Jack Lackey, the attorney for the Christian County Board of Education, submitted the following letter to the editor.
Somewhere at 6 am on a weekday in Christian County, a 12-year-old girl is getting her 6-year-old brother ready for school. She’s exhausted after a night of struggling to sleep through the nightly chaos of her home. Their single mother is a victim of domestic violence and addicted to drugs.
This little girl can’t wait to get to school because it’s the only place she feels safe. She has had to grow up too fast and all she wants is a chance at a better life.
Education is that little girl’s best chance at a better life, and on November 5, our community can send a powerful and positive message to that little girl. We can tell her that we love her enough to provide her the same educational opportunities as other children. We can send her that message by voting for the Nickel.
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Both of our high schools need to be replaced or renovated. They no longer provide our public-school students the educational opportunities enjoyed by almost all their peers.
But we can’t renovate or replace our high schools without the additional funding from the Nickel.
Our maintenance teams work hard maintaining our schools with limited funds. Like school districts across the country, our district has struggled to maintain its facilities without enough funding. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (“NCES”), inadequate facilities funding leads “facilities problems [to] multiply, which can result not only in health and safety problems, but also in increased costs of repairs.”
Funding for facilities has been inadequate since KERA passed. FSPK (sometimes referred to as the original Nickel, which is required by the state) funding alone is just not enough.
Many districts soon recognized this inadequacy in 1990s and early 2000s and passed a Nickel to supplement their building funds before things got too bad. In fact, 112 school districts have adopted one or more Nickels to supplement their respective building funds. Our district has not.
The Kentucky Dept. of Education (KDE) classifies Hopkinsville High School (HHS), which is 57 years old, as a Category 5- the worst rating possible. Fifty-year-old Christian County High School (CCHS) is not much better as a Category 4.
The life of a typical high school is about 50 to 60 years. According to NCES, “After 40 years a school building begins rapid deterioration, and after 60 years most schools are abandoned.”
The old HHS on Walnut was replaced when it was 50 years old. The old CCHS, which became CCMS, was replaced when it was 52 years old. Fort Campbell just built a new high school, replacing a school that was 53 years old.
Our high schools do not provide the same educational opportunities as high schools in places that already have the Nickel, like Warren County, Marshall County, or McCracken County.
Our ability to address construction needs has been further hampered by cuts in state funding since 2008. According to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, annual state per-pupil funding has been cut by 22 percent in real dollars since 2008. For our district, that’s a cut of about $6 million every year.
These cuts make local tax revenue critical to the success of our schools. Of 173 school districts in Kentucky, we have the 8th lowest tax rate. There is simply not enough local tax revenue to compete with neighboring communities.
Our district has done well to navigate this difficult financial environment. According to the Prichard Committee, our district spends $823 less per pupil than the state average, an annual savings of $7 million each year.
The Nickel is our community’s chance to step up. The Nickel represents a small increase in property taxes dedicated to construction needs. The Nickel is 5.5 cents per $100 of property and will cost the average homeowner less than 15 cents a day.
The Nickel is not a 5% tax. It is a 0.055% tax. To calculate the Nickel, a homeowner can multiply the tax value of his or her home by 0.00055.
The Nickel will allow our community to begin addressing our aging high schools.
On November 5, our community will send a message to that little girl. Will it be a message that we value and love her enough to provide her the same educational opportunities as other kids? I sure hope so.
Jack Lackey is the attorney for the Christian County Board of Education.
