'Brutal.' 'Unprecedented.' Nothing is safe as lawmakers slash $1 billion from budget.

Frankfort -- Tiffany Dunn, who teaches English at Lassiter Middle School in Louisville, began to weep Tuesday at the state Capitol. She was speaking at a rally of educators scared of what the 2018 General Assembly will do to Kentucky’s schools when it axes up to $1 billion a year from the state’s $11 billion General Fund.

A decade of state budget cuts since the Great Recession of 2008 — roughly $2 billion, cumulatively — already has drained funds available for textbooks, teacher training and services for children with learning difficulties. The funding gap between the richest and poorest school districts is close to what it was in 1990 when the Kentucky Education Reform Act required the state to send additional money to communities unable to raise enough from their meager property tax bases. In 2016, nearly $1,400 more on average was spent to educate each child in the most affluent districts.

Now the legislature is preparing to write a two-year budget that Republican Gov. Matt Bevin warned this week will be “brutal” because of a massive increase in costs for public pensions, as well as Medicaid and prisons. Lawmakers say they have no political appetite in this election year for tax increases that would raise more revenue. So everyone is bracing for the worst.

“They are — they are systemically ruining our schools on purpose,” Dunn said at the Capitol rally, wiping tears from her eyes.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article193214139.html