This holiday season, I feel particularly grateful for your overwhelming support of public education. Together, in a 65-35% rout, we defeated Amendment 2 in all 120 counties.
In most of our communities, the public school system is the largest employer. Your kids and grandkids sit in the classrooms where your friends and family teach. These are the folks you sit with at ballgames on Friday nights and in church on Sunday mornings.
Your public school feeds hungry kids and provides them with pencils, notebooks and laptops when they don’t have school supplies. Your Family Resource Youth Service Centers provide clothes when students are in need. Your teachers collect toys for the kids who might not have presents to open on Christmas. Your districts schedule physicals for sports, and offer dental, vision and hearing screenings. Whether your child is ahead of the curve or needs extra support, your public school supports every child.

The work of a public school system is endless, but it should never be thankless.
That’s why Governor Beshear and I are proud of our education-first administration. From day one, we have prioritized restoring respect and gratitude to the profession. We listened, and we delivered. Every year we’ve been in office, Governor Beshear has proposed a budget that was responsive to the needs of public education, recommending key investments in areas where our schools need it the most.
But here is our unfortunate reality – every budget cycle, those critical investments are removed by the same Republican supermajority that supported Amendment 2’s attempt to siphon off public dollars and send them to private schools.
As a result, your public school has endured unnecessary cuts to critical resources and services in recent budgets, even as the commonwealth sits on record budget surpluses. Textbooks, technology and classroom resource funding does not exist in Kentucky’s state budget and hasn’t for years. Transportation has been underfunded in every budget since 2006 – that’s when this year’s senior class was born.
Given all the work your public school does, surely, we can agree that your elected officials should commit to provide the funding necessary to get students to school, and the classroom resources teachers need to do their job. There is no more important job because the future of Kentucky, including our economy, is in our classrooms today.
As the saying goes, show me your budget and I’ll show you your values.
For as much as your public school does for your community, our educators and school staff really don’t ask for much. Your child’s teacher wants to feel appreciated. they want to feel that they matter. By rejecting Amendment 2, you showed them how much they mean to you. Trust me, they desperately needed that.
Yes, defeating Amendment 2 was a decisive victory for public education in Kentucky. But it is more than that. It is a clear mandate from the voters to end the ongoing war on public education; a resounding message that you believe public dollars belong in public schools, you support your community’s public schools and you expect your elected leaders to do the same.
So, from the bottom of my heart: Thank you for supporting Kentucky’s public schools. Now, let’s get to work.
Jacqueline Coleman is Kentucky’s 58th lieutenant governor.