Advocates to lobby for school choice issue
By KRISTIN TAYLOR
Staff Writer
The grassroots Advocates for School Choice don't want to support one local school district over the other but rather lobby for school choice in general.
Many of the parents at the group's meeting Monday night live in the Calloway County district but send their children to the city school district. Other parents involved live in the city district and have children attending Calloway. And still some parents live in the same district in which their children are enrolled.
One of the latter is Carolyn Winchester, who had third- and fourth-grade boys in the Murray system.
"If you are city-city, if you are county-county, then you still need to speak up for school choice," Winchester said with about 50 people gathered in the Curris Center Ballroom. "It affects all of us. We need to get people who are complacent with this issue to get excited."
The administrations and boards at Murray Independent and Calloway County are at odds over the 2005-06 non-resident average daily attendance contracts. Officials from both districts have made proposals only to have them rejected or not considered by the other district.
Murray Independent Board of Education meets at 7 tonight in special session at the Carter Administration Building. The agenda includes four executive sessions for personnel and possible litigation matters.
The Advocates for School Choice agreed Monday to apply pressure to both boards and keep lobbying for school choice through letters to lawmakers and school officials.
Calloway officials have said they want to achieve a balance between the number of students transferring from one local district to the other. Right now more than 400 students are leaving Calloway to go to Murray, while only about 200 are going from Murray to the county, according to officials from both districts. However Calloway Superintendent Steve Hoskins said during last week's board meeting an additional 100 or more students who reside in the county district are not on the non-resident list for Murray.
The ADA money amounts to about $3,222 per student, but officials have said that figure is only about half of what it takes to educate a child. The non-resident ADA contracts allow districts to receive this money from the state for the students who are attending schools outside their home districts. ADA funds amount to a combined $1.9 million for the two districts - about $1.2 million for Murray and another $700,000 for Calloway - according to the current contracts.
The Kentucky Department of Education has a Feb. 1 deadline for schools to agree on the non-resident contracts for the 2005-06 academic year. If Murray and Calloway don't reach an agreement by then, the state board of education could become involved.
Monday's meeting also included guest speaker Jim Waters, director of policy and communications at the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions. He shared his perception of the school choice issue statewide, citing a similar dispute between Breathitt County and Jackson Independent in eastern Kentucky.
Waters said school choice does not financially hurt districts but rather the competition has allowed both Calloway and Murray to thrive. He said both districts have improved their standardized test scores and have more college-bound students.
"We aren't saying tonight that one district is better than the other," Waters said. "What we are saying is choice is always the best way."
He said the dispute could sour what is working well. For instance, unreported non-resident students would hurt both districts. "Calloway wants to be able to say we are losing this many students instead of this many," Waters said, "but the real issue would be Murray is losing money too because they aren't getting ADA money either."
Waters said the school choice dispute carries with it a financial burden, even though the issue goes far beyond money. Murray's recent proposal said students could continue coming to that district even if the city schools didn't receive ADA money for the transfers from Calloway.
"If they deny a transfer and the students goes anyway, then Calloway doesn't get that money," Waters said. "Guess where that money goes? It stays in Frankfort."
For the complete story, see Tuesday's >Ledger & Times.
Story created Dec 14, 2004 - 11:52:14 EST.
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