Education, Hot Issue in Governor’s Race

Is college worth the costs anymore? Are children getting the education they deserve? With budget cuts and the election right around the corner, a hot campaign topic is the efforts of the candidates towards education funding.
Current Governor Steve Beshear rallies his campaign around his accomplishments to education programming so far. He especially promotes his protection to SEEK, the primary funding to Kentucky classrooms despite having to cut $1 billion from the state

budget. Beshear also claims that his actions have created results putting Kentucky ranked as 19 out of 50 in Education Week’s 2011 Quality Counts report. As for college education, Beshear has signed legislation making it easier for credits to transfer from a community/technical college to a Kentucky university. He’s also secured a $50 million bond for student loans from the state’s only public, non-profit loan provider.
However, to many people what Beshear is doing isn’t providing students with the appropriate benefits. In fact, though, candidate David Williams’s website doesn’t dedicate any part to his views on education funding, he made it clear in Monday night’s debate with Beshear how he feels about Beshear’s efforts on education. Williams

accused Beshear of actually being responsible for the cuts to education.
Candidate Gatewood Galbraith, on the other hand, has a more direct approach in his campaign towards education funding. Galbraith compares the 68% of our budget in 1991 to the 58% we now use in our budget to education today. His plan to get it back to where it used to be is what his campaign refers to as the “Commonwealth Incentive”.
Part of Galbraith’s plan includes awarding each high school graduate a $5000 voucher for books, tuition, and or fees to any further education institution in Kentucky, with up to ten years to use it. The Galbraith administration would also like to provide each 8th grader a lap top computer to advance Kentucky’s education three fold. The expectation is for these students to not only use it for their school work but to also share it with their siblings and parents so that every family member can be a part of the educational solution.

Yet, students and parents all over Kentucky are looking for an educational solution, but they’ll have to wait until next week’s election results to find out the possible answer.