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Hickman County School System: Concerns from the Distant Ramparts of Educational Reality
Hickman County School System: Concerns from the Distant Ramparts of Education Reality

Hickman County School administrators, 281 miles from Frankfort, are watching the raging debate in the state capital over the future of educational programs as another battle over educational funding takes place in their front yards. They watch in horror, as what passes for legislative process in Frankfort, resembles more of a train wreck with each passing hour.

The budget debate in Frankfort is about how to pay for education in Kentucky without cutting funds for teachers or school programs.

Each state dollar of the General Fund is now under tremendous pressures from (1) a failing local government infrastructure (2) severe loss of local taxation base as population ages (3) loss of local jobs from manufacturing plants that either are closing or moving out of country and (4) rising costs from oil prices and health care costs.

For the locals, the education battle is as real as it gets. They don’t have time to talk about theory or thresholds of unfunded program benchmarks. In 2008, they must confront and deal with the reality of what budget cuts mean to a local district.

Hickman County School District has 792 students in 7th through 12th grades. A staff of 125 provides teaching and administration for these students. The county has two communities: (1) Clinton, population of 1,000, the county seat and (2) Columbus, population of 229, a modern ghost town where the community lives only in its historic name, not in any sense of functional local government.

Hickman County's population is slipping below 5,000. The 2010 census will probably show the population at 4,600. In each of the past two years, the average number of deaths has been over 220, a factor of 4% loss.

The funding realities for the school system in Hickman County is that Frankfort is going to cut funding again as the local tax base gets smaller. And if that was not enough bad news, forces and trends outside the control of the school system, the ever rising costs of oil and heating fuel, beats down on any attempts to balance school year budgets.

Hickman County has 1,018 miles of bus travel each day for its students. The fuel costs is 6.8 % of the overall school budget. And now, the state education department is paying only 87 % of their fuel reimbursement costs to the county because they are short of money.

As great as those costs are for the county, it is the human cost that really takes its toll on the morale of the school system. Each year by April 30th, the school system must have their teacher contracts finalized for the next school year. This year, the ugly specter of budget disaster looms if the General Assembly fails to enact a budget by June 1 and have to come back in July or August to reach agreement on the budget.

The school year for Hickman County starts in early August, with or without teachers and programs. The tragedy in all of this great debate is the great loss inflicted upon the bright young minds trying to learn and start their journey toward careers and citizenship in the Commonwealth.

Who will explain to them how laws are made and how government functions in their best interests?

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