Kentucky’s future in the balance

Homelessness among Kentucky students and less opportunity for minority students are among the state’s largest issues. Yes, we may be fighting to keep jobs in certain industries, to keep our citizens away from heroin and other illegal drugs, and to keep a voice in our politics, but we need to focus on fighting for the students.

Kentucky students are not getting the education they need to be successful later in life. Statistics show that people who are more intelligent tend to travel more and farther away from their hometowns. We can assume that most Kentucky students who are not getting sufficiently taught stay here for most, if not all, of their lives and will have a voice to be heard and influence how our commonwealth functions.

That means that in the next decade, Kentucky will be littered with citizens who were not properly educated. So even if we succeed in resolving the other issues but failed to educate future generations, all of those successes will be unraveled and eliminated by those who are uneducated and rising to take over what we have built.

Our school systems need better funding, our social programs need to be stronger to get families and students under roofs, and we need to give these future constituents the tools they need to succeed.

This story was originally published August 26, 2016 at 8:40 PM with the headline "Kentucky’s future in the balance."