Amendment 2: Superintendents Speak Out on the Future of Education Funding

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Welcome to FCS Unscripted, a new podcast for One Team, fcs, where we look at the stories behind every one in Franklin County schools.
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Hello everyone, this is Superintendent Mark Kopp.
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I'm really excited to be with you today.
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Very special episode of FCS Unscripted, where we're going to be discussing Amendment 2 today and I am blessed to be joined by three amazing fellow superintendents from some of our surrounding school districts.
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I'm going to let them introduce themselves.
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We'll start with you, sherry.
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Hello, my name is Sherry Satterley and I am the superintendent of Frankfort Independent in the capital of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
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Sweet.
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Hello, I'm Sheila Mitchell, superintendent of Anderson County Schools from Lawrenceburg Kentucky.
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Hello Billy Parker.
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Superintendent, do what we can to educate about this amendment.
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As superintendents, you know, we're very impacted by anything in terms of public education, and this particular amendment could potentially be very impactful on public education.
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So we wanted to have a chance to all talk together about, you know what this amendment is all about, and really educate the public and advocate at all times for public education.
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The one thing that we're not going to do in this podcast is we're not going to tell you how to vote.
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That's completely up to you.
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I would love to tell everyone please go vote.
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I think that's more a civic responsibility than it is a right.
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So please make sure that you vote, but we're not going to tell you how to vote.
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We're just going to try to educate you as much as we can about Amendment 2.
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So where do we begin?
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What do we want to start talking about in terms of Amendment 2?
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Billy, you want to start us off today?
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Amendment 2.
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Billy, you want to start us off today?
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Well, I mean for me, amendment 2, I really boil down to one point and that is that do you believe that public tax dollars should be used to fund private school tuitions?
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If you want to boil it down to its core, for me, that's the root issue for me.
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So this is Sheila Mitchell, and my big concern around Amendment 2 is the funding and where.
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If private and homeschool students are funded, where is that money going to come from?
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With tax dollars already stretched and the budget that the General Assembly put out last year, as a taxpayer, where will that funding come from for those additional 100,000 students that aren't currently being funded?
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Right, right.
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If I can add on to that, this is Sherry Satterley with Frankfurt Independent.
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Of course, when Sheila says tax dollars are already stretched, of course you know I'm going to go there right, you should yeah.
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So Frankfurt Independent specifically there is about property tax revenue should be a little more than $1 billion.
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$736 million of that is tax exempt for us and that's property value.
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Sorry, $316 million is what's taxed.
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So of the $11.3 million that's out there, $7.9 million of that is exempt.
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We get $3.4 million.
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So we are already stretched as thin as we can be stretched and now we're proposing an amendment that there's no proposed mechanism for right.
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So we have no idea what's going to happen or where it's going to come from, and the only thought for me is that it's going to come from a tax revenue that I don't already get Right.
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I mean going back to Sheila's point when she talked about the.
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Basically, if you think about the revenue that we receive to fund public education, it's almost like a big pie, and the pie, over the course of time, hasn't increased at the same level as inflation and as all of our other costs going up.
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I can speak specifically about Franklin County schools.
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In 2010, 56% of our revenue in this district came from the state and 44% came from our local taxpayers.
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That has completely flipped in 14 years.
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56% of our revenue now comes from our local taxpayers and only 44% comes from the state.
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The state level of funding has not kept up with what we've unfortunately had to put on the backs of our local taxpayers.
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So if Amendment 2 passes, the pie is not going to get any bigger.
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We have the same piece of pie and now a large chunk of that, a big piece of that pie, is going to be taken out and diverted to private schools.
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So I think that's one of the biggest concerns that we have.
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Yeah, looking at the numbers, I mean, if you just factor, we all know it's around 100,000 and diverted to private schools.
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So I think that's one of the biggest concerns that we have.
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Yeah, looking at the numbers, I mean, if you just factor, we all know it's around 100,000 students that are not part of the public school system.
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That's 16.6% of an increase to the pie, as you would say.
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And again, where's that coming from?
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And the reality, too, is, if there was money out there, where was that last session when we were told that there wasn't any more?
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to be provided Exactly.
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So with that 16%, that equates to about $420 million.
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Wow.
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Just so that everyone understands.
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You know the dollar, the dollar tag that goes with that.
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And again, where is that funding going to come from?
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And Anderson County is very much the same as Frankfurt and Franklin Well, more so, I guess, franklin.
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We 10 to 15 years ago were funded at 60% and 40 local.
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Now it's completely flip-flopped.
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We are funding at 60-40 local dollars.
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So the taxpayers are already funding at a high rate.
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And so you know, the concern really is we do not want to shift additional tax burden on to, you know, our parents, our community members.
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Right, and I would also say that my board in particular just gave a 5% raise, which is I would also say that my board in particular just gave a 5% raise, which is, from what I can tell, the highest raise in recent history, 20-year history in Frankfort Independent.
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And with increased spending there has to be increased revenue, right.
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So we obviously took the 4% when we increased taxes and we are the fourth highest taxing district in the state of Kentucky already, which most people seem to understand because of our situation.
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But our tax rate right now is 107.5.
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And if you take part of that away, what are we going to have to do to make it back up?
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It just doesn't make sense to me.
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Yeah, there's only so much that you can stretch a piece of elastic before it breaks.
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You know, and I think all of us are in kind of that same boat in terms of we do not want to burden our local taxpayers with having to ask for additional revenues to keep the services that we have in our district.
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That's right.
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You know, if our budget is impacted negatively as a result of the possible passage of this amendment, we're going to have to look at what are things that we would look at having to cut.
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And right now, covid changed the ballgame in a lot of ways and our kids, over the course of time, have had greater and greater needs when it comes to mental health services and some things that we've been able to put in place.
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I don't know how we would be able to fund those things moving forward.
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In our district, we're blessed to be able to have a school resource officer in each one of our buildings.
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Well, that costs us about a million dollars a year.
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It's a $930,000 impact to our budget.
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We have a social worker in every one of our schools.
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We have a behavior intervention center in every one of our schools Incredibly needed and useful positions.
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But how would we be able to fund those if we get cut and when we're talking about the cuts that we could be looking at.
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Obviously it's a lot of hypothetical right now, but we have to plan for what could be a significant impact.
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But that's the scary part.
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Right, right, the hypothetical.
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Yeah, it's open-ended right.
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And it's kind of like I've talked to different lawmakers and they've suggested to us that you know.
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well, you can't say what we're going to do because we haven't had the chance to do it.
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Well, right, I mean, I get that.
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I mean I honestly.
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We had a board meeting last night and I considered going into the board meeting and during my superintendent's report saying to the board hey, we need to fund 14 teachers.
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I didn't put it on the agenda, but I wanted to come talk to you about this tonight and we need to fund 14 teachers and just leave it at that.
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And they would have naturally been like that's not how we roll.
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So they would have thought this is crazy for one.
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But then they would have been like asking a thousand questions and at the end of the day, well, I don't have a plan, we need to do this.
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It's no different than what's happening right now.
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We're being asked to approve something and there's no measures of accountability.
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I mean, there's things too about this that because we haven't experienced it, we can't really even fathom what's coming.
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I've talked to, I've got, a principal who spent some time in Florida.
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When she was there she said oh, it was nothing for a school to shut down in the middle of the week, and now you've got three extra kids as a teacher on your caseload in your class because the school that was there shut down.
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So it's those pop-up private schools.
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We don't even you know, people aren't even wrapping their head around.
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That's something that we might have to contend with here, that we're going to have to deal with.
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That will disrupt the educational process for a number of students.
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Well, if 13 percent of the budget for Anderson County is reduced, I'm just not sure where we're going to cut.
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What programs are we going to cut?
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You know, our teachers and staff are already, in my opinion, not.
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Their salaries are not where they should be.
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You know I'm always an advocate for increasing teacher and staff salary, so that would completely be off the table.
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So then we look at, well, what else makes up that pie?
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You know there are a lot of things that are already set that we just, you know, have to add into the budget, and I do not want to make those tough decisions about where we make cuts.
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Right.
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And outside of that, my bigger concern is if we have to cut positions you know, no one wants to lose a job, no one wants to cut a position and we're already short-staffed for teachers will this add to the teacher and staff shortage?
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That's a big concern of mine in Anderson.
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Going back to resources, you talked about mental health resources.
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One thing that I put out there a couple nights ago was the fact that we as public school districts are bound by providing for the individual, the disabilities act, a free and appropriate public education for students who have disabilities.
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That looks the same as their same age peers um, to talk about the elephant in the room.
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I mean, we have to be honest.
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Private schools don't have to do that right and they can say so.
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The choice here really it's not about school choice.
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It it's about money and the choice.
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Like you've always had a choice, especially with House Bill 563 with public schools, you've always had a public, private choice, but now, with open borders, you have a public choice and the choice really isn't yours.
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It's the schools and whether or not they will accept you and provide the resources that your child needs where we are obligated to do so.
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And if our funds start being diverted somewhere else, how are we going to be able to continue to provide some of the resources that you and I know we have to provide for certain students?
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And we've seen it in other states the decision of who schools have to admit.
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There's nothing around that, Right.
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So, as the you hear the term sometimes level playing field and you, you know, you just want to be able to operate on a level playing field.
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Well, the the issue is in terms of private schools, they can pick and choose their students for any reason.
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In public schools, we take everyone because that's what we do, that's what our mission is, and private schools asking for public school dollars.
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The thing that just fundamentally doesn't make a lot of sense to me is when I think about a church that has a school okay, churches are exempt from paying taxes, right, so you have an entity that already doesn't pay taxes but now is going to benefit from a public tax.
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Just, you know, fundamentally, it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
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What I've always said is someone who has worked in I've worked in Ohio and Florida and Kentucky, and both Ohio and Florida have charter schools I've always said the same thing Bring them on, we will compete with them.
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It is not an issue of competition because we will beat them seven days a week, twice on Sunday, because we can offer more opportunities, but what we cannot do is take public dollars and give to private schools.
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I just don't understand how that is even conceptually a thing.
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Yeah, one of the things, too that I haven't really seen people talk about but for me has been a problem is the fact that I mean, just looking at the language of the amendment itself, right, the fact that it's almost to me it's a slap in the face to Kentuckians that, call it what it is.
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Why preface it with some key words choice.
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I mean, okay, I'm going to throw choice or freedom or patriot into something and try to garner some support for something.
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Call it what it is.
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I've got a neighbor who she lives down the road from me and she sometimes can be critical of the things that we're doing, but we, you know, love her to death and she loves us and she knows that we're working hard to always be better.
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But anyway, she brought up Amendment 2, and I totally expected it to go a different direction than it did, and I said so, okay, so what do you think?
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And she said do they think we're stupid?
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This is the rich getting richer.
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This is nothing more than you know, setting up for private schools to get money, and I just kind of I was thankful, I guess, to feel like there's a lot of people in the community that see this the way that I think a lot of other people see it too.
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I think the word notwithstanding in the language of the Amendment 2 is concerning, because there are seven of those legal exceptions that are just concerning and I hope that voters look at those before and really understand what that means.
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Notwithstanding means and the exception to despite, regardless of what's in the Constitution.
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It means they don't have to follow what's in the Constitution and so you know, one of the things that's in there is Common School Fund prohibits taxation for funding of nonpublic schools and that's concerning to me, you know, as an educator but also as a taxpayer, and you know I just really hope people do their homework and understand what is in the amendment.
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The language is important, the impact on funding is important because essentially, with the word notwithstanding means there is no specific.
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With that specific, no funding structure, it's really just an open checkbook for legislators to make decisions.
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As a taxpayer, that's concerning to me.
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A hundred percent yeah.
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I would love to know what the funding structure is going to be before I vote.
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I don't think you're going to know that, sheila, I don't think I am either.
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Mark, you mentioned something about private schools in churches that don't pay taxes.
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So when we talk about religious schools, that also somewhat compromises the Constitution in the separation of church and state.
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Where many of them are religious, funding them with taxpayer dollars kind of entangles public money.
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Yes, it does.
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In religious doctrine which to each his own, but I wouldn't be in public school if I wanted to be in a religious school and it kind of compromises the values of inclusivity and neutrality that I think are central to public education.
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Yeah, I think too.
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You know, I had some people at my church.
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We were talking about this, and well, I don't see anything wrong with it.
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I said well, you don't see anything wrong with it, assuming that they're going to a school that believes what you believe.
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Right, there's other beliefs out there.
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Sure.
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Are you okay with your tax dollars going to fund those other schools too?
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And they had not considered that.
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I think there's a lot that hasn't been considered.
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Well, and when the argument's being made on the other side of the issue in terms of being in favor of Amendment 2, we're seeing a lot of mailers I'm getting them, my neighbors are getting them asking me about them.
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Why does it say on this mailer that teacher salaries are going to go up if this amendment passes and there's going to be more funding for education if this amendment passes?
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I can just honestly say those are flat lies.
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There's no other way of saying it, which is why, as superintendents, we're going to give you the honest truth.
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We're going to do everything we can to educate the public about this, because right now you're getting misinformation right.
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Yeah, and I wonder too, like you know, are they just going to states that have recently added it and they're like well, look, their pay went up.
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Well, no, kidding Inflation, everybody's pay went up.
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So I mean really, but anyway, yeah, it's a mess and I would imagine that you know.
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If dollars are diverted to private schools, maybe private school salaries might increase potentially.
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But again you've got to think about our funding mechanism, how we are funded in public schools.
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The pie isn't getting bigger and if you take a piece of the pie it gets smaller.
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It's simple math.
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And you can't ignore what's happened in other states.
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So you said private teacher salary would probably go up.
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But private school tuition has gone up too with these vouchers.
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And if you think like, what's the dollar amount being thrown out there right now, it's like $4,000 per kid.
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I don't know where that came from because we've been given nothing, but that's what I keep hearing and I'm like what's tuition at some of these schools?
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It's not $4,000.
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No.
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No no.
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But if it is $8,000 and the vouchers are $8,000, then where is that again money going to come from?
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That would double that $420 million that we're talking about, almost, to you know, a billion dollars.
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Yeah, and just speaking in real dollars again, and I'm going to talk specifically about Franklin County Schools just for a second a 12% cut to our budget.
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And we're just again, we don't know.
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We do know it's going to be significant.
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It could be 17%, it could be 9%, we don't know what could happen.
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But if you consider a conservative estimate of 12%, that's over $10 million in our budget.
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Again, what do you do when you're an entity that you're going to have to cut because we can't raise our prices like a company can, right, you know we can't raise our prices like a company can, right, we don't have prices to raise.
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All we can look at is our local taxpayers and say, can you help offset the deficit that now we're going to see coming from the state?
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And we've, you know, we've spoken a lot about we don't want to do that and in some cases it's going to be really hard to do that.
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I think a point that we really need to consider is that you know there are states that we have to look at.
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You have to look at Ohio, you have to look at Arizona, you have to look at Florida and you have to look at what has the impact been with the implementation.
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And you know what you see is additional money being spent on education and you see staffing and teacher shortages.
00:20:22.443 --> 00:20:33.344
So additional cost, less staffing, and the outcome is not as beneficial as some would like for all of us to believe.
00:20:33.796 --> 00:20:35.299
You know I'm sitting.
00:20:35.299 --> 00:20:46.642
Every time I get into this conversation I get frustrated because, again, 90% of Kentucky's children that are attending school are in our schools.
00:20:46.642 --> 00:20:49.248
So again, where has this even come from?
00:20:49.248 --> 00:20:54.476
You know, and that's where I think too, kentuckians are like okay, this doesn't make sense.
00:20:54.476 --> 00:20:56.701
Nobody was like asking for this.
00:20:56.740 --> 00:21:14.269
And if 90% of people are in public schools, where does this come from and again we know at this table it's national money and it's billionaires and people with a lot more money that are wanting to be able to dip into the arena and the funding stream that we have available to us.
00:21:14.734 --> 00:21:16.663
And it's political unrest too right.
00:21:16.663 --> 00:21:28.520
It's disagreement at the table in session with the supermajority, and an education first governor and lieutenant governor, which is wonderful, but schools don't have any place.
00:21:28.520 --> 00:21:35.506
Like, don't use us as your pawns is just kind of how I feel.
00:21:35.946 --> 00:21:42.065
And you know, we're all local to each other, we're all neighbors, we're all friendly with each other.
00:21:42.065 --> 00:21:57.030
We have to think about some of the other districts in our state that are really going to suffer as well, some of our more rural districts, that they do not have an opportunity to have a private school, yet they're going to be impacted the same as everyone else.
00:21:57.030 --> 00:22:01.810
So it's really going to hurt, you know, all across the state.
00:22:01.810 --> 00:22:06.263
So, final comments, we'll start with you, sherry, from Frankfort Independent.
00:22:06.263 --> 00:22:07.723
How would you like to wrap this up?
00:22:07.743 --> 00:22:12.286
We'll start with you, sherry, from Frankfurt Independent.
00:22:12.286 --> 00:22:13.145
How would you like to wrap this up?
00:22:13.145 --> 00:22:17.426
I think I'm just grateful to be around a table with other superintendents who have the same passion that I have and I personally.
00:22:17.426 --> 00:22:20.907
Sherry Satterley loves public education with all her heart.
00:22:20.907 --> 00:22:37.432
I read something on Twitter the other day that said public school graduates are dumber than a box of rocks, and I find that offensive, because I am a public school graduate and I see public school graduates each and every day, and they can do just as much as anybody else can do Great Sheila.
00:22:37.873 --> 00:22:42.054
Well, I just want to say that public education has served me and my family well.
00:22:42.054 --> 00:22:43.394
I'm a third-generation educator.
00:22:43.394 --> 00:22:54.288
I believe that public education is the great equalizer, as I reminded several of my friends over the course of the last three to four weeks.
00:22:54.288 --> 00:22:59.386
If you look around in public school classrooms, what do you see?
00:22:59.386 --> 00:23:02.303
You see children performing at high levels.
00:23:02.303 --> 00:23:08.448
You see career technical education students preparing for their future careers.
00:23:08.448 --> 00:23:10.462
You see dual credit classes.
00:23:10.462 --> 00:23:12.782
You see AP students.
00:23:12.782 --> 00:23:14.494
You see JAG students preparing.
00:23:14.494 --> 00:23:30.308
You see our colleges full of our children who have had high-quality educations from public schools, who are competing with the best and brightest across the state and, quite frankly, across the nation.
00:23:30.308 --> 00:23:49.646
And I think we need to remember what public education has done for all of us and know that colleges and trade schools are full of public education children being very highly successful, and so are our communities.
00:23:49.855 --> 00:23:50.880
Absolutely, billy.
00:23:50.880 --> 00:24:00.082
You know this amendment to me it's three things Do you believe public tax dollars should be used to fund private school tuition?
00:24:00.082 --> 00:24:06.763
Do you believe public tax dollars should be used to fund schools with no accountability and no oversight?
00:24:06.763 --> 00:24:12.961
And are you okay with potential tax increases locally that this measure could create?
00:24:12.961 --> 00:24:17.940
So again, we're not telling you how to vote, but I'm telling you that Billy Parker is voting no.
00:24:17.940 --> 00:24:19.001
There you go.
00:24:20.746 --> 00:24:27.691
I'll wrap it up by saying I've dedicated my career to the memory of my mom, who passed away last year.
00:24:27.691 --> 00:24:37.180
She was a 32-year first grade teacher who actually grew up and went to private schools, was in a Catholic school and all through high school and everything.
00:24:37.180 --> 00:24:44.105
And when she graduated from college she became a public school educator and championed public education for the rest of her life.
00:24:44.105 --> 00:24:50.296
And she is rolling over in her grave thinking about what this amendment could do to public schools.
00:24:50.296 --> 00:25:00.984
So I also will be voting no, as Mark Kopp, not telling you all how to vote, but also I think it's important that we educate and advocate.
00:25:00.984 --> 00:25:04.175
So, guys, it has been awesome having you here.
00:25:04.175 --> 00:25:08.405
This has been the best fun time with some fellow superintendents.
00:25:08.405 --> 00:25:09.576
We should do it more often.
00:25:09.576 --> 00:25:11.101
Thank you so much.
00:25:11.101 --> 00:25:12.263
I sure appreciate you, guys.
00:25:12.684 --> 00:25:13.707
Thank you for the invitation.
00:25:18.996 --> 00:25:22.584
Well, that wraps it up for this week's episode of FCS Unscripted.
00:25:22.584 --> 00:25:37.118
Thank you for listening in and I encourage you to subscribe and follow this weekly podcast where we will share updates, information and interviews with Hashtag Everyone the wonderful students and staff who make up One Team FCS.
00:25:37.118 --> 00:25:38.559
Have a great week everybody.