The Kentucky Student Voice Team, also known as KSVT, has recently sued the state of Kentucky for failing to uphold its constitutional duty to provide a quality and equitable education to its students. According to the KSVT website, the lawsuit arose due to the critical issues of declining literacy skills, a lack of civics education, the ongoing mental health crisis, limited availability of visual and performing arts, and severe achievement gaps between Kentucky school districts.
“[The lawsuit] is happening because KSVT is pledging that the state has failed to meet its constitutional obligation,” KSVT member Peter Jefferson said, “to provide all Kentucky students with an adequate and equitable education. The case is built on the Rose vs. Council for Better Education from 1989, which defines seven capacities for students to succeed in schoolwork and civic engagement. KSVT is arguing that decades of systemic underfunding and poor resource distribution has left us without the ability to get these seven capacities. This lawsuit hopes to change that by asking the court to compel the state to make changes.”
One of the most important claims of the KSVT lawsuit is the current literacy crisis in Kentucky. According to KSVT’s website, only 41% of 8th grade students were proficient in reading (although the Kentucky Department of Education, who produces the data, puts the number at 47%). KSVT believes that this is a long-running problem, especially considering that the literacy scores are approximately the same as in 2020.
“It’s been 35 years since the court ruled that the system has to provide the seven capacities [this includes the literacy issue],” Jefferson said, “and it’s not just yesterday that we discovered we weren’t […] seeing declines across the system. It’s not a new crisis, but we’re looking to put a new light on it now with this lawsuit.”
Another major claim in the lawsuit is that the state has failed to adequately address the mental health crisis in Kentucky. According to the KSVT website, 18.6% of Kentucky high school students reported seriously considering taking their lives. Although the lawsuit alleges that the state is failing to combat this issue, Jefferson states that the lawsuit does not place blame on the school system.
“This lawsuit is not about the school system,” Jefferson said. “This lawsuit is about a lack of adequate resources provided by the state government […] I would say that the mental health crisis is one of the issues that stems from a lack of full staff funding including counselors. For example, state law says that there must be one mental health counselor per 250 students, but many districts in the state do not meet that ratio.”
The last three points of the lawsuit are a lack of arts education (only 81.5% of Kentucky schools have performing or visual arts classes), the lack of a required civics education, and inequitable funding of Kentucky school districts that are resulting in significant achievement gaps. The last point is, according to Jefferson, preventing students in many districts from getting the education that they need.
“The general idea is that across the state, people are not receiving an equitable access to resources…” Jefferson said. ”This may not necessarily be about giving everyone the same amount of money, but about giving everyone what they need. Right now, we know that many people are not getting what they need.”
Although KSVT does not have a specific solution to the funding problem, they hope that this lawsuit will force the state to provide equitable resources to all students.
“We’re not asking for any specific solution,” Jefferson said, “in terms of funding […] We’re really asking the court to take a look at our allegations and agree that Kentucky students are not being given the access to the [seven] capacities and that means that they may not be getting access to the same equitable resources. The point here is that KSVT does not propose any funding solution, we’re asking the court to mandate the government continue to uphold our constant right to a quality education.”
