Editorial: Education needs funds

As anyone who attends the Casey County School Board meetings can see, our Board and District staff have done a marvelous job of being fiscal conservatives, yet without skimping on quality teachers, staff, or instructional materials and resources for students.
However, the financial cushion that the Board has worked hard to build is slowly being eroded away by continuous cuts on the state and federal levels along with rising prices of goods and services.
SEEK funding, the amount the state gives to each school district based on students’ average daily attendance, is now back at the 2008 level.
State legislators like to say that they are protecting education by not cutting SEEK funding but how does one explain that the 2008 SEEK allocation was $3,822 and the 2013 level has been set at $3,833, an increase of $11 per student.
Our District has received no state funding for new textbooks since 2007 and the transportation portion of SEEK funding has been cut from 87.8 percent in 2006 to 62.5 percent in 2013.
Huh? Diesel fuel for buses has risen from about $3 a gallon in 2010 to near $4 a gallon today.
All these state cuts mean that our local board must learn to do more with less money.
But if lawmakers say that we need to educate our children to compete in the global marketplace, it ain’t gonna happen on the cheap.
Politicians can spin it any way they want to, but facts and figures tell the real story — our districts are suffering financially.
Perhaps lawmakers could concentrate on finding more money for education and not spending it on special called sessions and such.