COVINGTON — The group that forced the state to revamp its education system has hired a nationally recognized professor to study whether lawmakers are adequately funding Kentucky's public schools.

        The Council for Better Education is paying Deborah Verstegen, professor in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, $49,100 to determine the cost of providing an adequate education for Kentucky's kindergarten through 12th-grade pupils.

        “The council felt that it was important to have an adequacy study conducted to determine whether adequate funding has been provided by the General Assembly to meet the needs of students as outlined under the Kentucky Education Reform Act,” said Oldham County School Superintendent Blake Haselton, the council's vice president for research.

        Leaders of the council — made up of more than 140, or about 80 percent, of the state's 176 school districts — say the study will be presented to members of the General Assembly in time for their January session.

        The council brought the lawsuit that resulted in the 1990 Kentucky Educational Reform Actafter a landmark court decision declared Kentucky's educational system unconstitutional.

        The adequacy study is among three separate ones in the works on various aspects of the state's school funding system.

        The General Assembly's Program Review and Investigations Committee, which is co-chaired by state Sen. Katie Stine, R-Fort Thomas, has begun a study that will review how calculations are made in the state's school funding program, known as Support Education Excellence in Kentucky (SEEK).

        The study also will examine how the formula affects different school districts and whether the data used in the calculations areaccurate. The staff of the bipartisan committee is expected to complete the study by the fall.

        “When the committee undertakes a study, that usually causes the executive branch to change what they're doing without us even having to adopt statutes. The committee has a lot of credibility,” Ms. Stine said. “We need to reassess how this funding mechanism is done.”

        A third study is in the works by the state Department of Education to examine adequacy in the SEEK formula, Mr. Bassett said.

        Mr. Haselton said the council wanted a person without ties to Kentucky to conduct the study.

        “It's not that we're not confident in (the other) studies. The researchers they've used are also nationally recognized,” Mr. Haselton said. “We felt that in looking at the questions we wanted to commission a study with an individual we thought could review it.”

        Superintendents Fred Bassett of Beechwood Schools and Larry Stinson of Fort Thomas Schools earlier this week went before the Program Review and Investigations Committee to discuss what they believe are shortcomings with the SEEK formula.

        Mr. Bassett said Education Commissioner Gene Wilhoit, who also spoke to committee members, admitted that there are problems with the SEEK formula that need to be looked at.

        But the commissioner said the formula is more equitable today than it was before the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act was enacted, when every school district received the same amount of state dollars per student.

        Now districts with high property values bring in more local taxes, but they get less state funding under the SEEK formula.

        “(Mr. Wilhoit) just admitting that there are problems with the formula is a first for the Department of Education. It's getting to the point where they can't push them under the rug and hide them,” Mr. Bassett said.

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