Senate Passes 2-Year Budget Emphasizing Education

The Kentucky Senate has passed its version of a two-year state spending plan, in what amounts to another step in the process to get a new state budget.
 
The Republican-led chamber voted 26-11 after a long debate Tuesday to pass its spending proposal.
 
That sets up the next phase of the budget debate, when conferees from the House and Senate will work in the coming days to iron out differences between the chambers' spending plans.

As part of the plan, senators want to put more police officers in public schools. The proposal would make it cheaper for school districts and law enforcement agencies to hire retired officers to patrol public schools by exempting them from expensive health insurance contributions. The proposal would also let state troopers get second jobs as school resource officers, which is not allowed now.

This proposal comes on the same day a school resource officer confronted a teenage gunman in a Maryland high school, which ended in the fatal wounding of the student. And it is nearly two months after a shooting at Marshall County High School left two students dead and more than a dozen others wounded, the first of multiple tragedies this year that have stirred debate about the role of guns in school safety plans.

The emphasis on public schools comes at a time when tensions are high between teachers and the legislature. On Wednesday, schools in at least six eastern Kentucky districts will close so teachers and staff can travel to the state Capitol for a rally to oppose cuts to their retirement benefits and other structural changes designed to stabilize their woefully underfunded pension system.

Much of that anger has been directed at Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, who has called teachers opposing the pension bill "selfish" and "willfully blind." Bevin's budget proposal also cut $138 million from school buses, prompting alarm from districts across the state that would have to pick up the cost.

The Senate's budget, like the one the House of Representatives passed a few weeks ago, restores the money for school buses. It directs any shortfall in retired teacher health benefits be covered in full and increases classroom spending by $3 per student over what Bevin proposed, although less than the House had proposed.

And it would set aside $8.5 million for 14 eastern Kentucky school districts at risk of closing because of a decline in revenue from a tax on unmined minerals.