One Kentucky school district gets it right

– Careful planning leads to tight budget and a TAX CUT!

Hats off to the local board of education and the entire crew at the Beechwood Independent School District.

On top of having one of the very best educational programs in Kentucky, the district has accomplished that with one of the more modest, but well-managed budgets in the state.

Now, just when hard-pressed taxpayers in the district need it, thanks to Beechwood’s great fiscal management, the district has actually approved a TAX CUT at the very same time other districts up and down the state are screaming that they need still more money.

Beechwood Superintendent Glen Miller is quick to point out that the district has not sacrificed academics to make this happen, and there is great evidence that he is refreshingly on target with that statement (how many others have promised the same, only to produce continuing poor results?).

For example, I blogged yesterday about the top and bottom performing high schools on the recent ACT 11th grade math testing in Kentucky.

Beechwood High School was number one in the state among Kentucky's 233 public high schools for the percentage of students who are ready for college math. NUMBER ONE!

I’ll post the ACT science results later today, but Beechwood was NUMBER THREE in the state for the percentage of students on track to pass their first college level science course. WOW!

Beechwood High also ranked NUMBER ONE on ACT reading and NUMBER ONE on ACT English for the percentage of kids ready for college in those academic areas. WOW!

Beechwood High’s school accountability index ranked NUMBER EIGHT in Kentucky on the now defunct CATS assessments in 2008, as well.

While CATS is now gone, if the assessment had continued, Beechwood High’s school accountability index of 95.9 meant the school could have made no further improvement all the way to 2014 and it still would have avoided all sanctions and would actually have been considered to have met its CATS goals.

And, the school accomplished all of this remarkable academic performance despite the fact that in 2008 the entire school district’s per pupil funding for current expenses ranked only 159 out of 174 school districts.

Kentucky’s new education commissioner needs to look at what is happening in Beechwood right away. Beechwood gets it right, and they do it economically.