Legislative Priorities: A Clear Call to Action for Kentucky’s Public Schools
January 15, 2026
Kentucky’s public schools are entering a pivotal moment. As the General Assembly begins its work in the 2026 legislative session, decisions made in Frankfort will shape the future of teaching, learning, and opportunity across the Commonwealth. As superintendents responsible for educating more than 600,000 students across Kentucky, we believe this moment requires clarity, collaboration, and an unwavering commitment to putting Kids First.
Public education thrives when policy reflects both statewide goals and local realities. This session, three legislative priorities rise above all others as essential to student success: a modern accountability system focused on continuous improvement, a sustainable educator workforce pipeline, and fully funded SEEK. These priorities are not theoretical. They directly impact classrooms, communities, and the future of Kentucky’s workforce.
Accountability with Purpose
Kentucky has an opportunity to lead with an accountability system that reflects what communities value most. Through the Kentucky United We Learn initiative, educators, families, and education leaders have come together to design a framework focused on continuous improvement, local voice, and shared responsibility. This collaborative work emphasizes growth, relevance, and trust rather than compliance alone.
The United We Learn framework recognizes that meaningful accountability must balance statewide expectations with locally identified measures of success, allowing communities to define what success looks like while remaining aligned to statewide goals. When communities see themselves reflected in accountability, engagement increases and outcomes improve. KASS continues to support implementation efforts that ensure accountability remains transparent, student-centered, and responsive to community needs. Learn more about the framework through the Kentucky Department of Education’s United We Learn initiative.
Building and Sustaining the Educator Workforce
Educators are the foundation of Kentucky’s public schools. Teachers, principals, and superintendents shape learning environments where students are supported academically and socially. Yet recruitment and retention challenges threaten the stability of this foundation.
Building a strong workforce pipeline requires a long-term approach. Competitive compensation, flexible certification pathways, job-embedded professional learning, and meaningful induction supports all play a role, along with the flexibility for local districts to recruit, support, and retain educators in ways that reflect their unique community contexts. KASS supports continued work with the Education Professional Standards Board to broaden pathways into the profession and ensure talented educators can meet student needs in diverse settings.
When we invest in people, we invest directly in students. Strengthening the educator pipeline is not simply a workforce issue. It is one of the most direct student success strategies available to policymakers.
Sustaining and Strengthening SEEK Funding
Equitable funding remains central to educational opportunity. The Support Education Excellence in Kentucky (SEEK) formula is the Commonwealth’s primary tool for ensuring students have access to comparable educational opportunities regardless of zip code. Over time, inflation has eroded SEEK’s purchasing power, placing additional strain on local districts.
Restoring SEEK to its inflation-adjusted 2008 level, fully funding add-ons, and providing long-term predictability are essential steps toward fiscal stability and toward meeting the Commonwealth’s long-term responsibility to provide an efficient system of public education. Adequate funding allows districts to plan responsibly, support staff, and meet the academic and social-emotional needs of students. Additional information on SEEK and Kentucky’s education funding system is available through the Legislative Research Commission.
Progress Through Unified Advocacy
Kentucky’s education leaders have seen firsthand the impact of unified advocacy. In recent years, collective KASS efforts have helped secure investments in full-day kindergarten, student transportation, and school safety. These wins demonstrate what is possible when education leaders speak clearly, consistently, and together, and when superintendents engage early, often, and constructively with policymakers.
While progress has been made, continued advocacy remains essential. Each legislative session presents new challenges and opportunities, and sustained engagement ensures student needs remain at the center of policy decisions.
A Moment That Matters
This legislative session represents a defining moment for public education in Kentucky. Lawmakers must hear directly from education leaders about what students need to succeed. Public schools remain the Commonwealth’s greatest engine of opportunity, and bold, sustained investment is critical to their success.
The path forward is clear. Together, we must lead with urgency, advocate with unity, and act with purpose. KASS will continue to engage lawmakers, partner agencies, and superintendents throughout the session to advance these priorities with clarity and consistency.
Kentucky’s superintendents stand ready to work with policymakers to ensure every decision keeps students at the center and strengthens the future of public education.
House Bill 500 is the most important education bill in Kentucky right now because it will shape SEEK funding, transportation support, and Tier I equalization for school districts statewide.
HB 1 is now law, but KASS says the most immediate issue for Kentucky public schools is the state education budget, including SEEK, transportation, and Tier I funding.
Dr. Brad Johnson recently posted a statistic that stopped me: one in three teachers say they're likely to leave the profession within the next two years. It lingered, not because it's shocking, but because it feels remarkably real. I've spent years sitting across from superintendents who started conversations trying to solve an instructional problem and ended them talking about the challenges of filling teaching positions and other vacancies, and how many teachers they may lose at the end of the year. I've heard veterans say, quietly, that they wouldn't choose this again. I've watched districts do everything right and still lose people, not to other professions, but to exhaustion. That's not anecdote. That's pattern. And in Kentucky, the data confirms what those conversations already told us. According to the Kentucky Department of Education's October 2025 Educator Shortage Report, 80% of Kentucky's public school districts began this school year with unfilled positions - a total of 2,421 vacancies statewide. That figure, while still striking, actually represents improvement: the previous year, only a single district in the entire Commonwealth started fully staffed. Progress is real. But 140 districts still began this school year short, three-quarters reported a decrease in qualified applicants over the past two years, and 401 emergency certificates have already been issued for this year alone. Meanwhile, Kentucky's reliance on alternative certification pathways has nearly tripled since 2016, rising from roughly 1,200 to more than 3,000 placements annually. Proficiency-based certifications, which didn't exist here eight years ago, now account for nearly 370 placements per year. These aren't signs of a system expanding its options. They're signs of a system under strain, reaching for whatever it can find. And the reach is costly. Superintendents across Kentucky describe a consistent pattern with alternative-certified placements: higher onboarding and training investments, greater likelihood of mid-year resignations that leave classrooms unstable, elevated absenteeism that drives up substitute costs, more frequent discipline challenges, and - most importantly - measurable learning consequences for students. This is not a reflection on the individuals stepping into these roles. Many are doing genuinely courageous work under difficult conditions, often entering classrooms mid-year, in the most challenging assignments, without the full preparation they deserved. The problem isn't their effort. It's the conditions the system has created, for them and for the students they're trying to serve. When a system chronically fills seats instead of building a profession, the costs don't disappear. They redistribute - onto students, onto colleagues, and onto district budgets already stretched thin. Johnson frames this partly as a generational shift - Boomers and Gen X conditioned to tolerate what never should have been normal, Millennials bridging, Gen Z refusing. There's truth in that. But I'd push further: this isn't fundamentally about generational toughness. It's about system design. For decades, we normalized what never should have been normal. We called overwork "dedication." We called silence "professionalism." We called exhaustion "the cost of caring." And many stayed anyway, because the kids mattered. They still do. But something has changed. Today's emerging educators are not less committed. If anything, they are more values-driven. They want impact. They want meaning. They want to serve. What they are unwilling to do is sacrifice their health, their financial stability, and their sense of professional dignity to systems that refuse to evolve. That's not fragility. It's clarity. Meanwhile, the job itself has intensified. Students arrive carrying more - academically, socially, emotionally. Communities navigate economic strain and social fragmentation. Public discourse has grown louder and sharper. And the distance between a classroom decision and a public reaction has compressed to almost nothing. Through all of this, compensation has not kept pace with inflation, support staffing has not scaled with student complexity, and expectations have expanded without parallel redesign. We have added weight without reinforcing the structure. But pipelines shrink when people look ahead and decide the destination isn't sustainable - when they calculate student debt against starting salaries and watch how educators are treated in a culture that criticizes the profession from every direction while asking more of it every year. At some point, the question stops being naive: Will this system care for me the way I'm asked to care for others? If we answer that question with nostalgia instead of reform, we will lose them. Not slowly. All at once. This is not simply a teacher issue. It is a workforce issue, an economic stability issue, a community resilience issue. Schools are the backbone of local workforce development — they prepare the talent pipeline for every other sector. But that backbone is under strain, and the numbers make that undeniable. Here is what makes this moment both urgent and clarifying: we know what stabilization requires, and we know what it costs. Kentucky school districts are operating with 26% less purchasing power than they had in 2008. That erosion isn't abstract - it shows up in salary schedules that can't compete with the private sector, transportation budgets that drain classroom dollars, and funding gaps that compound year after year regardless of how efficiently districts manage them. We aren't asking for expansion. We’re asking for restoration. That restoration has a name and a path. The KASS Big Three - a meaningful increase to the SEEK base funding formula, full funding of pupil transportation using accurate prior year data, and raising Tier I to 20% - represent the highest-impact recurring revenue investments available to Kentucky's policymakers. Together, they provide what no workforce strategy can succeed without: predictable, sustainable revenue aligned to real and rising costs. SEEK base increases are the primary vehicle for competitive educator compensation. Full transportation funding ends the forced diversion of classroom dollars to cover buses and fuel. And Tier I equity investments ensure that every district, regardless of local wealth, can compete for the talent their students deserve. And compensation is more than a salary line. For decades, competitive health insurance and retirement benefits anchored the education workforce's value proposition - offsetting salary gaps with the private sector and giving dedicated professionals a reason to stay. Proposals that erode those benefits don't just affect take-home pay. They eliminate the last competitive argument available to districts that can't win a salary bidding war. Beyond funding, stabilizing the workforce requires a modern accountability system that develops educators rather than simply measuring them, and a genuine investment in the pipeline itself through apprenticeship pathways, loan forgiveness, induction support, and a public narrative that treats education as the in-demand career sector it has been recognized to be. Passion cannot substitute for infrastructure. A career in education was never meant to require martyrdom to prove commitment. The next generation is telling us something important: they will serve, but not at any cost. The question before us isn't whether young educators care enough. It never was. The question is whether we are willing to invest in and redesign the system enough to deserve them. If we are, we won't just stabilize a profession. We'll strengthen communities for decades to come.
A provision in the House budget proposal would place a cap on the state’s contribution toward employee health insurance premiums. Based on projections shared by the Personnel Cabinet, that cap could shift substantial premium growth to employees over the next biennium. For Kentucky’s public schools, this is not simply a budget line item. It is a workforce strategy issue with long-term implications for staffing stability and student outcomes. The Foundation at Risk Public education has always competed for talent on total compensation — salary plus benefits. When salaries lagged behind the private sector, strong health insurance and retirement benefits sustained the education workforce for decades. Recent legislative investments began restoring salary competitiveness. That progress is measurable. More districts are fully staffed than in prior years, and momentum has been building. The proposed changes to the health insurance cap change that equation. If benefit costs rise significantly for employees, districts risk losing both the salary progress recently achieved and the long-standing benefits advantage that helped sustain the workforce during leaner years. The Personnel Impact According to projections referenced in statewide discussions: Premium increases could reach up to 78 percent. Teachers could see reductions in real take-home pay of approximately $5,832 per year. Bus drivers could lose roughly $6,420 annually. Additional impacts include higher deductibles and reduced coverage. When a teacher receives a raise but pays more in premiums, total compensation declines. From a workforce standpoint, that erases recent progress. Three Compounding Consequences This shift creates three compounding consequences for Kentucky’s public schools: 1. The Profession Loses Its Competitive Case For decades, education could tell prospective employees: salaries may lag, but benefits are strong and retirement is secure. Recent investments allowed districts to add that salary competitiveness was improving. If take-home pay declines, both arguments weaken at once. Recruitment becomes harder. Retention becomes less certain. 2. Classified Staff Lose a Primary Reason to Stay Bus drivers, food service workers, paraeducators, and custodians have historically accepted lower hourly wages in exchange for quality health coverage. Significant premium increases tip the balance. When classified roles go unfilled, districts face immediate operational challenges — transportation routes, meal service, and facility operations all depend on stable staffing. 3. Local Communities Bear Unequal Burden When total compensation declines, communities face pressure to respond locally. Property-wealthy districts may have some flexibility. Property-poor districts, many of which are already near practical tax limits, often do not. Workforce instability will not distribute evenly. It will disproportionately affect the communities least equipped to absorb it. T he Big Three Alignment Question The House budget proposal also includes continued investment in SEEK, transportation funding, and Tier I — the “Big Three” pillars designed to support competitive compensation and expand access to opportunity. Those investments reflect a commitment to strengthening Kentucky’s public education system. However, if benefit costs simultaneously reduce take-home pay, the workforce strategy those investments are intended to support becomes more difficult to sustain. You cannot recruit with one hand and create net financial loss with the other. Budget provisions must align. A Superintendent-Centered Perspective Superintendents understand fiscal responsibility. District leaders make difficult budget decisions every year, balancing sustainability with workforce investment. The question is not whether health care costs are rising. The question is how those costs are distributed and what consequences follow. Workforce stability is not peripheral to student success. It is foundational. Schools rise or fall on the quality and consistency of the adults serving students. Moving Forward As the budget process continues, clarity and alignment matter. Districts need: Accurate projections Clear implementation guidance Budget alignment that supports total compensation stability KASS will continue to provide superintendent-centered analysis focused on operational consequence and workforce sustainability. Kentucky’s public schools depend on talented educators and staff. Policy decisions affecting compensation structures should be evaluated not only in fiscal terms, but in terms of long-term workforce strength and student success.
In a recent KASS Live episode, KHSAA Commissioner Julian Tackett addressed the growing complexity surrounding high school athletics in Kentucky. From transfer eligibility under open enrollment to NIL guardrails and mid-season movement, the pressures facing districts are increasingly operational and immediate. Tackett emphasized that the KHSAA’s responsibility is consistent rule application grounded in member-approved policy, while superintendents remain central to maintaining fairness, clarity, and community trust when eligibility questions arise. The conversation also underscored the importance of safety, supervision, and partnership. Whether addressing fan conduct, officiating shortages, or compliance concerns, athletics reflect district leadership and school culture. With clear communication and steady collaboration between districts and the KHSAA, superintendents can protect student opportunity while preserving competitive integrity and public confidence. 👉 Watch the full conversation with Julian Tackett
When education funding debates move into budget season, conversations often revolve around line items, percentages, and projections. For district superintendents, however, the implications are far more tangible. They are measured in teacher salaries, bus replacement schedules, classroom resources, and student services. This session’s budget conversation centers heavily on recurring revenue through the SEEK formula. While multiple targeted investments are under discussion, the clearest message emerging is the importance of the SEEK base and its connection to district stability. Why the SEEK Base Matters The SEEK base is not simply a number in statute. It is the primary recurring funding mechanism that districts rely on for sustainable planning. When the base increases meaningfully, districts gain the ability to invest in instruction, remain competitive in staff compensation, and address long-term workforce challenges. When it remains flat, the pressure shifts locally. Over time, districts have experienced diminished buying power relative to 2008 levels. Inflationary pressures and rising operational costs continue to compound that challenge. Without recurring revenue growth, districts absorb those increases within fixed budgets. The result is not theoretical. It is operational. A Local Example: Rockcastle County Schools A funding impact report shared this week illustrates how these pressures manifest at the district level . On page 1 of the report, Rockcastle County Schools documents a 26 percent decrease in purchasing power compared to 2008. Bus replacement costs increased significantly, with a single bus rising from $97,115 in 2021 to $154,702 in 2026. The district will purchase four buses at a total cost of $618,808. Insurance costs tell a similar story. General and property insurance increased from $168,977 in 2020 to $467,555 in 2025 . Instructional curriculum now totals $1.2 million annually, and even a limited Chromebook replacement cycle at select grade 0 levels requires $300,000 plus additional charger Y . These are not optional expenses. They are core operational realities. Transportation and Instructional Tradeoffs On page 3 of the same report, Rockcastle details the transportation impact specifically . Fully funding SEEK transportation using prior-year spring data would provide $413,906, nearly funding three of the four buses needed for the upcoming year. Over a ten-year period, the district estimates a $7,040,240 deficit resulting from transportation not being fully funded . When transportation funding falls short, districts must redirect general fund dollars to close the gap. That shift carries instructional consequences: delayed salary adjustments, postponed program investments, and limited capacity to address workforce shortages. Superintendents presenting to budget committees emphasized this dynamic clearly. One district reported being funded at roughly 74 percent of actual transportation cost, requiring approximately $900,000 to be covered locally. The instructional opportunity cost of that gap is real. Tier I and Geographic Equity The third recurring revenue lever under discussion is Tier I equalization. An increase from 17.5 percent toward 20 percent has been referenced as a way to strengthen equity across districts with varying property wealth. As described in the Rockcastle report on page 4 , recurring SEEK funding supports: Expanded mental health services Special education and intervention staffing School resource officers Student services such as counseling and food access Cost-of-living salary increases Rising instructional programming costs These needs do not fluctuate annually. They are ongoing, and they require stable funding. The Power of Telling the Story The most effective advocacy this week did not rely on abstract percentages. It relied on district-level numbers and clearly articulated tradeoffs. Transportation funded at 71 to 74 percent. Four buses costing over $600,000. Insurance increases of nearly $300,000 in five years. A decade-long transportation deficit exceeding $7 million. These details shift the conversation from policy theory to district consequence. Legislators consistently respond to local impact framed through data and student outcomes. When superintendents connect SEEK base increases to competitive salaries, to workforce retention along border states, to expanded mental health supports, the budget conversation becomes grounded in operational reality. Recurring Revenue Is the Stability Strategy Targeted investments have value. School safety, induction programs, and principal mentoring initiatives all matter. But recurring revenue remains the foundation. The SEEK base, fully funded transportation using current data, and equitable Tier I adjustments represent structural stability. They allow districts to plan beyond a single fiscal year. They protect classroom resources from operational volatility. They restore balance between state and local funding responsibility. At the center of this discussion is not a formula. It is stewardship. District leaders are tasked with protecting instructional quality, sustaining safe environments, and maintaining public trust. Recurring revenue allows them to do that with foresight rather than reaction. Moving Forward Budget negotiations will continue to evolve. Early signals suggest interest in raising the SEEK base and improving transportation funding. Final outcomes will depend on continued engagement and clear communication from district leaders. The most effective approach remains consistent: Present the numbers. Connect them to instruction. Explain the consequence of inaction. Reinforce the long-term return on investment. As the Rockcastle report concludes, the return on investment is not abstract. It is the future leaders of Kentucky communities . In this budget cycle, the SEEK base is more than a funding mechanism. It is the clearest signal of the Commonwealth’s commitment to sustaining strong, stable, and future-ready public schools.
