Lt. Governor Jacqueline Coleman stopped in Owensboro on Tuesday to discuss her and Gov. Andy Beshear’s plan for public education, touching on several highlights including an 11% across-the-board raise for school employees and universal funding for pre-Kindergarten. She also emphasized the need for student loan forgiveness and classroom funding, saying an investment in teachers is key to the state’s long-term economic development.
Coleman — who spent years as a teacher and school administrator — spoke to a crowd of about 30 people, most of them donning Kentucky Education Association T-shirts, at the Western Kentucky Botanical Garden on Tuesday. She was introduced by Tommy Thompson, who served as a Democratic State Representative for Owensboro from 2003-2017.
“When I was in the legislature, (Coleman) would be in the Capitol often, advocating for education,” Thompson said. “… In her role as both an educator and as a leader, she’s worked hard to expand access to public education and to the resources necessary to fund public education. She’s advocated for funding, and she also worked to make sure that GED tests were free so people could take those tests and get their degrees. You couldn’t have a better friend for education, and teachers couldn’t have a better advocate or better supporter than Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman.”
Coleman stressed the top priority of her and Beshear’s “Education First Plan” is an 11% raise for all teachers and staff.
“You guys who have worked through pandemics and floods and tornadoes and all of the challenges that you faced all these years in your classrooms, you deserve to be compensated for that expertise,” she said. “When you think about what Gov. Beshear and I are working towards when it comes to public education, our No. 1 pillar of our plan is to make sure that every single school employee across the board gets an 11% raise. That is long overdue. That is well-deserved.”
Coleman also briefly touched on several other key points of the plan. She noted their opposition to private school vouchers, saying “not only is that a bad decision for our schools, that’s a bad deal for our taxpayers, quite frankly, to not know how their tax dollars are being used within the school systems.”
She also emphasized the desire for fully funded universal pre-K for every 4-year-old in Kentucky.
“That is an investment in the next generation of Kentuckians, but it’s also an investment in today’s workforce to make sure that everyone who wants to go to work isn’t crippled by the rising cost of child care and private preschool,” Coleman said.
On a similar note, Coleman said teachers deserve to have student loan forgiveness and fully funded classroom resources.
“Teachers are paying out of their own pockets for resources for other people’s children in their classrooms, while also being disrespectfully underpaid and having to pay off their own college debt. That means they can’t save for their own child’s education,” she said.
Coleman said such funding measures don’t just benefit the teachers, as it is an investment in Kentucky. She pointed to the billions of dollars in economic development investments across the Commonwealth that Beshear has announced over the last couple of years.
“We can not remain No. 2 in economic development in this country if we remain No. 44 in teacher pay. It doesn’t work that way,” she said. “We have to make sure we’re investing in the original job creators, which are our teachers. I think about all of the jobs being created all across Kentucky — 50,000 new, good-paying jobs. We are No. 3 in the nation in rural job creation … We cannot continue to be No. 3 in rural job creation if we continue to underfund the largest employer in every rural community, and that is our public school system.”
Coleman added, “The future of Kentucky’s economy is in our classrooms today. This is not just an investment in public education. This is an investment in people. This is an investment in job creation and economic development that we need for years to come. “
She summed up the plan saying the formula “is a simple one.”
“You put kids first. You have the backs of the people that show up for your kids every day,” she said. “And you make sure that our schools have the resources they need to do what we need them to do. That’s not rocket science, but it does require leadership that has the guts to put their money where their mouth is, and that is exactly what we are determined to do here.”
