For Tiffany Combs, public schools did more than just teach her to read and write.
“I was the student who came to school to get my basic needs met,” she said Thursday in the library of Hazard’s East Perry Elementary School. “There were times when my Christmas presents arrived from school, when school administrators made sure I had extra food to take home, or when my teachers made sure I had clean clothes.”
Now 35, Combs has graduated from college and is an instructional coach in the Perry County School District. On Thursday, she stood with other teachers and administrators in Perry County to launch the Protect Our Schools KY campaign to oppose a Republican-backed “school choice” amendment on the November ballot.
“Public school teachers are already being asked to do more with less every year,” Combs said. “Vouchers will make that problem even worse.”
The question, the product of this year’s House Bill 2, will ask voters whether they want to change Kentucky’s constitution in a way that allows public dollars to go to charter, religious and other private schools.
Voters will answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the following question:
“To give parents choices in educational options for their children, you are in favor of empowering the General Assembly to provide financial assistance for the educational costs of students in kindergarten through 12th grade who are outside the regular ( public) schools are covered by the Kentucky Constitution as stated below?
It goes on to say that the Legislature could exercise this power despite seven other parts of the state constitution, which are listed by section number only.
While sponsors of the bill have presented the measure as a potential means to restore or expand parents’ freedom of choice over their children’s education, teachers in Perry County painted a different picture.
“To be clear, it would allow public money to be funneled through vouchers to unaccountable private schools,” said Perry County Superintendent Kent Campbell. “It paves the way for our state to write blank checks to private schools, using dollars that should be going to public schools and their students.
“The stakes are high. … We will not let this happen.”
Jody Maggard, chief financial officer of the Perry County Board of Education and pastor at Willow Fern Baptist Church, said vouchers are “cleverly crafted promises” that will spur a “radical divestment from public schools.”
Maggard, whose wife teaches at East Perry Elementary, said passage of the amendment will only worsen the teacher shortage and resource strain many districts are experiencing.
“The Kentucky Constitution is the last line of defense protecting us from inexplicable and inequitable voucher schemes that would ravage and destroy our public schools,” he said.
In rural parts of Kentucky like Perry County, where there are few alternative education options outside the public education system, divesting that system would have a ripple effect.
The schools — not just the buildings themselves, but teachers and staff — serve as pillars of the community, Maggard and others said, and not just as locations for classroom learning.
After the 2022 floods in Eastern Kentucky, which affected 9,000 families in the region, schools opened as distribution centers, according to Maggard.
East Perry distributed food, clothing and cleaning supplies. Three miles away, staff at West Perry Elementary opened the school’s gymnasium, providing hundreds of people with a temporary place to sleep.
Combs volunteered to work a night shift in the gymnasium, keeping watch over families, and in many cases, students who had just lost everything.
“Public schools are more than just education for most students,” she says. “It’s a lifeline, just like it was for me.”
