is, and so I know it's probably at least that, if not maybe a little more so I was just curious. It's like we've been paying three three dollars.

J

um Of course you know diesel is much higher than that, but what the break would be on per gallon for our school buses, so that was my question. Thank you.

A

Superintendent fletcher.

K

Thank you, chairman wiles, a couple of points of clarity and also a question for che, and maybe it might be something for him to add clarity on also one of the things that chairman wise brought up a little earlier was talking about fewer students.

K

I would say over the years, especially in lawrence county. There are fewer students being transported, but unfortunately the county is still the same size, so our density has has decreased of how many were transporting. So, if you look at it, we're still traveling the same number of miles so but we're having less students that are riding buses so.

L

K

Something a good point there. I think it was an excellent point, also chairman wise, but also too, to senator wilson's point about sports programs. If you look across our state, you have some school districts that will ask their sports programs to raise money so to pay for their travels in lawrence county. Our board has made a priority to pay for all extracurricular activities. So we pull that out of general fund because we have to have students to raise money already, a lot for other for sometimes for uniforms for other things too.

K

So each district is going to have different policies and how they handle that. So you may have one district that charges. You know 47 50 cents, a mile or a dollar or two dollars a mile, whereas others may take care of all costs.

K

uh That's just depends on the the priority of the district, also keep in mind when you're looking at sports programs, when you have less urban, more suburban areas, they're gonna have to travel farther for ball games for sports, so that cost of extracurricular is going to be very different, depending on where you're located.

K

So if you're in louisville, you can probably travel within a 25 mile and maybe play 20 games, whereas maybe in western kentucky or even southern kentucky or eastern kentucky, you may not find anybody that you can play within 25 miles, so those are some other things that that their costs and for che, I do have a question. Maybe a clarification.

K

Chad, you brought up that the density of student population is low, then that will contribute to a low efficiency rating. So am I correcting that again again? Let me say that one more time if the density of student population is low, that will contribute to your efficiency rating. So how are districts penalized if they have a low efficiency rating.

G

So as you're placed in a group- and this gets into the super deep weeds of the formula and I'll pick on lawrence county and say that you're in a group with let's say, 20 or 30 other districts you're then competing because the pot is limited, of course, to 214 million dollars.

G

So if you're the most efficient in that group, you know you'll do fine, but let's say something shifted in your district, like you lost a whole bunch of students but you're still about having to drive the same routes, because that's where your kids live, so you literally don't have a choice. You know it's not like you can say well, we'll we'll make them walk 13 miles to the same place, so we can pick them up.

G

So what the formula essentially does is your cost will go up but you're in that same group, so your cost for transporting each pupil each day will go up so you'll actually kind of slide down, and that's where that graph adjusted cost and I'm gonna. Let me skip back here a little quite a ways.

G

Bear with me just a second, so in this case the calculated cost per pupil for this district was 615 and you'll notice. The graph adjusted is higher. What that tells me just on a surface without really knowing is well they're pretty efficient, because the math is going to give them a little more. uh What is that 17 cents more per day per pupil? If you look at some other districts, you'll see and again, I'm not the efficiency. This is what I hate about that term. It sounds like we're saying: well, the district's not efficient.

G

No, it's the district has geography, that's not efficient! It's not the district's fault that their kids are. You know, pike, county's kids are over a huge square mile area and when you look at someone like boone or jefferson or fayette, they're just going to have more students per square mile, so it's just naturally more efficient for them to transport. And that's you know, that's the geography we've inherited. Basically can't do a lot about it.

G

So you'll see some districts that actually get less than that graph adjusted cost per pupil day. So there's this, you know kind of flip if you will and in some cases it's fairly significant and now we know because we work with the transportation directors on a daily basis. Every single district I've ever worked with hustles to make sure that these programs are efficient, they're, not out. You know, saying we're just going to run extra routes because we're bored they look at routes. I believe you know constantly to see what else can we do to?

G

You know not drive so far and things like that or burn as much fuel, and things like that. Does that answer your question? Superintendent.

K

Yes, sir, and if I may chairman one other comment, please proceed. Thank you, sir. um Also keep in mind too. The uh the price for 72 passenger bus may be different for different parts of the state and when I say that, for example, if you live in a mountainous area, you're going to have to have a higher grade of transmission, so you're going to have to pay extra. For that. Also too, we transport students on 100 miles of gravel roads per day. That adds to the cost of tires.

K

So there's a lot of discrepancy, if you will, when it deals with where you travel now, also, for example, in louisville in other areas, I understand you may have one bus that or you may have to have five buses for a smaller area, so that adds to their cost. Also, so there's a lot of factors- and I appreciate mr ritter and what he's presented today, but keep in mind, there's a lot of discrepancy as far as cost of buses and items like that.

G

Yeah and that's something we talked to a lot of directors about, and I guess one of the first things I learned when we started working with transportation, directors and we'd go to their conferences, understanding um you know again what the cost in lawrence, county or pike is very different than those in say, murray, kentucky, calloway, brake pads alone. For example, you know you're going up and down mountains.

G

You really want some good brake pads, of course, so they're replacing those at probably a faster rate than someone that does you know pretty light driving, maybe in graves county. But if you're jefferson stop and go stop and go stop and go. That can also do some. You know serious, wear and tear on your buses, so the maintenance cost may be more. So we we can't say we have a very consistent state just because of our geography and where the students are located.

G

uh But again, that's where that you know professionalism of the transportation directors and their employees makes a huge difference, and that's why the training's important too uh we've got some really great k groups out there that help the transportation directors communicate issues they've run into, or you know things like that and I've attended those conferences and I'm constantly impressed at these people they're just top tier people when it comes to school bus, transportation,.

A

Friendly reminder, if we have any online members, participate remotely. If you have any questions, please submit those in the chat function. The last question I have in the audience from miss page.

M

Thank you, chairman wise, mr ritter, you had a statement on one of your slides that you promised to explain and I'm sorry if I missed your explanation, but it says no independent school district receives an average cost per pupil day in excess of the minimum received by any county district. Can you explain.

G

Actually, thank you. I did not explain that I was trying to sneak by and not explain that so I could get called back again. um So if I go back, let me go back to that statement here at the bottom: no independent school district- if you, if you have that spreadsheet in front of you, that I sent uh the link to let me this one here uh that the one that's got really small font, uh which I have trouble seeing uh anymore.

G

If you look at the independent districts, a lot of them will have the exact same graph, adjusted cost as jefferson county, and that is precisely what this means is the average cost per pupil day.

G

So jefferson gets this minimum because that of their size and you'll see that the average cost per day in jefferson is also applied to many of the independents.

G

So you'll have to kind of look through that spreadsheet and, if you'd like, if it would make it easier, I can actually get you a copy where it's sorted a little differently. So you can see it a little more clearly, I'd be glad to send that out to the committee. If that's something you all want.

M

A

That'd, be great thanks, shane see no other questions at this time. We're going to proceed to the second portion of the presentation and during the 2021 regular session house, bill 563 uh was passed with the provision allowing districts to include non-resident students in average daily attendance, and also, I think, in this second portion, we'll be discussing house bill 405, which also passed requiring the kentucky department of education to submit report which is due in november, relating to local funding following non-resident students.

A

So sheath this time, if you and robin wish to proceed with this second half portion, we greatly appreciate it.

F

Thank you, chairwise, I'm going to ask jay if he'll continue to assist with advancing slides and we can go to the next one. We are going to talk about house bill 563. Thank you for those beginning comments. um This was new legislation that was passed in the last general assembly session and we thought it might be helpful to start with what the current law says right now and then we'll go into what 563 requires in the next school year, not the school year that we're upcoming but the following school year, so krs 157 350.

F

That is what we call uh generically the sikh statute. This is the statute that really defines um how districts become eligible to uh participate in the distribution of seek, and in that, in addition to the the non-resident piece that we're going to talk about that also contains those employment of teacher responsibilities.

F

Minimum school days, teacher compensation, there's some. You know overall arching requirements that all local school districts need to meet in order to participate and be eligible on the seek distribution.

F

Part of that right now addresses non-resident students, and you can include non-resident students currently in your average daily attendance for purposes of seek calculation currently when it is under a written agreement between a non-resident district and a resident district. So ada is already being applied in some of these cases, so for seek funds.

F

Currently, if you have a non-resident a student under that written agreement between two districts, then that seek funding the ada is included in in, in our calculations already for state formula grants some of those are done by ada and so non-resident students again under that written agreement between a non-resident district and a resident district, you can count those as part of your student population and you could receive state formula grants based upon the inclusion of those students in your ada federal funds are a little bit. Different federal funds are typically in many cases.

F

I should say in many cases rely upon census, data and census information. So it's based more upon geographically what your school district might have from a census standpoint rather than an ada standpoint. So there are a few that rely upon like number of students served, so you might be looking at actual numbers that you're serving in your district, but most of them are by census. Data next slide, please che um with house bill 563.

F

Of course there are changes coming for our local school districts by july, 1st of 2022 school districts must adopt policies governing the terms under which the district shall allow enrollment of non-resident pupils. So we're not doing these independent one-by-one agreements between districts. A policy is going to govern that the policy shall allow non-resident students to be eligible to roll in any public school located within the district, and if, if you hold that thought, because that is giving rise to some questions with our local school districts, does that really mean any public school within the district?

F

Or does that mean public schools that have availability or capacity within our district? So that's one question we're starting to hear the house bill. 563 also talks about the policies should not discriminate between non-resident peoples, but may recognize enrollment capacity as determined by the local school district and those policies adopted by our local school districts will be filed with the kentucky department of education 30 days following their adoption so beginning july, 1st of 2022 non-resident pupils will be included in average daily attendance for seek funding purposes.

F

Next slide, please um kde requirement under 563. The general assembly has tasked kde by november 1st 2021, which is approaching. um We are to submit a report to lrc and the interim joint committee on education on options and how to ensure the equitable transfer of education funds.

F

With this idea that funds following the non-resident student to the school district of enrollment uh in that report, we are asked to address recommendations on how the amount should be calculated and what mechanisms should be used to conduct the transfer. So I will share that. You know um talking with you today. We are um working on some of the logistical items around this report, but we're not really to final determinations on what that's going to look like um che.

F

If you can move to the next slide, please some some statues to kind of keep in mind, um 157 360 again about seek funding when we are determining the cost of the program to support education excellence in kentucky that is, seek the statewide guaranteed based funding level. That is, that four thousand dollars that we sometimes talk about when we're referencing students and appropriated by the general assembly shall be computed by dividing the amount appropriated by the prior year's statewide average daily attendance. So.

N

F

Where ada comes into play, we are always when we are calculating seek we look backwards. We always look backwards of a year, of course, with covet in the pandemic, with the help of the general assembly. Again, we've done things a little bit differently.

F

The last couple years we are now moving to an attend back to a more, I would say, a more normal attendance counting and ada for the upcoming school year, but remember we froze um that information for a couple of years as we dealt with coven, but we do have a one-year lag in ada funding for non-resident students as well as for as we look back for all of our students, we allow for a fall growth component which allows for that catch-up that we do in the fall.

F

So when we have new students coming into our districts, whether it's non-resident students or students that are just coming there, because they have changed their residency, we try to catch school districts up on their funding with fall. Growth. You've heard a lot about transportation this morning from che. So, of course, that's an important component and they're trying to think about how this is going to look in the new non-resident requirements for many school districts. Currently, if they have non-resident students that participate and are enrolled in their school districts, they do not provide transportation.

F

um Of course, staff contracts and facilities. Bondings are things that have to be taken in consideration as districts continue to think about what what their um new non-resident compliment is going to look like and how that impacts, both staff contracts and facility bonding next slide. Please probably the thing that is uh the biggest head scratcher, I would say, as you're trying to work through. This is the a component that we call local effort, and these are local tax revenues. What does that look like? Where does it come from, and how does it flow?

F

So when we are coming up with the allocation because seek is an allocation model when we come up with the amount that gets distributed to the districts, we look at the base funding per pupil on an ada basis which we've talked about, and then we add those things that chay um spoke with you about before a couple of a couple of meetings ago, which are our add-ons.

F

So we have the at-risk students, the students with disabilities, home hospital and and then, when we get all that amount together, we take off the amount of local tax revenues generated for school purposes and that you'll see that maximum equivalent rate of 30 cents, because everyone has to do at least that mac that equivalent local rate of 30 cents in order to participate and seek. So when we talk about that four thousand dollars per pupil, it's really important that we continue to recognize that that is both a state amount and a local amount.

F

It's that balancing of of uh state revenue, state support and local support to get to that four thousand next slide, please the other things about local effort again. This is what makes this logistically a little more difficult, as well as other questions that are popping up around local effort and how that may fit into the house bill 563 discussion.

F

Of course, our local school boards are local, uh taxing authorities. They are independent and autonomous taxing authorities. um They are so those tax rates are set by their local board of education.

F

um Some of the taxes that they deal with are property taxes, and these are back to the things that jay kind of talked about a little bit of the local revenue. That's coming in permissive taxes, those utility occupational excise taxes they are collected locally or by the department of revenue. So none of the local revenue generated by our local school districts comes to the department of education in any way, shape or form it all either comes directly to the local school district.

F

Sheriff's help collect those taxes or even local school districts. Do that themselves or they come to the department of revenue first and then go back out.

F

Tax collection rates vary, even though you may receive an assessment to collect a certain amount. That does not mean that is the amount that is ultimately collected by our local school district. So that's another kind of wrinkle. In the conversation, what amount is being collected by our local school districts and, of course, the department does not have any control over that local decision making by our local school districts next slide, please jay.

F

As I mentioned earlier, we are shooting for that november 1st report date to complete the charge task to us by the general assembly.

F

I wanted to just put on this last screen sort of some of the questions that we hear that are being raised by local school districts as well as are questioning some of these things within our own organization about how this will work.

F

From a logistics standpoint, the kentucky association of school administrators casa actually has pulled together a group of superintendents, I think, there's between 20 and 30 superintendents that have been participating in discussions around house bill, 563, which I had shared with them with casa- that I would share with you all- um and these are some of the questions that they are raising just um to help provide clarity and help provide refinement around the language of the bill. So some of these are how could how should capacity be defined? Is that a facility's capacity?

F

Is that a capacity of instructors? What does that look like? Is there a timeline for open enrollment choices by which school districts should have those kind of nail down in order to plan and budget? Accordingly, how is enrollment handled without discrimination is tuition permissible, is transportation of students required? That was something else that I had mentioned earlier and then the local revenue components trying to think through the applicability of kentucky constitutional sections, 180 183 and the rose decision.

F

So um at this point in time, unfortunately, I think we have more questions than we have answers, but sharing that some of the things that we're hearing from our local school districts about the implementation of 563..

F

That concludes my prepared remarks, but che- and I are both on if you have any questions about um sort of the direction we're heading and some of the thoughts that are being passed around at the department of education.

A

Robin thank you so much, and I appreciate the slide that you have up there right now in terms of of questions. Hypotheticals, things such as that I've been very encouraged uh over the interim uh that there are a lot of conversations taking place between various groups, uh k groups, especially that are having some very good, uh open discussions about many of these questions, and I'm glad that we're doing that.

A

I think that's uh the the beauty of the bill uh that gives this year the opportunity to work on those type of questions uh as we get ready to tee everything up for this legislative session. That's upcoming. We do have members with a couple of questions that are on the task force I'll get right to those chairman, tipton.

E

Thank you, chairman wise, and this question may be directed more to the superintendents who are present here or virtually under the current law. There are districts that have non-residence agreements. uh I guess my question is: does your do your districts have them, and can you share what you're what's currently being done in your district? So we just have some idea of what the current practice may have been across the state.

A

Superintendent fletcher since you're in the audience.

K

If you'd like to go first, uh thank you chairman, wise and representative tipton. We we have resident contracts one-to-one contracts with everyone around us. uh Basically, we have students that we trade one-for-one. If they're non-resident, uh we have a waiting list of students that you know if they wanted to transfer it's a small waiting list, but if they want to transfer those places so essentially, if it's it's a one-to-one contract with all of our surrounding counties, now when open borders takes takes effect, that's going to look a little different. Of course,.

A

Senator wilson.

J

Thank you, mr chairman, when we're looking at capacity, I know that that's going to be very different in the east and the west, because they're losing population and also I'd happen to be in a district. That's growing like crazy.

J

In warren county we've grown, probably 20 000 people in the last 10 years, when we look finally get our census numbers, and so my son and daughter actually went to a high school that was over capacity.

J

They they had to build a new high school and they were in the process of that. I think it was the year after my son graduated that the new high school opened and we're constantly in the process of having to build more schools.

J

So those are some things that I think probably will have to be taken into account as you as you look at that question. How should capacity be defined um in those areas because you're it's going to be different in different areas because of the loss of population because of growth in different areas? It's along I-65, I-75, everything's, growing and the east and west? It's you know it's declining, unfortunately, so that was just a comment I wanted to make in regards to that question.

A

Thanks senator wilson just to comment also in terms of looking at questions that are up there. I think for me the third one there enrollment handle without discrimination- and I don't know currently schools that have already agreements, but I think we'll get into something there of where you know, I'm hoping that districts are taking children uh and we're not getting into winners and losers. Picking and choosing, as it relates to certain aspects of students. So I don't know how that's handled I'm not putting any other superintendents on the spot, but you know going forward.

A

I hope that you know we do look at that, one in a very broad capacity in terms of what that means by without discrimination, so I'm very interested to watch uh in the months ahead of how that's that's being handled. So just a comment, not not a question any other members. Any other comments. Any questions, coach, chairman tippin.

E

Thank you. um Currently, uh we have a situation or state, I'm referring to the gatton academy. Craft academy and model school also comes to mind how how are the seek transfers handle in those situations or is there any.

F

I might have.

G

F

Ask jay to help with that one.

G

Yeah, I can give you some information there so for for model um it's a little different. There was a I'm going to go blank on the house bill representative, frazier introduced it and it passed. um Chuck may remember the house bill if he's in there. I don't know if chuck's there or not, but it was representative frazier. I can't remember the house bill anyway. It changed how we did eku model.

G

Previously, uh the the model students were included in madison, county's ada, so all that rolled up to madison county and then madison would basically cut a check to model for those students, and then you know, model operated, obviously under eku, and now they get a separate appropriation uh for in the budget bill, and I couldn't. I can't remember how much that is. But there's a separate appropriation, gatton and craft academies do not participate and seek so the students that attend there.

G

um For example, if I'm a gatton student or craft student that ada stays with their home school district and whatever agreement the districts have with gat and craft, I'm not aware of any agreements. The superintendents in the room may be able to speak to that better than I can. I'm not aware of any agreements, though,.

K

Superintendent fletcher, thank you chairman wise. um The district does retain all ada but, for example, in lawrence county we do pay for all all textbooks or any other, any type of other bills that the students may accrue as part of the gatineau or craft academy. So we do pay for all their textbooks and any other fees that may have. But we do keep the ada, but we also try to help the student out by paying for their textbooks and those other items.

K

Chairman tipton.

E

Thank you for those comments and I'm going to ask a quick follow-up, and this is based on a conversation I had a few years ago with representative carney and we were discussing the issue: the cost of textbooks and the the point came up that there may be districts out there who do not re they get the they get the ada seek, but they don't reimburse the students for textbooks and things like that. So that's essentially a district by district policy. Am I correct?

E

A

Any further questions, and just for reference shade that was house bill 366 as it related to that comment that was made earlier. Thank you, you're welcome, see, none! Thank you all so much for the presentations today. Thank you for your comments for answering the questions really appreciate your guidance and expertise on the topic.

F

A

Last up for our discussion today, we move on to unfunded mandates for schools, and members of the task force had also expressed an interest in our previous meetings and hearing about unfunded mandates and the cost of administrative regulations as they've had on school operations. So we've invited representatives from the kentucky school board association as well the kentucky association of schools superintendents uh to present and discuss the issues with us today or no other strangers to this task force or the education committees eric kennedy, as well as jim flynn.

A

Real quick before you start, we just had an online chat comment from superintendent borges if you would like to participate superintendent. Thank you.

N

Thank you senator wise. I just wanted to bring up one other issue that we talked about is the ability for districts charging tuition. I think some districts that their ada or their money coming in from the state is less than the four thousand they offset cost of out out of district students with that. So just wanted to make you aware that that could definitely be an issue in the future. That would be an unintended consequence of districts that are taking on tuition students and they are charging to offset that cost. Senator wise.

A

Thank you so much for that comment. Jim eric apologies. The floor is yours. If you just identify yourselves with the record, please and please proceed.

O

Certainly, my name is eric kennedy, director of advocacy for the kentucky school boards association.

P

I'm jim flynn, I'm the executive director of the.

A

P

There you go, you have me: okay, I'm jim flynn, I'm the executive director with the kentucky association of school superintendents.

O

Okay, I think I haven't been here to testify in a while, so I'm getting used to the new system here at the table. Okay, I'm going to go first and go through just a few slides and I'm not going to get hung up on them they're more than anything. To organize my own thoughts.

O

I represent, of course school boards and superintendents, but our local school board members across kentucky, who have a little bit of different upfront, touch to some of these unfunded mandates than others. So, of course, jim flynn, representing superintendents, will have a different perspective on some of them. I think we'll go through some of these and then he will share other insights and we'll just kind of go back and forth. If that's all right, thank you for having us come present to the task force and talk about this topic.

O

I'll, say: I've titled this the financial impact of unfunded mandates on local school districts.

O

I probably will not have what some of you may have been hoping for of either one concrete, definitive list of all of the mandates, or these precise dollar amount cost of what all of them are for local districts, it's sort of like the idea of fiscal notes on bills.

O

In prior years, when I worked here at lrc staff, I drafted quite a few fiscal notes on different bills, and very often it is just something that is so difficult to get data for or to analyze that it will say well, there is a negative impact on the state general fund, but it's indeterminable. We can't calculate exactly what it is this at a high level. I wanted to make that point of it's kind of the same thing here.

O

There is a cost of state and federal unfunded mandates uh very difficult to come to one dollar amount of exactly what it is uh so first I wanted to talk about to orient ourselves. What is an unfunded mandate? I think this is like so many issues. You know everything's controversial these days and everyone has a different viewpoint.

O

Sometimes, when we, when I come up and advocate and meet with legislators or talk to local folks, sometimes they're it's in the eye of the beholder sometimes I'll I'll mention something and I'll say well, we kind of feel that this is an unfunded mandate and someone might say well, I really disagree. That's sort of a general thing that schools should do so just general seek funding, should kind of cover that and so for our testimony today. Definitely from you know our viewpoint. This is kind of the definition that we want to work with.

O

Looking at the mandate side of unfunded mandate. First, the things I'll talk about here would be a legal requirement of the state or federal government that a local school or district must do something without the state or federal government providing funding to fully cover the cost of that action whatever it might be.

O

So when we look for these things, the key terms in a regulation or a statute or something else would be, shall or must or is required to.

O

I think these may arise in statute or regulation or agency actions. They may be explicitly stated, or the result of some less explicit programming function or an interpretation.

O

What I mean by that is, you can open up the statute and there are several state statutes that say every district shall do x y and if there's no, you know if that came on at a certain point and that bill passed as this standalone thing and that at that point in time or since then there wasn't any funding tied to that one thing: those are the sorts of things that we're looking at. When we talk about what are these unfunded mandates?

O

It could also be something that just comes from the compliance work and the implementation work from the department of education.

O

They have very general oversight, functions and management functions at kde of state of certainly preschool through 12th grade, and so sometimes if they have been given the task of implementing something and they have some legal authority behind it, they might just send a letter to all the districts and say well. You have to report something in a certain way to us, or you have to fill out this form.

O

So sometimes those you know, the kde can put a requirement down based on a law that isn't so explicit in the reg or the statute, so we can also see them coming from there.

O

There are also some kind of less obvious things that we'll talk about, and I've listed some of them here, some less obvious mandates that don't you don't open up a reg and say well, it says every district shall do this, but they are still a mandate that can present sometimes significant cost and those are really much more invisible in many ways, and so looking here, some examples of some of the fairly obvious, explicit unfunded mandates from our perspective would be nbct's.

O

The national board certified teacher salary stipend. There is a state statute that says essentially every teacher who attains that national board certification shall be paid. I believe two thousand dollars more per year on top of their salary period, so districts, the local boards have to kind of make that payment uh over and above the salary schedule there is a line item there has been for many years in the state budget bill to help cover that cost.

O

But I'll mention it later, it's kind of like what we just had in the transportation presentation where years ago that fully covered it. But now it is not there's this pro rata reduced amount, and so that is sort of an underfunded mandate.

O

There are many state statutes and some regulations that require various pd professional development for various staff out in the school districts. There used to be a line item in the state budget that helped pay for some of that pd cost for the last couple of budget cycles, there hasn't been, but the cost for that really fluctuates anyway, and I have with me I didn't kind of put it in the slide at all, but at ksba we kind of compile a list of all of the state or federal required professional development.

O

If representative banta is still in the meeting, her favorite is here the bloodborne pathogen training. Unfortunately, I know it's one of your favorites, too representative bozenowski. Unfortunately, it looks like we have the citation for where the requirement comes from. That is a federal requirement, not just state but I'll hold it up. For those of us in the room can see it is four pages long, a long chart of various employees that do annual training. Of course, almost all of that has a cost that comes with it.

O

Very little of that is sort of free and freely available for everyone, so that is a cost anytime, that's required.

O

There is a state statute that basically says every school must employ a librarian or someone to coordinate the school media center. That's another one. I don't believe there's ever been any explicit funding tied to that specifically in the state budget. So that's a mandate. You know at a local school level you may or may not feel that you need one or want one or maybe you could have someone volunteer and fill that role, but then this statute says you shall employ one.

O

There are many district reports to kde and the legislature kind of embedded through many of the statutes for every report. That says you know every district shall send in information and send in this report that always comes with it. A lot of work on the front end and the back end for local district people to be tracking things, compiling information and sending it in many of those are also a mandate on kde, more than any other agency, to compile some of this information and keep track of it.

O

Another example of something that's pretty explicit is school boards must participate in the cers pension system. So several years ago I mean decades ago that was put into state law that the local school boards are the employers, so all of their classified staff must participate in that pension system.

O

There is no explicit state funding tied to make that employer contribution, unlike the teacher system. So that's an example of, and none of these are things that I'm saying we should get rid of any of these on this one bullet list, but this is just an example of some of those that are out there in statute conceivably. If there was a school district that either wanted to just have only a 401k or some other system.

O

This is an example whereby state law- no, they can't their classified folks- have to be in this, and the costs may be going up or down they're going up lately. So some less obvious examples I wanted to mention are that still are mandates and still under state or federal law required building code requirements and updates to facilities.

O

That is one where under state regulation. That is not something that kde really does. That is not something specifically tied to schools in such a way where you can open up one statute of reg, and it says well, every school board must follow the building code. That is really you kind of get there through several regulations. That kind of cross reference each other and so several years ago, is one example of how this can really become an increased unfunded mandate.

O

Several years ago, our state department of housing building and construction updated their regulation to update to the more recently sort of international building code that had been put together basically by a group of architects.

O

So when they kind of updated that code and incorporated by reference in their regulation that building code, you really had to go look at what the updates in that building code were to know. Well. This applies to school buildings based on some other regulations. So is this going to be more expensive or not?

O

And so quite honestly, the folks that were there at the time in my ksba, we didn't pay a lot of careful attention to that. That's not something that the education committee looked at and yet, when that came into place, we all soon discovered in the architects we work with. There was an all-new requirement in what was now the state building code that every school, I believe I have it highlighted here.

O

Every school facility, with a capacity of 50 students or more constructed after january, 1st 2019 had to start having a tornado storm shelter inside the facility. There were very specific specifications for how strong it had to be kind of the wind resistance, how many kids and students and staff could fit in it. Well that alone, our architects said in some schools that was always going to be a new cost, some very, very expensive. To have this be a part of school design. Going forward said for a 750 student facility.

O

The requirements could easily add up to a 1.5 million dollars. Just this one thing alone. So that's something that there it's a requirement it's coming from a reg, and it's when I say less obvious, it's something that wouldn't be at the forefront of most of our minds.

O

When we just sat down and said talk about school unfunded mandates, uh the facility construction approval process, uh the the bg-1 a lot of you all will know what that means: sort of the forms you use when you're trying to do any modification or upgrade or building an all new school facility, the system that school districts locally use for tracking their school inventory.

O

That is all we have to use a specific system kind of overseen by the department of ed. That comes with cost and there's really no other alternative to it. Similar with the use of the munis financial accounting system by reg, every school district in the state has to use the same financial accounting system.

O

I mean we all have to use one but conceivably, you might say: well, there might be a school district, maybe that's really small. They might just get by in house with quickbooks and not use munis. That kind of has a lot of complexity to it, but we all have to use it. That comes with a lot of training involved anytime, that there's a change in the muni system. All of the school finance officers out there have to do a lot of training to get up and up to speed on it.

O

So there again that's kind of a less obvious unfunded mandate to use this one system and nothing else and the last one, which probably is not too expensive, but one that just happened to come up with a call from a district in my office last week the use of schools is polling places.

O

That is something that school districts have no control over. Honestly. Other local boards and commissions are in charge of organizing our elections, sort of even over the possible objection of a school district. If one of the schools in a district is used as a polling place now by state law, all of the schools have to close. The entire district has to close for that day, which could bring a lot of cost and sort of work to a school district.

O

There again, just is something that's, maybe not what we immediately think of as an unfunded mandate, and certainly something that's a little bit less obvious. Eric.

A

I'm going to pause you right.

O

A

Representative banta had a question or comment representative banta.

C

uh Yes, eric. This is great. um I think that this is so clear that it makes everything so clear for us, but can you tell me, would schools benefit if we looked at the cost of some of the like bloodborne pathogens? As you mentioned, it's my favorite, but of those things combined and how long it takes teachers to maybe add a day of pd paid for by the state for teachers to kind of encompass those.

O

Oh, absolutely, I think it would. It would be a great benefit and that's another detail that I'll mention in the state statute. One statute that outlines the professional development program for every district says every district has to have a pd coordinator, and you have to kind of organize your professional development there's. I think one sentence in that regulation somewhere. That says something along the lines of you should prioritize pd for all of your staff, to especially your teaching staff to increase their professional educator skills.

O

Really things like you know, your curriculum and your actual instruction method should be what you prioritize and there's another sentence there. That says something like out of the four days per year that you have to have for pd days like at least one of them can be for a state mandated training well now kind of one at a time over the years.

O

So many one hour of this one hour of that have been added in state law for everyone that now I think it's you could not do all of the statewide mandated training, which very often is not about topics like curriculum and instructional methods.

O

Things like bloodborne correct, so looking at all of the hours, how much time it is what the cost is and how we could better use some of that time and money, I think, would be a wonderful idea- and I know representative bam, carney right before one of the last conversations I had with him before he became ill.

O

He was looking at some idea for taking all of the state statutory required hours of all the different topics and kind of putting those together and getting rid of explicit one-offs one hour for this, or that and doing some other approach to that. Then, of course, we haven't gotten back to that conversation yet, but we would definitely support what you suggested.

C

Great tina and I can take up that mantle. Thank you. Eric.

A

Thank you, representative,.

O

And I know we we've been at it for a while I'll kind of quickly wrap up here with a couple of other things, I did. I just. I can't not mention federal unfunded mandates when we're talking about this topic. Of course, I know none of you at the state level. We essentially have no control over federal law, of course, but some of the most expensive unfunded mandates are at the federal level. One of the most notable are many, I say the numerous mandates embedded throughout the individuals with disabilities, education, act or idea.

O

That is many of us, which is called the special education law.

O

There are many specific mandates for procedures that districts have to follow due process hearing procedures, just many many mandates, as I said, embedded throughout federal regulations and the federal law itself dealing with idea and that law, when it was passed back in 1975 congress at the time, said that their intent was to essentially fully cover the extra cost of districts providing all of the extra services to students who qualified for idea.

O

They have never even that first year that first federal budget the year they passed. This law they've never come close to fully covering these costs. It's something around the intent was to cover a 40 percent increase in cost. The districts were estimated to have because of idea right now. It's about 14 percent is federally paid for that's been something that ncsl on your behalf: nspa the national superintendents association.

O

Many many groups for years for two generations now have lobbied congress to please put more money behind the mandates of idea, and we certainly continue to do so.

O

The mckinney-vento homeless assistance act also similar that has a lot of mandates on something that every school district school district in the country has to do to kind of try to meet. The special unique needs of students who are experiencing homelessness essentially does not come with any extra funding from the feds. Most districts do not get any funding really, certainly nothing close to fully covering some of those mandates and then essa essa.

O

Many mandates are also in that law associated not only with assessment and testing and accountability, and all of the cost of the direct testing pd around that, but also things that you might not expect like. Providing transportation for students in foster care who are moved from one home to another and then move from one district to another because of that there's. Basically this mandate, that we provide transportation and that we we there's sort of we might be reimbursed for it, but it's not any full or direct funding for it.

O

So I just I would be remiss if I didn't just mention that there are many federal and if, if anything, the most expensive mandates are at the federal level, so wrapping up more quickly and I'll turn it over to jim. What is the financial impact of all of these?

O

As I said it's impossible to quantify the whole picture, I don't want you to feel like that's a cop-out like we're, always complaining about unfunded mandates, but then we can't say what it cost, but, as I said it truly is for some of these it would be different everywhere. There's no data. It just truly is difficult to give you one price tag for some of these things. A similar issue faced by the state tax expenditure analysis you'll, see in that book.

O

The entire introduction to that book tries to explain that you can't pick out any one state tax, credit or deduction and say we know exactly how much it cost. And if you repealed this, you would get exactly that much money in, but it is something we try to do and I'll mention switching gears to a question from the last presentation from chay ritter. If he's still on the districts may pay the state gasoline tax on the the diesel or the diesel they purchase for school buses. There is one exemption for that.

O

That might only be for non-highway use and I pulled up the state tax expenditure analysis a few minutes ago. So there's something there, but I think for just the general fuel in school buses. I think we might pay that tax, so we'll put a pin in that one and come back to uh later and also another thing. I will come back to very quickly from the other presentation: the idea of transportation and many many people. Many constituents out in kentucky will see a school bus driving past their house twice a day.

O

It's a full-size bus and there's like three kids on it. Sometimes it may be towards the end of the route when they just happen to see it by their house, so it used to be full, but also there are a lot of there again state and federal level restrictions on vehicles we can use to transport students. I think the federal government by federal statute congress, has said that school districts cannot purchase a 15 passenger van and use it for transporting students kind of on a regular basis.

O

There's another state regulation that pins it at about 10 people. I think it says you can use a vehicle designed for fewer than 10 people to transport students on special sorts of occasions. Maybe an emergency or a field trip, but not every day. This one kid lives at the end of the county, so we'll just go pick them up in a car and take them to be much cheaper. There's a lot of red tape all around that, but that is something that we also frequently here at the local district level.

O

Folks calling in saying: well, you don't you shouldn't, need any more money. You're driving a bus with one kid on it past my house twice a day, one easy one that I will offer up is for what we can. Almost to the penny. Tell you how much it cost is the national board certified teacher salary, stipend, so kde tracks that, because it's on a reimbursement basis, it's almost like transportation. They track that extremely closely.

O

We know the teachers a list of teachers that have qualified a list of teachers getting that we know how much that cost and what the full amount would be for the state to fully reimburse districts for paying the 2 000 per year kind of extra pay to all of those folks minus, I believe the 2.5 or 2.7 million, that's actually in the state budget bill that is running at about 30, 37 percent unfunded and so that cost in the last school year, the 2021 school year.

O

The amount of money that the dis that the state did not give schools that would have it would have taken to get to full funding was that 1.6 million dollar figure, and so it right about, like he said transportation, is about 55 funded this one statutorily required thing. This one mandate is about 37 percent sort of unfunded at that level, and so one thing I'll mention briefly in terms of what some recommendations might be is a couple of years ago.

O

I believe two sessions ago, the general assembly passed a change in this law to basically say going forward, we're going to have this cut off date. So any teacher that attained this certification before a certain date. You will continue for the life of your career until you retire.

O

Your local district will have to give you that two thousand dollar amount, no matter if they get any state money for it or not or no matter if that goes up or down, but then beginning at that date, if teachers attain that certification going forward, the district would only have to give you whatever the pro-rated amount was they got from frankfurt? Basically, but a local school board could make up the difference if it wanted to going forward.

O

I can almost certainly tell you that almost every school board, probably every school board, will do that, but that kind of change went a long way in getting this one. Unfunded mandate, sort of off the list of unfunded mandates is the kind of thing that we would advocate for going forward, and this picture I'm nearing the end here. This is something a concept when I sat down last week and started talking about.

O

What's the cost of these unfunded mandates and gemini discussed it on friday, what you see in front of you on the screen on the left, that is, the entire book of school laws in kentucky in 1988 right before cara, passed all of the statutes and the constitutional provisions in facting schools fit that's about one inch thick in 1988 on the right is the book from 2016 which they've published it since then, but that's my personal copy of the book from 2016.

O

and as things changed or guidance came out, I would just stick some inserts in it at very various places. That's the mess that you see there.

O

What I try to call the intangible cost of complexity in general is a growing issue in schools. So you see there how much more complex, how many more laws have passed from 1988 until now, directly dealing with basically preschool through 12th grade in kentucky.

O

You know not all of those are mandates, but just the overall complexity of the law. You know when, when a school board attorney or a superintendent or a board chair in a board meeting, has a question and even starts researching the law behind something how much more complex it is now than it used to be, and every session laws are passed, every session are amended and it just becomes more and more complex that even that very intangible cost is something that we're really working with.

O

I think that, honestly, that is part of you know every year when we sit down and say well what what has changed in the law. We do some training about updating everyone on things that are different or all new mandates or all new things that we're doing is something that um might honestly be contributing to kind of the exhaustion and burnout of superintendents.

O

Many many superintendents are in their first contract right now. A lot of them are retiring, of course, the teacher, whether you call it the teacher shortage or the teacher retention issue. I think this kind of nebulous concept- that's illustrated by these two books- goes a long way to speak. To some of that and just I'll mention you know everything in that book on the right is a law that had enough votes to pass. Most of those are statutes.

O

Every one on its own was a great idea that had enough support to pass, but then sometimes I think we need to go back like we did back in the 40s. When we sat down in a special commission, looked at all of the statutes and revised all of them and reorganized them repealed a lot of things. We could probably have a special session only repealing statutes and going through some of them things that reports that just aren't needed anymore or mandates that we can do some other way.

O

I would encourage us to do that when we as soon as we tackle the pd and get rid of bloodborne pathogen training, we can work on our special session to repeal some of this. Those are those are our personal copies in the office of these two books that I wanted to share.

A

Eric thanks so much.

O

Just absolutely last thing I'll turn it over to jim. I know the hour is getting late. The very last thing to consider that I'll leave with you is everything we just talked about everything in those books by and large, even though we can't estimate how much all of that costs.

O

We know that it has a cost and that, at the very end of the day, whether there's state or federal funding provided if there is a mandate for districts to do something, it will be found at the local budget at the local school board budget, they will find the local revenue to kind of make ends meet or make you know, budget decisions and just make it work.

O

So we ask everyone: whenever you see on social media or an op-ed or a comment that basically says well, the per-pupil expenditure in public schools is huge and the private schools in town they only spend like half that per people.

O

The easy assumption is that we're just wasting all of the money or doing whatever, but think of that book, that law book and think of how many of those things are not requirements on private schools that they have to find funding. For that we do. That is always something that we want to keep in mind.

O

Sorry to interrupt the end, but that's all I had.

A

Very good and the last slide visuals always leave lasting impressions. So thank you for for showing that chuck. Truesdale has a quick question. I think, as it relates to eric's presentation chuck. Is that correct? Yes, please proceed.

I

Thank you, mr chairman, and thanks eric that's a great presentation. I was just wondering on that that last point you made that and all these unfunded mandates are going to end up being paid for at the local level.

I

You know, we've talked quite a bit the last two meetings about how some districts have more tax base. Have a larger tax base have the better ability to to absorb some of these costs? Can you talk about if you can about? Does this play into any inequities between districts with when these unfunded mandates come down, that some districts.

H

I

Have the ability to absorb those costs and it takes away from the education of the children.

O

Certainly, thank you for that question and I'm I'm glad that you asked that, because something I neglected to say that I told someone over the weekend. I would say when we, when the agendas for these meetings come out, you get a lot of comments and questions ahead of time and someone from uh a small by enrollment, a small, independent district reached out and said kind of. Where did this come from?

O

What are you going to talk about, and we talked about how you know the inequities, the ability for a local community to bear more local tax burden in the last presentation associate commissioner kinney said: tax collection is an important thing to keep in track of a local school board can raise the tax rate.

O

You know every year and end up getting less money actually in the door, because some districts, the community jobs, have been lost, especially in eastern kentucky, and they just people just won't pay it at all and the way most of this is property tax and the way that works you can't pay half of it.

O

A lot of folks will get the one bill a year and say: well, I just can't pay this at all, so the tax delinquency rate or collection rate actually is a big part of this too, and so you have some districts that you know the overall weight of being new mandates that are unfunded or things out of their control that come down and when they don't have federal or state funding to meet a specific thing and they just kind of have to build up the ends locally for districts.

O

That can do that you're, seeing some more of them kind of pushed to the brink of either making really tough choices and doing all the things we have to do and giving up on some of the things that would be nice to do that everybody wishes. We could do whether that's you know dual credit, offering more ap courses, a building project. You know they're up to code, but there's things that they would really like to have well we'll give up on the things we would like to have.

O

You definitely see that it is a problem and even for some of the most recent independents that have folded and gone out of existence that was part of the issue. This was sort of at a certain point, the overall weight of one thing. At a time there was finally one that kind of broke the back.

A

Chairman tipton.

E

Thank you, mr chairman, um when I read over the material last night, I was a little surprised to see the discussion on pensions. We.

O

Can't go a day without talking about pensions,.

E

Is it my impression that you're suggesting that we move all the classified staff into the kers, not hazardous.

O

Absolutely not absolutely absolutely not.

E

I understand that the ceos.

O

Cers is finally on a real good footing with our independent board that you have passed and thank you all for supporting that.

I

O

That was one of those that you, you might not think of it as a mandate. That's even there that I wanted to say there's when I asked in my office, I said hey when I first took this job a few years ago I said: does anyone have a list of all the mandates?

O

They laughed and basically handed me that law book and said well, everything's a mandate, and there is no one list and that's a good example of one of them that a lot of folks wouldn't immediately. Think of that, I wanted to mention, as you know, somewhere it says. Boards must participate in this.

E

And really the the big increase came in 2018 with the change in the assumption rates. That's right! That's where that's where I think you went from the non-hazard rate went like from 18 to 27 percent.

E

We did listen to you and pass, I believe was house bill 362 that allowed the class y'all to face.

L

E

So it did not come at one time. You know any discussion of moving allowing allowing the local boards on classifieds to go to a 401k system. The unfunded liability is still out there and it has to be paid by somebody.

E

We have done some work on that in the past house bill 1 2019 special session. I forget whenever it was uh house bill 8 this session- uh is that something that ksba would want to at least have a conversation about and look at what the feasibility is.

O

We we think it's probably not too feasible. Unfortunately, we.

E

Just are where we are, but you got to pay the unfair liability.

O

No matter even with drastic changes going.

E

O

L

O

You can do about the unfunded liability. I think we're we're in a very good place. Moving from here on.

E

With the change of the board, okay, that's kind of what I thought and one other uh follow-up point here on the librarians.

E

Do you believe that you alluded to this? Do you believe that there are school districts that may feel like they don't necessarily need to have a specific librarian in each individual school building.

O

And I think that statute that statute does allow, I believe, up to two schools to share one librarian position. I believe um so I mean that's just something that sure it could be different everywhere I mean some districts are very small, so I think about 10 districts or so or essentially one school is the entire district, and then you have jefferson county and fayette county sure.

B

O

I think that is an example where that, when that passed, there probably were some schools that did not have one full-time librarian position there and then that's probably why it passed. It was probably a movement in the lobby to say every school should have one, and so could there be different approaches to that out there in districts. Definitely, but because of the mandate. It says, I think at least one for every two schools. So that is happening and, as I said, that's one where I don't believe there was ever any explicitly tied funding.

O

Just for that, but, as I said, that's going all the way back to the first slide of what a definition of unfunded mandate is many folks would say: well, schools should have that anyway. So that's just part of what generally should be covered by seek.

E

Okay, that's all I have right now, mr eric.

A

I'm going to keep you right there last question: I have represented bojanowski and we'll move to jim. I'm sorry, representative, johnson, we'll follow representative bojanowski.

D

Okay, so just briefly um one of your comments just um brought to mind a question that I had on saturday. I did the one hour active shooter training for teachers, which is an excellent training. um I recommend that each of you watch it. I believe it's just on youtube and I can share the link, um but then we have to fill in a form that tells our administrator that we did the training and it says, do you have any questions and I actually don't have a question from my administrator.

D

I have a question for I guess this body is: why don't we require that training and that programming for our private schools is the safety of all of our children, not as relevant? You know, as I watched it, and thought about the possibility of an active shooter being in a building. There there's no reason why an active shooter would pick a private versus a public school, and so that's just that was my question um on that training on why we don't require um that type of programming in our private schools.

D

So I thank you for the conversation and I appreciate the ability to make my statement.

A

As the bill sponsor for that I'm happy to have an off conversation offline about that. You know we want to protect all of our children across the commonwealth, and you know we were looking at that in terms of legislation. You know we we focused on k-12 with public schools, but we've also wanted to encourage our private schools to do as well. Well, the kentucky center for school safety, I know, has had conversations with private schools as well, but I'm happy to have that conversation offline. um So, in the sake of time, move on representative johnson.

H

Thank you, mr chairman. Very briefly, do you know if there's been any work done on decomplexing there's a word for you are reducing the the unfunded mandates. Is there already a list started out there somewhere.

O

I think we I mean we work to chip chip away at it, especially any that are in state statute that you, as a body in the general assembly, have control over. I mean every session we and jim and the other k groups. We always have a legislative agenda very often there's kind of one or two that we try to get some attention on to getting rid of. If we can an example of that is representative branscomb had a bill that did not pass last session. I believe he's already pre-filed it again.

O

That's making some changes about something and sort of while he was making an amendment to a statute. He noticed that there was down below this mandated report about something, and so he kind of reached out to myself and chuck and said: do we still do this? Do we need to still do it and it's a bunch of work for kde and districts and we kind of all talked and said? No, I don't think we still need to do this, and probably a lot of people do a lot of work to make a report.

O

No one very few people probably read it so then he agreed part of his bill would be to repeal that report. So I think we try to chip away at it. I don't think that there's any been a holistic task force on just identifying all the things we can live without next interim. I encourage that'll be the next task force. We have next interim thanks.

A

H

I actually think it would be a worthwhile effort. Mr chairman, thank you thank.

A

You representative, without further ado jim flynn,.

P

Okay, well, thank you uh chairwise and chair tipton and members of the task force. You know we we really appreciate being a part of uh this conversation and think it's it's very timely.

P

You know and a very important topic, because really you know, as we've already talked about our laws and our budget are reflection of what we value and, and so it it tells us something and kind of you know to your point, representative johnson, uh you know. Maybe we need to have that task force to to look at that. It's just like uh representative tipton's put forward uh an idea to look at all the tax expenditures.

P

We probably ought to look at all the you know, all the the fund, unfunded and underfunded mandates, but anyway we we appreciate, being here and being a part of this and superintendents, have long advocated for adequate and equitable funding for education to meet the stated goals of our commonwealth, and we consistently ask for no unfunded mandates as part of our legislative priorities every year.

P

In fact, over the years we you know, we've had to oppose bills that probably we generally like, but they're, not they don't have any associated funding and we know that there are hard and soft costs with about everything that uh is passed and uh and as eric's already used with. uh I think a really strong image for you all.

P

When you look at those two law books, uh you can only imagine uh what the what that does and and uh to our budgets, but uh the unfunded and underfunded mandates pose significant challenges for our schools and districts and have really resulted in stark shifts in the overall funding to our local communities. And in fact, if you look at you know school funding since 2008 to you know current times the average district in kentucky's seek funding has gone from about 40 percent from local sources to 52 percent from local sources over that time period.

P

Now, of course, every district is affected or impacted a little bit differently from seek as you've all learned. You know just kind of like when you see a seek base of 4 000 per student. You know some some districts, you know get 4, 000 or more, and some get less than that and the way that works, but on average there's been a real shift to the local community and kind of building on a comment that was just made earlier.

P

I think it's important to note that our local communities have limited options for which they can raise those revenues.

P

So not only to to mr truesdell's question about equity, uh you know the impact of those limited revenue sources at the local level also play a big part uh there, and the seek base is really a key for addressing these unfunded under underfunded, mandates that have challenged us for many years and, as you heard in previous testimony, the sikh base has not kept up with inflation, which I think would be over 4 700 if it had simply grown with inflation.

P

And additionally, we know from multiple studies around the adequacy question over the years have highlighted that kentucky's education funding falls short of adequacy compared to the state's education goals for our commonwealth and and so I'm going to approach. My comments uh around kind of three main recommendations and so recommendation number one is to make a strong commitment to increasing the seek base. It impacts everything. Last time you all talked about seek add-ons. You know every one of those add-ons is a function of the sikh base, uh and so it uh it it.

P

It impacts everything and it also gives the local community the most flexibility for addressing their needs and the goals that the local community have and- and I do want to make a little side note- that about 80 percent of the district's budget goes to personnel costs, education's a people business, it's about developing people. It takes people to do that. The old adage it takes a village to raise a child is, is true and and then all those uh you know, those fixed costs uh are are pretty standardized per district.

P

So, in terms of the the real discretionary spending a district has it's a very, very small portion of that budget. So when we have uh unfunded or underfunded mandates it, uh it makes a big challenge so make a commitment to increasing the seek base.

P

Our recommendation number two is make a commitment to fund every man mandate and maintain that commitment for the life of the mandate. I was a superintendent that served for 16 years in in our state and and saw many times where you know, well-intentioned uh initiatives were put in place uh that were good for kids, but what I saw over that time.

P

It wasn't if it wasn't in the sikh base, sometimes that commitment would wane and that funding would would wane and but then districts were still stuck with it and eric did a good job highlighting some of those, and I know superintendent, borchers and superintendent fletcher, you know can add to a lot of specific examples about that, but but we need to make sure that we fund every mandate and maintain that commitment over the life of it and uh you heard about transportation. Already this morning we talked about.

P

uh You know textbooks and structural materials and professional development and and and all of those kinds of things, and we can get into more of the details on that, but all of those need a commitment and to to keep it. And then the third recommendation I'd like to make is to institute a school district impact statement, including a fiscal note for every education bill, and this will help ensure that well-intentioned bills get a full vetting before passage with every new law for education.

P

It comes in opportunity, cost and often requires our local districts and schools to cut something else and that's important to them. And so you know this vetting or this part of the process, and I kind of understand- maybe maybe eric was explaining to me if a bill impacts a city or county municipality.

P

It requires a fiscal note, but a bill doesn't require that for something that impacts our local school districts. Is that correct.

O

Yeah, the the local mandate statement is almost automatic for bills, but there's not. There is no statement just for school district impacts and then that the state fiscal note statement doesn't automatically happen. Unless legislators ask for it to happen, and then there's not even a section on that that specifically gets to, as we said earlier, part of its state part of its local. So what's the impact and.

P

And the kind of you know not only from a fiscal impact statement, but I think from how it's going to impact the local community.

P

One of the things that this pandemic, I think has taught us, is a one-size-fits-all solution, is not always the right path, and the other thing that I know about our local schools and having you know been a citizen of kentucky for most of my life, is that the schools are community, binding agent and one of the things I constantly talked about when I was a superintendent and continue to do so, is that a community gets the schools it wants and when the parents and the community members join with the schools to get interested engaged, have high expectation, invest their time and resources.

P

Our schools are better. So when we make decisions here that then honor that local governance and engagement piece, that that also makes a difference and inspires our communities to be more involved and helps us bind around that shared of interest around the well-being and the education of our children.

P

So just in summary, number one.

P

If we can make a strong commitment to seek base that impacts, everything number two make a commitment to fund every mandate and maintain that for the life of that mandate, for example, national board teacher certification, it's a great program very engaging to our professional educators when, when we mandate it, but then don't fund it that that cuts something else for our local schools and then finally require school district impact statement, including a fiscal note for every education bill and ensure that funding stream and honor local context and governance in every build debate process would be something we strongly recommend.

P

Thanks again, for the opportunity to share with you today know that superintendents are ready to help and move education forward at kentucky- and I know superintendent borchers was on earlier. He sent me a long list of of things that are unfunded and underfunded if you want to get into the weeds, but thanks.

A

Jim, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you also for the for the recommendations. It's always good. When we have presenters bring forth possible recommendations, I know superintendent fletcher had to leave to do a hiring for principals. That's why he had to leave while ago question that that I have, and I've been in front of your association, jim on numerous occasions, conferences and different times of speaking uh and and doing q's and a's, and one of the things that I get asked not by you individually, but some members is senator weiss.

A

When are you ever going to fully fund education when looking at the recommendations that you give us or gave us today, does that fully fund education? Are we talking about seek? Are we talking about transportation? Are we talking about textbooks? What is it when we hear from from constituents superintendents as legislators fully fund education?

A

What is the crux of that, and and what is there a priority list of that? How would you answer that? Well,.

P

I I think it's a great question. I know um you know chair petry, you know made that statement on the floor uh last session and uh I think he and some of the of his colleagues have been working on uh kind of trying to to look at that.

P

uh We've been having conversations among our partners and members about that, and that's why we tend to go back to seek as kind of the foundation if we're going to stay committed to seek then, first and foremost, let's, let's get seek up to par and uh in, and if you operate from the premise that in 1990, when we started that that represented kind of a foundation or a base, you know toward adequate funding, then probably step one would be.

P

How has inflation grown over that period and how is seek done? I think I think that would be a a great starting point, because you know we know this elephant's not going to be eaten in a day and it's going to take an investment. So a great first step was the funding of full day kindergarten.

P

I will tell you that we are very appreciative of that. That's something we've been asking for for 20 plus years in education, and that will make a huge difference uh in our our our districts and give them the flexibility you know to make the best decision moving forward there, but we'd like to see that codified and representative tipton. I know you pre-filed a bill to do just that and we're very supportive of that appreciative of that.

P

So I think that would be. You know kind of step, one fully funding transportation.

P

We know it's funded in arrears, uh but we also know it's only funded about 55 and and- and so just kind of you know clipping those off one at a time, and then you know we we could get into a lot of discussion and and debate about. What's next, I think investment, early, childhood education and wellness would be a smart investment. All the long-term studies show a great return on investment there.

P

uh I think a few years ago there was a bill proposed for universal full-day preschool and we know what the price tag was then on that and- and so you know, that would be a great investment.

P

But we also know uh preparing kids for the workforce and our career tech uh funding is uneven across the state and there's equity issues there. School facilities, there's equity and funding issues there, and so there's there's plenty of places to start, and I think we just need to start having the conversation and and debate which one uh to you know to bite off first, uh but I'll stop at my list, but I can go on if you want to know more.

A

Thank you, jim I'm going to go in order of questions chairman tipton.

E

Thank you chairwise. This is going to be more of a comment uh than a question. Maybe a few comments.

E

We talk a lot about tax modernization and I know there are people who are talking about this and we, this is more to the members of the general assembly, any conversation we have about tax modernization at state level. We also have to understand the impact at the state at the local level, but for county cities in school. I think school boards have to fall into this too. So I think it's important for us to keep that in mind. When we have those conversations you made the comment to fund every mandate.

E

One of the first words that I learned when I became a member of the house was notwithstanding and- and the reason I made that point is we cannot bind the hands of future general assemblies, but I think what we're doing now is an important step in educating our members about what the needs are. What the concerns are so that we can make informed decisions when we do budget sessions, but- and I think you already knew that as well, but I understand the sentiment, the sentiment that you made.

E

I think it's interesting your comment about the fiscal notes, local impacts for education. I think that's worth exploring and having conversations about, and I certainly would I'm I don't mind getting in the weeds, dr flynn, so you know please feel free to reach out to me and other members of task force with any specific items. You think maybe we could look at and work on. Thank you, chairman wise thank.

A

You, mr chairman, senator thomas.

L

uh Thank you senator wise and senator tipton. um I thought the presentations today were excellent. I certainly enjoyed che ritter's uh detailed analysis about transportation and eric. You did a good job today, yourself going through unfunded madness. I appreciate this. Not surprisingly, senator wise.

L

uh Your question was the one I wanted to raise today, because you and I uh tend to think along the same lines uh with regard to education, uh as as you and senator tipton know the reason we formed this committee uh was because, during discussions of the 21 session, uh a lot of it had to deal with, you know: where are we going to go with education um and- and I know that the senate president's uh president stuyves joined the education committee this these next two years, because uh he himself was really concerned about the sikh funding and and what kentucky was doing about education and I've heard representative bojanowski say several times over the last three meetings about how the uh comparison about what kentucky does in per pupil expenditures compared to other states is really not an apples to apples comparison.

L

She's made the point. I think quite well that that many states add in teacher salaries they had in school buildings they added school insurance and coming up with this uh astronomical exorbitant number about uh per-pupil expenditures compared to you know what we do, which is we really just look at what we're giving per doing. um As I indicated to you senator wise, uh what I want to talk about is uh where we are going forward.

L

You know we're halfway through this task force, which I think is probably one of the better task forces that we've done in this state. uh I would hope that before we end either in november december, we could have a session, and this is directed to representative tipton as well, uh in which we look at the more of an apples to apples comparison to the sink formula, because at the end of the day, when we, when we come back in january, you know we have to say we have to be able to say you know.

L

Are we doing it right here in kentucky or do we need a few tweaks? Do we need a a a major uh readjustment uh gem in terms of how we do the seek formula, uh but I'd like to?

L

I would ask I would ask that we have a session, that's devoted more on, if you just look at how we analyze, per-pupil, funding and and and and other states stripping away as representative bojanowski indicated teacher salaries, school buildings insurance costs, all of that um and and and and see again, where we are, do we need to increase it by a thousand two thousand. Do we not need to decrease it at all?

L

I think that would be very helpful going into the 22 session in terms of answering the ultimate question, senator wise that you just raised in that you know, are we uh you know making an adequate expenditure on poor people funding, or are we a thousand dollars low? You know: are we a thousand dollars high? I think we need.

L

I think we need to have a session just on looking at what other states do comparison, comparing per pupil expenditures the way we do it more of an apples-to-apples comparison, um uh and that would give that would help answer that ultimate question. That people want to know that's my suggestion to you, representative,.

A

Senator thomas great suggestion- and uh thank you also for the comments and the good news is- we should be receiving the oea report. I'm not gonna put it on the spot, but in our audience is dr bob legoria, and I think we should be receiving that october november time frame, if I'm not mistaken, dr laguerre you're, behind a column that I can't see you directly now.

A

I can not in your head, yes october november time frame when we should get that senator thomas, and I think that is going to be the missing pieces that you're looking for to give us some insight and analysis on exactly the breakdown that you're looking for, and I think when we have that report, that's really going to open up a treasure trove of some information that we should be able to look at.

A

So I'm confident with that report coming out, we can have a further discussion as it relates to that either on this task force or possibly an interim education committee meeting as well senator thomas, which I know you're a member of that education committee. Also, chairman tipton any comments, as relates to that saying. None: okay, any other comments for our panelists.

A

Seeing an excellent job today, both of you all. Thank you so much for the conversations. Thank you for the information.

A

Our next meeting will be monday september 13th at 10 a.m. Any other questions online from any of our members any comments as we close out seeing none. Do I have a motion for adjournment so move. Thank you all. So much safe travels home.

A