EDITORIAL

It’s been a long time coming but the Kentucky General Assembly appears close to finally passing a bill meant to keep kids from dropping out of school before age 18.

The “dropout” bill has been hanging around Frankfort for several years despite the obvious benefits — a high school degree increases a youth’s chances of getting a better job, continuing with education, staying off public assistance and avoiding the correctional system.

Rep. Jeff Greer, a Brandenburg Democrat, made a compelling argument this year, as he has in past years, for his bill which would gradually raise the high school drop out age to 18 by 2018.

“The dropout age was set in 1920," he told the House Education Committee this month. “In 1920, education wasn’t as highly valued as it was today.”

Then, he told the committee, all a person needed was a “strong back” to get a job and help support a family. In the modern world, youths can’t even enter the military or find work at many fast food outlets without a high school degree.

Raising the dropout age to 18 is a priority of Gov. Steve Beshear and his wife, Jane. Gov. Beshear mentioned it in his state of the commonwealth address on Feb. 6, underscoring its importance.

“We must keep out teenagers in school,” he said. “Every education group supports this legislation and a new survey reveals that 85 percent of parents favor it. It’s time to commit to our children’s future and pass it.”

But some lawmakers, chiefly in the Senate, have blocked the bill in previous years, with one of the more bizarre objections being it presents an “unfunded mandate” to local school districts.

Unfunded mandate? Isn’t the job of local school districts to educate all students and isn’t that what our property taxes are supposed to pay for — including providing high school degrees to as many students as possible?

Evidently not all lawmakers agreed in the past. But this year chances look better for some version of the legislation to become law.

Mr. Greer’s House Bill 224 has passed the House and is in the Senate, which has two bills of its own in play.

Senate Bill 97, a bill that would allow but not require local school districts to raise the dropout age to 18, won unanimous approval from the Senate Education Committee. It’s too bad SB 97, sponsored by the new Senate Education Committee Chairman Mike Wilson, a Bowling Green Republican, doesn’t go further.

A stronger measure, Senate Bill 99, hasn’t yet had a hearing.

The legislature shouldn’t let this effort get watered down. It has the support of state Education Commissioner Terry Holliday, who is willing to work with local districts to make it happen.

The General Assembly needs to bring Kentucky out of the 1920s and enact a meaningful bill designed to keep as many kids in school as possible through age 18.