House Budget HB 500 Would Cut SEEK Payments to Owsley County Schools

A social-media post, presented as an Instagram snippet, stated, "Owsley County Change in State SEEK Payments $99,536 2026 to 2028 Inflation-Adjusted Change -$121,175 Real dollar impact Inflation-Adjusted 0," a figure set that, if confirmed, would amount to a three-year erosion of state school funding for the Owsley County School District under the Kentucky House budget bill HB 500.

The Booneville Sentinel ran a local explainer on Thursday, March 5, 2026, "detailing how the Kentucky House budget proposal (HB 500) would change state school funding distributed through the SEEK formula and what that would mean for the Owsley County School District." The Sentinel also included a subscriber-only excerpt warning that, "The House Budget bill (HB 500) as introduced caps state health insurance contributions, causing employee costs to spike by 78% on average for …" that item remains behind the paper’s paywall.

Statewide context from Kypolicy analyst Jason Bailey shows why small changes to the SEEK base matter. Bailey wrote, "HB 500 increases the SEEK base per pupil guaranteed from $4,586 to $4,626 in 2027 and $4,792 in 2028." Those steps, Bailey noted, amount to "an increase of 0.9% the first year of the budget and 3.6% the second," figures that do not, by his analysis, restore purchasing power lost to inflation.

Bailey placed the proposed SEEK base in historical perspective with precise numbers: "The SEEK guaranteed base was $3,822 per student in 2008, which is $6,197 in 2028 dollars. The House budget’s 2028 SEEK guaranteed base is 23% less than it was two decades prior." That calculation frames Bailey’s broader finding that "an estimated 82% of school districts would still receive lower SEEK payments in 2028 than they did in 2026 once inflation is taken into account."

Transportation funding changes in HB 500 are another explicit line item Bailey flagged. He wrote, "The House budget freezes school transportation funding and makes small increases in the guaranteed base funding level used to determine payments to school districts under the SEEK formula," and that, "The House’s budget, HB 500, suspends the law that requires the state to fund 100% of the cost of school transportation. The House proposal funds only 81% of these costs, an amount that is $93 million a year less than what the law would require."

Locally, the only district-level dollar figures provided in the material available to this newsroom come from the un-attributed Instagram snippet quoted above. That snippet contains no author, methodology, or date; the phrase "Real dollar impact Inflation-Adjusted 0" appears in the post without explanation. The Booneville Sentinel contact information printed in that March 5, 2026 issue lists PO Box 129, Booneville, KY 41314, and phone 1-606-464-2444 for readers and subscribers seeking the full local explainer.

Jason Bailey summed the policy choice at stake: "While the SEEK formula decides how much is allocated between school districts, the amount of money available to distribute through the formula is based entirely on choices made by the General Assembly — including whether to set the SEEK base guarantee at a level that meets the cost of providing a high-quality education and whether to follow the legislature’s own laws on funding for the transportation of students." If Bailey’s statewide calculations hold, HB 500 would continue, in his words, "a 20-year trend of eroding state funding for public education.