Education a top issue as Coleman, Mills face off in Kentucky lieutenant governor debate

Education policy was front and center Monday night as the running mates of Kentucky’s gubernatorial candidates faced off in their first and only debate this election.

Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, the running mate of incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, and State Sen. Robby Mills, R-Henderson, the running mate of GOP challenger Attorney General Daniel Cameron, bolstered their campaigns’ respective platforms for the hour-long Kentucky Tonight program moderated by Renee Shaw on KET.

Their head-to-head comes after Beshear and Cameron met five times on debate stages around the commonwealth in less than two weeks’ time in October.

Election Day is Nov. 7, and no-excuse absentee voting begins Thursday.

Here are key moments from the debate:

The child care challenge and pre-K

Citing a report from the Kentucky Chamber Foundation, Shaw said more than 45,000 Kentuckians struggle to stay in the workforce because of issues with access and affordability of child care.

Shaw asked what each administration would do to ease that burden.

Mills said child care was an issue before the COVID-19 pandemic, but that took a toll on these centers.

“There are some federal funds and state funds that these child care businesses have been receiving that are about to run out,” Mills said. “We’ve got to figure out how to get child care back open, less regulation and allow them to get back up in business, so ladies and gentlemen can get back to work.”

Shaw asked what, specifically, less regulation would look like as policy.

“You don’t want to have an owner or a manager of a child care facility spending, you know, 30, 40 hours a week on bureaucracy and paperwork and inspections of things of that nature,” Mills said. “They have to be safe. Child care centers need to be safe for the children, but there’s a lot of hoops to jump through to qualify to be a child care facility.”

Coleman said universal pre-kindergarten for ever 4-year-old in Kentucky would help not just working parents, but also make sure more kids are kindergarten-ready.

“We are looking at the largest rainy day fund and the largest budget surplus we’ve ever had,” Coleman said. “The excuse has always been that, ‘we don’t have the money. We can’t fund it.’ Quite frankly, I don’t think we can afford not to, not just because it is an investment in the future of Kentucky’s commonwealth, but because it is a workforce solution.”

Mills said he and Cameron would like to study universal pre-K, “but I think we need to do K-12 right and fund it right first before we start spending. If we’re going to spend money, let’s spend money where we’ve already got K-12 education and where we can continue to invest in that.”

K-12 education funding

Following up to Mills’ comment about funding K-12 properly, Shaw asked if the legislature has adequately funded public education with the SEEK formula, which stands for Support Education Excellence in Kentucky. SEEK sets a guaranteed amount of state funding per student and takes into account each local district’s ability to raise money through property taxes.

An August report from the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy found that the disparity between funding for wealthy and poor districts is greater than it was more than 30 years ago when the Kentucky Supreme Court found the previous funding model to be inadequate for upholding the constitutional obligation to fund public schools.

“It is being funded but ... we can always do better in K-12 education,” Mills said.

Mills estimated the Cameron Catch-Up Plan — Cameron’s education platform — would cost about $90 to $100 million dollars, much of which would be one-time costs to make up for pandemic learning loss.

“That’s the way to conservatively budget our money, like we’ve been doing in the legislature for the last five or six years, and that’s why we have the balance that we have in our rainy day fund,” Mills said.

Coleman, an educator prior to becoming lieutenant governor, said she could not believe Mills’ response.

“You cannot say, ‘Oh, this is a one time investment and it’s taken care of,’” Coleman said. “That’s not how education works. When we talk about making sure that our kids have what they need, for years and years, we have had numbers like instructional materials zeroed out in the budget, professional development for teachers zeroed out in the budget.

“Those are tangible things — technology — those are things that you can invest in to make sure that schools have what they need, so that they can do what we need them to do.”

Shaw also pressed Mills on vouchers, which became a standout issue in the debates between Beshear and Cameron.

“I believe that it’s important to offer our kids the best choice that they can have for their education, whether it’s vouchers or open borders, which we have now,” Mills said. “I think it’s important. Kids get trapped in schools that they can’t learn in and they need to have the opportunity to move around and find the education that’s best for them.”

A week earlier, Shaw repeatedly asked Cameron about vouchers.

“No, I will support, primarily, our public school system. Look, we need to make sure that we expand opportunity and choice...” Cameron said before Beshear interjected.

Higher education policy

Shaw also asked both candidates about a topic that has gotten scant few mentions in this election cycle: higher education and its future in Kentucky.

“Not as many people are going to higher ed,” Mills said. “They’re going into trades and things of that nature. We need to make sure that we have a robust higher education plan, or menu, in the state of Kentucky that meets the kids and children and needs for higher education. I think that I think that’s number one in looking at higher ed.

“I also think that we need to focus — once again, I said this earlier — we need to focus on K-12 and do it, do it well, as a part of the menu that we are offering.”

Coleman again criticized Mills’ K-12 comments.

“I’m still not over the K-12 funding and ‘doing it well’ from somebody who has failed to do it every year he’s been in office,” Coleman shot back when Shaw asked her the same question. “When it comes to higher education, that is our kids’ opportunity and gateway to a career. It can look different for every kid and it should.”

Coleman said that can include 2- and 4-year college degrees, post-secondary certification, an apprenticeship or something else.

“Our job is not to tell these kids — the future of Kentucky — what’s best for them,” she said. “Our job is to make sure that every door is open for them so they can find their way.”

Is climate change real?

Shaw asked Mills point-blank: is climate change real, and are fossil fuels a contributing factor?

“I believe that there are effects that industry puts forward that could raise the (Earth’s) temperature, but it’s not as large of a raise as they’re talking about,” Mills said. “I believe that we can move forward and attack that issue, but we could still use fossil fuels and burn more effectively and burn more economically.”

Mills was the primary sponsor of Senate Bill 4 in the 2023 General Assembly, which would make utility companies seeking to retire coal-fired plants get permission from the Kentucky Public Service Commission first.

The bill became law without Beshear’s signature.

Coleman, like Beshear has said, believes climate change is real.