Low pay, funding cuts, political abuse. A short history of teacher-bashing in Kentucky.

Last week, reporter Valarie Honeycutt Spears wrote an excellent story about a teacher shortage across the state of Kentucky. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, while fewer college students are getting education degrees to enter the field.

Let’s be very clear about what’s going on: Kentucky teachers have been routinely insulted, underpaid and undermined while the institutions they work for are systematically underfunded. At the same time, their leaders, the people who should be doing the opposite of all these things denigrate them while they put all their energy into creating a charter school system, which will suck more money away from public schools. Think about that for a minute, the people appointed to run Kentucky’s public schools think public schools should be replaced by a different system.

“What once was a highly respected career, has become the butt of many peoples’ jokes, even though educators are truly some of the most important people in society,” Rowan County teacher Allison Slone told Spears. “Kentucky has a good ‘ole boy system that hinders the growth and experience of highly qualified individuals to gain and maintain employment and teachers fear retribution for speaking their mind.”

Let’s review how we got here, shall we?

January, 2015: Matt Bevin becomes governor.

November, 2016: The House flips to a majority of Republicans for the first time in 95 years, putting the GOP in control of the legislative and executive branches.

March, 2017: Legislation to allow charter schools passes the General Assembly, signed into law by Bevin.

June, 2017: Bevin dissolves and reorganizes the Kentucky Board of Education and the Education Professional Standards Board, which oversees teacher certification. His new school board appointees, including his former gubernatorial opponent, Hal Heiner, are charter school advocates.

March, 2018: Teachers begin protesting proposed changes to their pensions and cuts to education programs; Bevin accuses the teachers and their union, the Kentucky Education Association of having a “thug mentality.” He also says teachers are “selfish” and ignorant.”

April 2, 2018: Thousands of teachers storm the Capitol building to protest changes to their pensions and cuts to education, which include funds for teacher training.

April 13, 2018: Bevin says “I guarantee” a child was sexually assaulted because teachers were protesting at the Capitol instead of being in classrooms.

April 17, 2018: The Kentucky Board of Education ousts Education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt and appoints Wayne Lewis, a University of Kentucky education professor who studies and advocates for charter schools.

August, 2018: The reconfigured Education Professional Standards Board, which oversees teacher certification, drops the requirement that teachers receive masters’ degrees to earn higher rank and higher pay.

March, 2019: Teachers return to Frankfort to protest pensions, cuts and charter schools, causing some school districts to close. A month later, Lewis sends subpoenas to Jefferson and several other school districts to get information about teachers who used sick days for the protests.

Four years later, Bevin is running for re-election amid a severe teacher shortage as we hurtle toward charter schools, when other districts, according to the New York Times, are backing away from charter schools because of very uneven results for students.

Bevin’s real enemy, of course, is the KEA, the only union that’s really ever had any clout in Frankfort, and has been able to thus far halt charter school expansion by opposing a funding mechanism that would allow charters to use public school money that follows each student. That could change as early as January, when the General Assembly convenes for a budget session.

Of course, Kentucky schools have problems, many of them caused by years of flat or declining state funding. In 2014, a report found that if Kentucky schools had been properly funded, they would need $2.4 billion in extra funding. And now, fewer teachers will mean bigger classrooms and fewer services.

Instead, legislators are far more concerned with whether every school has “In God We Trust” emblazoned on their walls.

Public school teachers should be the most venerated, highly skilled and highly paid members of our society, as they are in other countries, because other countries recognize there is no more important work. We don’t pay them as much as we should, the least we could do is respect them. But no, the governor trash talks them on TV, and undermines public schools behind the scenes.

No wonder teachers are despondent. It’s depressing to think that K-12 education, which along with higher education, has the power to do more to bring Kentucky up from its terrible economic rankings, has instead become a popular punching bag for our state’s leaders.

Linda Blackford writes columns and commentary for the Herald-Leader.

This story was originally published July 31, 2019 at 11:48 AM.