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Finance director explains SEEK formula and Hardin County budget impacts
Summary
A district finance presenter outlined Kentucky’s SEEK funding formula, noted the district’s growing property assessment and local deductions that reduce SEEK, and urged board advocacy as the guaranteed per-pupil base lags inflation.
At the Hardin County Board of Education meeting, the district’s finance presenter walked the board through Kentucky’s SEEK funding formula, explaining how the guaranteed base per pupil, state equalization and local effort deductions interact and how those mechanisms affect Hardin County’s budget.
"So you get $4,586 for every kid per ADA," the presenter said while describing the current SEEK guaranteed base and why attendance and accurate ADA reporting matter to district funding. The presenter traced SEEK’s origin to the Kentucky Education Reform Act and the CARA Act of 1990 and said the guaranteed base has risen more slowly than inflation.
Using district slides, the presenter showed local figures: Hardin County’s certified assessment values (presented on the slide as a little over 9,700,000,000 and noting the current school year figure as 10.6 on the slide), a 30¢ per $100 local effort deduction (presented as $29,159,029 on the slide), and dedicated local "nickels" that must go to the building fund and cannot be used for salaries. The presenter said Hardin County’s SEEK totaled roughly $60,000,000 while the district’s general fund budget was shown as $140,000,000.
The presentation compared Hardin County with Perry County (Hazard), which the presenter described as having lower assessment bases and correspondingly higher SEEK dependency. The presenter urged board members to advocate to state legislators for higher SEEK funding, saying local assessments alone do not close the gap created by rising costs and uneven assessment changes across districts.
The board asked no formal questions that changed the presenter’s recommendations; the presenter said the annual audited financial report will be posted after the audit is finalized and the working budget approval on the agenda would be posted once approved.
The finance update framed SEEK mechanics ahead of the biennium and emphasized attendance, accurate student counts and advocacy to address funding shortfalls.
