When the Council for Better Education formed nearly two decades ago to protest the inequities of school financing, the group was perceived as a “bunch of disgruntled rabble-rousers,” says founding member Jack Moreland.

        The members were a handful of small, financially strapped school districts with a constitutional gripe:

        The education provided cannot be equal unless the education funding provided is equal.

        “When they first began, there was no clout. They were just another education organization,” said Brad Hughes, spokesman for the Kentucky School Boards Association.

        But when the group reformed in February — some 140 school districts — and indicated it was considering suing the General Assembly, many legislators looked up quickly, with their knees shaking.

        They knew the group meant business.

        The last time the disgruntled bunch of rabble-rousers sued, its constitutional gripe in 1984 turned into the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. Kentucky rebuilt its education system from the first stick.
       

Suit results in KERA

        The now-famous equity lawsuit against the General Assembly was argued before the state Supreme Court by former Gov. Bert T. Combs. His victory led to a landmark court opinion declaring Kentucky's education system unconstitutional.

        Make the constitutional right to equal education start with equal funding, the court told the General Assembly.

        The opinion forced the 1990 law, known statewide as KERA. Under it, Kentucky became one of the first states to completely reform its entire educational system — a process Ohio is now starting.

        And now the group has rebanded, re-elected Jack Moreland — now Covington Independent Schools Superintendent — president and is looking again at the state budget and school funding.

        “After the first of July, when the budget is resolved or if it isn't resolved, I think they're going to be a major player,” said Paul Whalen of Fort Thomas, a member of the Kentucky Board of Education.

        “I think they're going to force the General Assembly's hand in doing something in respect to funding.”
       

Budget and education funds

        Kentucky's General Assembly left the regular session and a special session called by the governor without passing a state budget, leaving educators uncertain about their budgets beginning June 15 and facing a required 2.7 percent pay increase for some employees.

        “They'll definitely be listened to,” said Robert F. Sexton, executive director of the Lexington-based Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, a non-profit education advocacy group.

        “They have the potential to be a very powerful voice. And it's likely they'll be a strong voice around financial issues.”

        Mr. Moreland said the council's resurgence is a way to address the growing frustration among elementary and secondary educators.

        “Some of it certainly is the whole litany of things we've gone through with the budget. But even more than that, we have seen a declining percentage of money out of the general fund go to elementary and secondary education over the past (several years),” said Mr. Moreland, whose former district of Dayton, Ky., was one of the 16 that sued the General Assembly in 1984.
       

$150 million a year drop

        A study by the Kentucky School Boards Association showed that the percentage of the state budget going to elementary and secondary education slid over the last eight years. The drop is the equivalent to an average of $150 million a year, Mr. Hughes said.

        The reformed council says it wants to find a long-term solution for KERA's promised adequacy in state funding for elementary and secondary education. It's also trying to address the “unfunded” mandate of mandatory 2.7 percent raises for some school employees required, but not funded in the state budget.

Adequacy the issue

        Upset with the unfunded mandate, the council last month passed a resolution to have its attorney look into possible legal action against the General Assembly. The council will discuss its goals when it meets in conjunction with next month's Kentucky Association of School Superintendents conference in Lexington.
       Allan Odden, an expert on school financing and professor of Education Administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said adequacy in school funding is a controversial topic nationwide. He recommends that Kentucky officials study whether funding is adequate.

        “There probably are still some shortcomings,” said Mr. Odden, who co-authored a 10-year study of Kentucky's school funding program last year. “It raises the financing of the whole standards movement.”

        Kay Freeland, superintendent of Rowan County Schools, said, “There is concern across the state about equity and adequacy. I think that's very evident after this last legislative session. But I think the bigger question that has to be addressed is adequacy.”

        Ms. Freeland, the council's secretary-treasurer, said the group has collected about $106,000 from membership dues.

        Tony Collins, a retired superintendent of Wolfe County Schools, one of the districts involved when the council formed in 1984, said his concerns remain about state funding for elementary and secondary education.

        “The state funding has to be there and it has to be unilateral, across the board funding,” said Mr. Collins, now an assistant to the president for special projects at Somerset Community College.

        But not every school district has joined the council.

        Bracken County Interim Superintendent Bob Seiter said his district hasn't ruled out joining the council, but now isn't the right time.

        “We're monitoring the situation very closely. We know the activities that the council is involved in and we support them and lend support to anything they ask us to do,” said Mr. Seiter, who leads the 1,400-student district.

        “We just felt like at this time we did not feel like (joining the council) was financially what we wanted to do.”

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