2025 Regular Session - Day 27 - SCR 43, Rep. James Tipton

thank you Mr Speaker this resolution came from the Southern Regional Education board uh if you may not be aware Kentucky is one of 16 states that is a member of SRB as part of an interstate compact uh currently uh the president of SRB is Dr Steven prit if you're familiar with that name he is the former Commissioner of Education here in Kentucky and and in conversations with Dr prit that that Senator West and I had back in the fall and he testified in the primary and secondary education committee yesterday morning he was the commissioner at the time of the Marshall County school shooting here in Kentucky just a few short years ago and and he went down there and there was a lot of support that came to that school in the short term but one thing that he recognized is that there is a long-term need to provide support to schools and students and teachers and communities who have gone through a situation like this so this proposal would set up a network of counselors they would train 40 counselors from each of the 16 sreb States and these counselors would be available to go into the schools in any of the 16 states in the Sr B region and provide support now these counselors wouldn't be there full-time they have their other duties at their home schools uh but they would be there for like 10 days at a time and they could rotate and these counselors would be there for one week after the first anniversary of the event and sadly Mr Speaker and members of this body this is the reality that we live in in today's world that there is a possibility that something like this could happen at any given moment sreb will cover the cost of a coordinator to operate the network as well as travel cost for Network counselors during training and deployment uh and SRB has secured funding for the first two years of training for a pool of counselors from each SRB State uh just to make you aware that in two years SRB would be asking each of the 16 States including Kentucky to contribute $10,000 in additional funding to sustain training of counselors and I believe that is an investment well worth making for a situation like this Mr Speaker if there are no questions I move for adoption of Senate committee resolution 43