Covington Independent Public Schools superintendent Alvin Garrison called full-day kindergarten “an absolute must” when he testified in favor of the school program before a 2021 state budget subcommittee. Like most districts in the state, Covington Independent has offered full-day kindergarten for many years. But paying for it has been a challenge.
Kentucky school districts have historically used local funds to pay a share of the cost of the full-day program that takes children from early childhood into the K-12 environment. Then, three years ago, state lawmakers started to fully fund the program instead of just half-day kindergarten allowed under the state’s school funding formula. Having the state cover the full cost allows districts to put more money into other needs, like teacher recruitment, teacher retention and school facilities.
The extra money, however, is a temporary fix for local districts.
That’s because state lawmakers haven’t made state funding for full-day kindergarten permanent. To do that, under current law, lawmakers would have to tweak SEEK –the state’s core funding formula for public school districts. So far, that hasn’t happened.
A full-day kindergarten bill sponsored by House Education vice chair Timmy Truett (R-McKee) wasn’t assigned to committee for review in the 2024 legislative session. Prior year efforts also stalled.
Universal preschool, or state-funded pre-K for all four-year-olds in the commonwealth, has also been passed over by the General Assembly. Gov. Andy Beshear pushed for funding of the initiative in his 2024 budget proposal, but majority leadership in the House and Senate didn’t have an appetite for the idea. The proposal died.
Beshear had billed universal pre-K as a way to stem what he called “learning loss.”
“The biggest area of learning loss is kids not showing up kindergarten-ready and never catching up. Let’s address it before it starts,” Beshear was quoted as saying by the Associated Press in December.
Back at Covington Independent, Garrison and his team have grappled with some of the lowest kindergarten readiness rates in NKY. Several river city districts, including Covington Independent, have fallen behind other NKY districts in kindergarten readiness based on 2023 data from the Kentucky Center for Statistics shared by local education incubator EducateNKY.
The data is cited in EducateNKY’s working draft to assess the education needs of the river cities. Overall kindergarten readiness in NKY based on that data are below.
(Rates indicate the percentage of children per district who entered kindergarten ready to learn based on the state’s kindergarten readiness screening process):
NKY kindergarten readiness rates by school district, 2023
Districts:
Beechwood Independent 77%
* Bellevue Independent 76%
Boone County 53%
Campbell County 57 %
* Covington Independent 32%
* Dayton Independent 58%
* Erlanger – Elsmere Independent 29%
Fort Thomas Independent 78%
Kenton County 56%
* Ludlow Independent 43 %
* Newport Independent. 19%
Southgate Independent 42%
Walton-Verona Independent 84%
Statewide = 46 %
* River Cities school districts marked with asterisk
Early learning is EducateNKY’s first priority for improving outcomes in the river cities, president and CEO Tim Hanner told LINK nky. Other priorities, in order, are family engagement, mastery learning, exposure and out-of-school time and secondary options.
Work teams, one for each priority area, are studying the issues. Each team is researching and looking for solutions for “systemic change and expanded opportunities for youth and their families,” according to EducateNKY. Recommendations will come before the EducateNKY board later this year.
“We’ve got good people doing good work, everyone from Head Start to for-profit daycare,” Hanner said. “But we have too many kids not showing up ready to learn. How do we break that? All of that’s to be determined.”
One challenge the river cities face is transience — or families moving in and out of school districts due to affordable housing needs or other issues, said Hanner. Resources may be locally available but underutilized.
Ludlow Independent, for example, has free preschool four days a week, with a choice of morning or afternoon sessions. All four-year-olds and eligible three-year-olds are eligible to attend, with Ludlow residents attending free of charge. But the program is only at around 40% capacity, Hanner said.
“The problem down here is not that we don’t have enough programs,” he told LINK. “It is that – and this goes back to transience – how are putting wraparound supports from prenatal to age two, from age two to age four, age four to age five? Making sure it’s high quality?”
Funding for early childhood programs at the state level is looking up, at least for the next two years. The Prichard Committee – a longtime Kentucky education watchdog – reported after the 2024 legislative session ended in April that $112.45 million was appropriated by lawmakers over the next two years for the state Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), employee Child Care Assistance Program and early childhood scholarships. According to the report, this year’s funding is “a substantial increase from the $21.2 million” funding in the current budget cycle.
The new state budget also includes approximately $45 million in tobacco settlement funds for home visitation and state maternal and child health services.
But the Prichard Committee report makes it clear that challenges – including funding needs – remain.
For its part, EducateNKY is focused on improving learning in the long-term, said Hanner. Improving early learning through a “reinvigorated and coordinated approach” — to quote the organization — is what its work teams are focused on now, with an organization goal to develop a strategic plan sometime this year.
“Our board will have to make decisions for this phase to work,” Hanner told LINK. “It’s not just about funding, but what are we helping?”