Western Kentucky President Timothy Caboni testifies in front of the House Budget Review subcommittee for Post-Secondary Education at the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort, Ky., on Thursday, February 1, 2018. (Michael Reaves/Special to the Daily News)

Western Kentucky University President Timothy Caboni released new details Tuesday about the scope of state budget cuts, which include a new cut to the Gatton Academy for gifted students.

“We’ve been closely engaged in this process throughout the legislative session, and while there are some improvements in the final version from where we started, this budget presents us with significant challenges,” Caboni wrote in a campuswide email.

Before lawmakers approved their budget Monday, WKU and other universities across the state were expecting cuts of 6.25 percent. For WKU, that translated to $4,619,000.

However, in his email Caboni noted that lawmakers returned some of that money by putting it into universities’ performance funding pool. The new model, adopted last year, rewards the state’s public universities for their performance on measures like graduation rates.

“So while we will lose $4,619,000 in the budget reduction, we will likely gain most of that back in the performance model, bringing our state appropriation reduction to a little less than 1 percent,” Caboni wrote.

Other funding, including for WKU’s statewide weather network called the Kentucky Mesonet, was also restored to its full amount by lawmakers. It will receive $750,000 each year of the two-year budget cycle. That funding was eliminated in the governor’s original budget proposal in January.

However, Caboni said lawmakers applied an additional 2 percent cut to money for the Gatton Academy, which is a residential high school at WKU for students gifted in math and science.

“We will have $75,000 less to support operations of the Academy in the next two years,” he wrote.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the cut would impact enrollment.

Also absent from the legislature’s budget is support for employer pension contributions, which Caboni described as “the primary driver of fixed increases to our operating budget.” Lawmakers also didn’t finance a pool of money that universities can tap to fix up their aging facilities.

Caboni also addressed language in the budget that would allow universities to fire tenured professors when their departments are eliminated.

“It is my view, and I have shared this during my conversations in Frankfort, that current guidelines set forth by the American Association of University Professors provide a fair, reasonable and effective pathway to manage downsizing or elimination of academic programs,” he wrote. “I am strongly committed to following those guidelines and to protecting the integrity of tenure and academic freedom as we work together to address the current financial challenges facing WKU.”

Going forward, Caboni noted that the changes aren’t final and that Gov. Matt Bevin now has 10 days to veto all or parts of the budget bill. The General Assembly will reconvene in the final days of this year’s lawmaking session. Lawmakers can override the governor’s veto with a majority in both houses.

“While the national trend has begun to shift back to state governments increasing support for higher education, sadly Kentucky is not yet there,” Caboni wrote. “That is all the more reason to redouble our efforts to make significant gains on enrollment, retention and graduation numbers. We are seeing positive trends in that regard, and I am grateful for your work and continued commitment to our students and our University.”