As a public school student, Matt Bevin is not your friend

By Eli Dyer

As you may know, the 2019 Kentucky gubernatorial election will be held on Nov 5, next Tuesday. The winner, whether it be Andy Beshear, Matt Bevin, or John Hicks, will serve as our governor for the next four years, unless in case of extreme circumstances. This election is huge for every Kentucky citizen considering the large amount of influence the governor has over state policy.

Realistically, the only two potential winners are Matt Bevin and Andy Beshear. Matt Bevin is the incumbent Republican candidate and Andy Beshear is the Democrat candidate. I don’t know much about Andy Beshear, but I do know Matt Bevin.

I cannot stand Matt Bevin. He has done his best to cut funding from the pensions of public officials, including police officers, firefighters, and teachers. He argues that the money can be put to better use in other areas, seeming to look over the importance of the first responders and teachers. Perhaps as the son of a teacher I am biased, but his vendetta against public school teachers is his most infuriating quality. He seems to want to eliminate public schools, on multiple occasions attempting to cut funding from public schools and public school teachers. If not for the teacher “sick outs,” where hundreds of Kentucky teachers called in sick to school in protest of the cuts to education, Matt Bevin would most likely have succeeded in these attempts.

Rather than the public school system, Bevin supports charter schools, which are essentially private schools that receive government funding. Across the nation, charter schools are objectively worse than public schools, showing a deficiency in academic performance compared to the average public school. However, Bevin is insistent that charter schools are the only possible option moving forward. When confronted with a Board of Education dedicated to improving the Kentucky public school system, he gutted the board, replacing them with a group of sycophants looking only to benefit themselves and Bevin, not you, the public school student.

Bevin’s seemingly blind insistence on charter schools makes one wonder what’s in it for him. Perhaps proponents of charter schools have offered him a generous “donation” for his efforts. Perhaps he is doing it to benefit his constituents: the wealthy and elite. Whatever his reasoning may be, he is doing his best to implement charter schools at the expense of public schools.

Bevin has shown, time and time again, that he is not for public schools; he is not for us. If he had his way, there would be extreme cuts to public school funding at the expense of public school students across the state.

Therefore, I encourage those who can, to vote against Bevin and for Beshear. Even if you can’t vote, you can still do your best to influence those who can. At the end of the day, it is up to us to stand for public schools, and to stand up for ourselves.