CORRECTION: The original version of this article misidentified the sections of the Kentucky Constitution that would be affected if Amendment 2 passed. The relevant lines have been corrected–LINK nky editorial, Oct. 10, 2024
“Amendment 2 is not about school choice,” said Walton-Verona Independent Public Schools Superintendent Matt Baker. “Amendment 2 is about vouchers, and vouchers siphon money from public schools.”
Baker’s comments came at a special event at the Erlanger branch of the Kenton County Public Library on Tuesday.
The event, put on in partnership with the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, a think tank whose research is critical of Amendment 2, saw attendance from multiple public school superintendents in Northern Kentucky: Kenton County, Erlanger-Elsmere, Covington, Fort Thomas, Bellevue, Walton-Verona, Beechwood, Southgate, Carroll County and Williamstown. Amy Razor, the executive director of the Northern Kentucky Cooperative for Educational Services, also attended.
The superintendents expressed several arguments that opponents of the amendment have leveled in the past, namely that it could allow the legislature to draw money away from public schools, reduce access for vulnerable student populations and put undue strain on an already beleaguered public school system.
“The people that drafted our constitution wrote a rock solid constitution for public education,” said Kenton County Schools Superintendent Henry Webb.
Kentucky Constitutional Amendment 2, otherwise titled the Allow State Funding for Non-Public Education Amendment, would add language to the state’s constitution that could enable the General Assembly to provide public funding for non-public education.
If passed, the amendment would add the sentence “the General Assembly may provide financial support for the education of students outside the system of common schools” to the state’s constitution, in spite of some sections of the current constitution’s limitations. The term ‘common schools’ in Kentucky refers to public schools.
One of the sections is Section 183, which tasks the General Assembly with providing “an efficient system of common schools throughout the state.”
Another section, 186, states that all accrued school funds shall only go to the maintenance of public schools, while section 189 effectively prevents public funds or taxes from being appropriated to, used by, or in aid of any church, sectarian or denominational school.
If passed, the amendment eliminates these funding boundaries, giving the Republican supermajority in Kentucky’s General Assembly the power to change the law in future legislative sessions. It does not automatically create or enable a voucher program or fund charter schools. While changing the constitutional language won’t directly lead to any tangible change this year, it would create the legal environment to do so in the future.
Although vouchers aren’t directly part of the amendment’s language, many superintendents expressed a worry the amendment would, at the very least, be a prerequisite for establishing a voucher program in Kentucky in the future.
Vouchers refer to government-issued certificates families can redeem with private schools. This moves tax funding that would typically go to a local public school into the private institution the family’s student attends. Proponents of Amendment 2 deny that the amendment enables vouchers. However, reforms around school funding in other states have resulted in voucher programs.
The superintendents drew heavily from a report from the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy called ‘The Impact of Diverting Public Money to Private School Vouchers in Kentucky’ (read here). The report offers estimates based on a voucher program instituted in the state of Florida, which has served as a site for numerous programs in school funding reform.
“For Kentucky, establishing a program proportional to what Florida, the largest state program, has in place would cost $1.19 billion annually from the Kentucky state budget,” the report states. “That equals the cost of employing 9,869 Kentucky public school teachers and employees.”
The report provided estimates for individual districts in Kentucky, as well, figures the superintendents drew upon in their statements.
The numbers, said Erlanger-Elsmere Superintendent Chad Molley, “[aren’t] just about jobs. It’s about larger class sizes, fewer resources and fewer opportunities for students across the state.
“Kentucky’s experience is not unique. Other states have adopted similar programs and have seen public school resources drained to subsidize families already planning to send their children to private schools. the burden would fall disproportionately on lower-income and middle-class families, while schools become more segregated and unequal. Public schools will be left with the same fixed cost and increased pressure to do more with less.”
The superintendents also worried that tax dollars would go to private institutions that aren’t subject to the same levels of pubic review as public schools.
“We’re talking about public schools that are accountable to the public,” Baker said. “We have a high-stakes accountability system. Those results are published in the newspaper every year. We are subject to open records requests. Private schools are not accountable to the taxpayers through an accountability system. They do not have to comply with open records requests.”
As an alternative, the superintendents recommended reinvesting public funds into other public school programs, such as expanded training for teachers, increased salaries, universal Pre-K and safety infrastructure. They also recommended considering reforms to Kentucky’s SEEK funding program.
Kenton Hornbeck contributed reporting to this article.