As we posted yesterday, the special session will be seen as a very important step forward on ensuring that Kentucky children are attending adequate schools. Quite simply - the genie is out of the bottle. The Kentucky public is now more aware than ever before of the awful condition of certain schools, which the Kentucky Department of Education calls "deteriorated."

Don't just take our word for it - check out the NewsRoom for links to the dialogue unfolding in Kentucky. Some highlights:

House Speaker Greg Stumbo got things going in the Lexington Herald-Leader when he said, "I'm a proponent of building schools," said House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg. "We're looking at a proposal which we believe can act as an economic stimulus package and also help eliminate some of the awful ... schools we have in the state."

The Bowling Green Daily News opined on their editorial page that the "prevailing wage is a government enforced price fixing conspiracy on projects, such as schools, where public funds are involved. Rather than allowing the free market to deliver the best value, these laws require labor prices established at the prevailing (which is to say union) rate...

When you consider that the Kentucky Department of Education reported that the state’s prevailing wage policy increased school construction costs almost $500 million between 1999 and 2004, it becomes obvious that a small special interest group is extracting serious money from a much larger group - the taxpaying citizens."

In the Hardin County News Enterprise,Rep. Tim Moore, R-Elizabethtown, said he believed "the General Assembly should look for cost-cutting measures rather than new avenues of spending. He said there are other ways to cut expenses that the General Assembly is avoiding. For instance, Moore said the state’s prevailing wage — a median wage paid to workers in a specified location — puts an additional expense on the price of every construction project in the state with no just cause for doing so."

The Bluegrass Institute weighed in saying,“Kentucky’s process of determining wages on schools and courthouses is costly, inefficient and harmful to our economic well-being.”

Just yesterday, Mike Duncan, one of Kentucky's most prominent and well-respected leaders of his generation, was quoted as saying,“One thing that I have seen proposed recently is on prevailing wage for school facilities. If we weren't paying a prevailing wage on local courthouses and school facilities, it would save hundreds of millions of dollars for the citizens of Kentucky."

The Coalition hopes that the conversation continues leading into the 2010 Session. Our children's future depend upon it. We owe it to them to keep it up.