In Conversation With…features an interview between a leader or figure involved in public education and a staff member of the Kentucky School Advocate.

Q. How will the budget just passed by the General Assembly affect the center?

A. This current fiscal year, the General Assembly allocated $10.3 million to fund safe school programs. From that allocation, the Center for School Safety receives 10 percent to operate the Kentucky Center for School Safety (KCSS) which included our partners KSBA, Murray State University and our consultants. The remaining 90 percent of the money is allocated to all of the Commonwealth’s school districts.

In the budget that was just passed by the General Assembly, the allocation was reduced to $4.3 million, or roughly a 58 percent cut. That dropped the center’s operating budget from roughly $1 million to about $430,000. The General Assembly restored an additional $400,000 to the center’s operating budget, which takes us back to FY 2005-06 operating level, which was the lowest KCSS allocation since its inception.

So the center’s budget has been cut by 21 percent.

Q. What impact will the cuts have on school safety?

A. To date, 70 percent of the monies that were provided to the school districts were used to support alternative education programs. Specifically, this provides staff members who teach children who are behaviorally challenged and/or academically falling behind.

What’s going to happen to those programs and the students who are receiving these services — we don’t know.

When you have a 58 percent cut, those kids have to go somewhere and there are basically two options: return these students back into the regular education program or possibly see them drop out. Why?...Because alternative programs are a school district’s primary dropout prevention program.

What further complicates this is that state and federal dollars have been reduced for juvenile day treatment centers, or A-6 programs. Alternative programs are A-5.

Kids in the A-6 programs are usually incarcerated or state agency children. If those programs are eliminated, they would normally go to an A-5 program. If the A-5 programs are eliminated, many of these students are possibly going to go straight into regular ed programs.

People in the media have asked me to predict what may happen … I would predict that these non-traditional students, who exhibit behavioral and/or academic deficiencies, will find it very difficult to succeed and as a result possible misbehaviors will increase and so will suspensions. If behaviors escalate to the point where they are involved in drugs, bringing weapons on campus and/or assaults, you’re going to see more expulsions without services than ever before, simply because there are not other alternatives available to the school district. My greatest concern, which is shared by directors of other state school safety centers, is that of complacency. We must keep student and staff safety on the front burner permanently. People may have forgotten there were five school shootings in one week back in October.

It is so hard to measure prevention. How do you measure what didn’t happen? For every one school shooting we’ve had in our country, we might have had 25 that were averted because kids broke the code of silence. If we start paring back our school safety efforts in Kentucky, I’m hoping that we don’t experience any tragedies as we did during the 90’s. But I can certainly say that if things start to turn negative in safety issues, behavior issues, management issues, drug and alcohol issues, then one might conclude the reductions in school safety possibly contributed to part of the problem.

Q. What can school districts do?

A. What we’re going to have to do, in conjunction with our partners, is to do a better job of letting our legislators know what we do. We need to find how we can best inform them of what we’re doing.

We have been a very active agency during the past eight years. We have met with 186,000 people, we’ve conducted over 200 statewide trainings and we’ve been in every single school district to assist educators in one form or fashion. We have been referred to by some superintendents and principals as a "one-stop shop." I consider this a real compliment…to know that our educators see us as an efficient resource that is accessible to them.

Q. How will this affect the center’s staffing levels and ability to deliver services?

A. Because we were able to keep a basic amount of money, full-time employees will not be affected. We normally have a cadre of retired educators who go out and use their expertise in such areas as school safety assessments, emergency management planning, behavior management, anti-bullying training and instructional discipline to mention just a few. There will probably be at least a dozen contractors we will not be able to use for this coming fiscal year. As a result, current staff will attempt to deliver some of these services. However, this will take us away from our daily routine responsibilities. That being said, we’re going to pick up as much of that work as possible.

Hopefully, this will only be for the next two years.

Our educators are used to making a call and having us being able to respond immediately. We have done so much over the past eight years that it is really disheartening not to be able to deliver the level of statewide services that we have in prior years.

More specifically, we will have to reduce the number of school safety assessments that we normally conduct. We will not be able to co-sponsor 12 child-serving state conferences as we have in the past. We will reduce our statewide trainings by at least 50 percent; we will reduce the number of professional development opportunities that we provided to schools by at least 50 percent.

Q. Do you have any indication of how school districts are going to handle these cuts, particularly in regards to their alternative programs?

A. In the past, after KCSS received its operating funding the remaining funds were distributed according to a set formula. Each school district receives a base allocation of $20,000 and the remaining pool of money is divided on a per-pupil basis. We simply divide it by the number of students in our state and come up with a per-pupil allocation, which this year was $9.80. Jefferson County, for example, received $20,000 this year plus $9.80 times (approximately) 85,000 kids ADA, which put them around $845,000. If we apply that same formula this upcoming biennium using the same formula, we would start with $3.5 million for the schools, and after giving each district $20,000, the per pupil ADA allocation becomes 50 cents. That puts Jefferson County down around $71,000 or a 92 percent reduction in their allocation.

If you look at one of our smaller school districts such as West Point, they’re only losing 6 percent of their monies under the current formula. As a result, larger school districts have asked us to revisit that formula for this next biennium because of the disproportionate percent of reduction in these funds. KCSS’s Board of Directors is considering adjusting the formula to more equitably distribute these reduced funds.

Q. How far back do these cuts set the center and school safety in Kentucky?

A. In my opinion, this sets us back to 1999, because the funding has been cut by more than half. Alternative programs will feel the impact of this budget cut. Ironically, some people say alternative education should not be considered as a school safety program, but I disagree. Our nontraditional students are kids who are in grave need of immediate, intensive intervention that cannot be provided in a regular classroom setting, because they are coping with issues such as drugs and alcohol abuse, aggressive behavior and various academic deficiencies just to mention a few. We don’t want to lose these kids.

In addition, under No Child Left Behind, we cannot "put those kids out" without trying to do everything we possibly can do. They need to be involved in a program that is attempting to save them from dropping out while also addressing appropriate behavior habits. I fear that many of these currently offered services will be severely reduced or eliminated, possibly compromising the goal of leaving no kid behind.