Kentucky Education Fund Presentation & Questions | Commission on Race & Access to Opportunity

All right, so thank you all for the chance to be here today. I do welcome the opportunity to share about the Kentucky Education Fund. I'm a recently retired superintendent from Greene County Schools in Greensburg, Kentucky, and filled at retirement, so I saw the need for a trusted group to help Kentucky students, a Kentucky-based group. So I have partnered with the Kentucky Council of Area development districts the 15 area development districts and they've been instrumental as I shared today about forming this fund but we have declared to the Secretary of State's office and that's been confirmed that we are one of those 17 just so you all know all right a little bit about what we're about our motto is empowering students and strengthening Kentucky and what we want to do is expand opportunities for the students in the Commonwealth and we think if we do that we expand those opportunities over time we hope to improve outcomes and we hope to strengthen Kentucky. We hope to make this a better place for all, make this a better place to live, make this a place where students can stay home. With that we have developed a mission and a vision. One of the first statements on that mission statement you'll notice there is we want to remove financial and systemic barriers. So we want to remove barriers for children and our goal is in doing that is we reach that vision one day. A Kentucky where a student is defined by their talent, their ability, and their determination, and there's no barrier that stands in their way to get to where they want to be. So those are some things that shaped our mission statement and shaped our vision statement. We have goals that support that, and I'm not going to bore you and read through all those goals, but those speak much to the same. And one thing I do want to highlight in these goals is we realize that people are contributing to this fund to help students, and we want to be good stewards of those dollars and I think you all would want us to be good stewards of those dollars to make sure that these dollars get to students that are in need in the state of Kentucky and as I mentioned and I'll stress that probably several times we are Kentucky based our focus is on Kentucky the people that work for us are here in Kentucky we want to make sure we help those students some roles and responsibilities of the Kentucky Education Fund I'll speak to in just a minute but the area development districts have been very instrumental in providing resources, the Kentucky Council there, to purchase a robust software system. This is not something you can do on spreadsheets. This is not something anyone should take lightly. This is something that, whether that's good or bad for me, I wake up thinking about it and I go to bed thinking about it. And that's pretty bad for a recently retired person, but that's what I do. And we do manage the donations, and I want you to know how our fund is set up. People do contribute to an SGO, and we are that SGO. But for the schools that we partner with, we set up a fund for those schools. And when people contribute to us, they can designate where they want those dollars to go inside the state of Kentucky to the particular school that we partner with. And we provide all, do all the reporting. We provide the receipts to donors so they can take advantage of that tax credit when it comes tax season. In a similar manner, we also manage all student applications. So students that apply for these scholarships for a particular fund and that fund could be set up for the school or some type of education service provider. When people apply for those scholarships, those scholarships come to us. But at the same time, we know that we want this to be a true partnership with schools across the state of Kentucky. And while we are the ones that actually have to make determinations and award scholarships, we want to work with schools to make sure we are serving the students that are most in need, that need these scholarships the most, and at the same time to make sure these are actually students that exist and not just someone applying for something and they're not really there or they're trying to game the system in some way. But we do complete the required reporting. We will comply with all requirements. The Kentucky Council's office has already created a wonderful website. I've spoken with Georgia, other states, and they say you probably have the best site going. So if you haven't checked that out, check it out. Compliments to the Kentucky Council's Office for putting that together. They've also created a social media site. Once again, it's a great site. They've already started sharing documents, information to educate our state, and the people in the state is what will make this program successful. And they've already prepared some documents that we send out. We'll send out to schools. The first document we will send out to schools is a CPA document. nothing takes the place of someone sitting down with their tax preparer and their tax preparer says you need to take advantage of this opportunity so that's the first one the second one we'll send out is to families and communities we will share those documents with schools so they can distribute those across the communities that they live in and we will also work with schools on if people want to do payroll deductions in their schools they can contribute back to the children of the communities that they live in through a payroll deduction system and we our software is set up to do that people can basically contribute and their take-home pay every month is the take-home pay is the same and their tax status at the end of the year is the same so it's really a no-brainer to contribute in that model the roles of the area development districts and I have Casey Ellis back here with me he's the executive director of the Kentucky Council Office here in Frankfort just down the street we also have 15 area development districts across the state they've been great in educating stakeholders across the state they've been great in connecting us with donors community leaders they're connected deep within communities across the state and they've done a great job of networking for us and connecting us with the right people and identifying outreach opportunities for us and they've helped with the messaging as i've shared through social media and the website and they've they've hosted they will have hosted by the end of this month or the first of next month 15 educational sessions across the state one educational session in each of the 15 ad districts they will have done that and uh i can't say i can't stress enough there would be no kentucky education fund without that organization so i want to give kudos to them because they didn't have to but they did and they did so because they see they saw a need for the children of kentucky and they did purchase our software system and that's not cheap we will reimburse them with time but once again they come up with the funds to do that up front because they're as you might know There's no contributions coming in currently. We do sign MOUs with institutions across the state. We're not going to partner with anyone that's not a partner with us because we do want this to be a true partnership. So we have signed agreements, and we will continue to do so so that funds and schools are ready to accept donations for their children come January 1st of 2027. And I'm going to pause there. There's my contact information. That's my cell number. If you've got any questions, I'll say call Rob Stafford. his cell numbers on there as well and that's our email addresses that's our website there's a social media site but uh thank you for letting me be here thank you and i appreciate your work and try and help organize SGOs across the state we'll start with co-chair Jackson thank you madam chair uh Will thanks for being here i saw Will at our local AD district a couple of months ago and and a much more lengthy presentation but a very good presentation i appreciate what you're doing i'm sure you're doing that all across the state absolutely uh i guess my question would be have you got how many schools have already signed up with you or been in touch with you is this thing going like you thought it would or where do we stand representative Jackson that's uh it's definitely going and uh that's probably you know you know we think about it every day because we want to make sure this is the best it can be i know you all do as well if we look at individual schools it's it's in the hundreds it will probably reach thousands if we look at just public districts it'll be over 100 public districts that partner with us before this is said and done senator Burke thank you and again i mean this goes to my confusion i think about this whole system my first question is how much did we pay for the software my second question is how does this money go to public schools yeah or is there a way for it to get into our public schools or does it only go to private schools okay software cost um year one is i don't know the exact number it was tens of thousands of dollars probably approaching thirty thousand dollars uh and over a five-year agreement that's probably like $100,000 or so. You get into six figures then if you look at the five-year deal. To answer your question, 100%, it can go to public schools. There is no tuition. I'll start at the high school and work down. At the high school, it can cover dual credit fees. It can cover equipment. If you're in a career and technical education program, it can cover the associated cost of that equipment for families for those programs as well. If you have a tutoring program after school, it could cover that tutoring program. The children that are in need, keep them after school. It could cover the cost of that tutoring program and the transportation to get those students home. If students need to come to summer school for a summer tutoring program, it could cover the cost of that program as well, along with the associated cost to get those children to and from school. I think about at the elementary level I'll just go there enrichment type activities field trips the associated transportation that goes with those back to school supplies the supplies that are needed to be at school for any level it could cover those costs as well there's just I could go on and on there's a multitude of things and I left out technology a child could get their own device and that they might get one in elementary school it may wear out to get another one in middle school they get another one in high school, they could actually take that on to college with them. So it could get them their own device and the software that goes with those as well. Keep in mind, it's the students and the families that are applying for these scholarships, and it's the schools that are offering these services or this equipment for those students, but it is the students that are applying and their families, and the schools provide the services to them. So, yes, it can certainly benefit our public schools. I hope that helps. Thank you, Senator Titus. Thank you so much for all the work that you've done. What concerns are you hearing from our public school leaders, our superintendents on the ground? They vary. I go to some places, they think, can we spend all these dollars? And so that's a concern. I think the latest guidance did provide some calm for that because dollars donated in 2027 now you have till December 31st of 2028 to expend those but i think that's more the public school mindset and i say that as a public educator that i was because this is different this is something we've it's not a road that we've been down because they think where all these dollars are going to be there how do i spend spend those and i i tried to calm them and i say look let's let's raise the funds first and there there will be a way to expend those dollars so i hear that also here's some concerns on we all have in our communities the one percent people that say i give enough to the school system or this or that or i pay enough in taxes you'll probably hear that too where you live i don't know um but we all hear that as well so but at the end of the day uh you know i tried to calm them as well i'm going to give my family's going to give 3,400 because i know where that 3,400 is going uh if i give 3,400 to Greene County schools i would rather do that than send it to Washington DC i do feel like my local school system my community school will do a better job of managing those dollars than Washington DC does so those those are a couple things there's probably others senator but uh if that's what pops in my mind initially senator Berg will we be keeping track by school how much money they're getting and will that be transparent yes yes yes okay thank you thank you i really appreciate your presentations a little more of the details i think people are it is a very new program and trying to figure out who's driving whom and some of this is difficult so you're very much an umbrella for schools and a connecting point yes for families um which is a good a good thing and you mentioned they can designate the funds but you're not legally obligated to to do that correct excuse me if a donor donates and puts in the memo please consider this school are you legally required to do that we our model allows them to do that we could have a general account as well i think to answer your question yes so someone may want to donate to a general account and then it would be up to our governing board to decide how to distribute those dollars across our partnering institutions okay thank you that's what i was curious about thank you very much appreciate it