Bills regulating remote learning, decision-making in Ky. schools get tentative approval

Two bills focused on controversies in Kentucky schools were approved Thursday by the Kentucky Senate Education Committee and sent to the full Senate for a vote.

▪ Senate Bill 25 has emerged after Republican lawmakers successfully passed legislation last year that prohibited school districts from using unlimited non-traditional instruction or at-home learning days as they did for months during the initial coronavirus pandemic.

Senate Bill 25, sponsored by state Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, allows up to 10 days of remote instruction per school for school districts to use at the school, classroom, grade, or group level for the 2021-2022 school year, but does not allow for unlimited NTI days. It passed the education committee Thursday 10-0.

A similar bill passed the General Assembly last year but was for a limited time period.

On a day when many Kentucky school districts had canceled in-person classes because of a winter storm and when those same districts were dealing with staff and student sickness due to a surge of COVID-19, Wise said, “we need to provide flexibility to school districts.”

“SB 25 maintains the flexibility school districts need to provide for the holistic well being of students,” Wise said in a statement. “We have seen the unintended consequences of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we also understand schools must have tools available to them to meet challenges specific to the districts they are in.”

Under current law for the 2021-2022 year, “the commissioner of education may grant up to the equivalent of ten student attendance days for school districts that have a non-traditional instruction plan approved by the commissioner of education on days when the school district is closed for health or safety reasons.”

▪ Senate Bill 1, which shifts power from Kentucky school decision making councils to school superintendents to choose curriculum and hire and fire school principals, was approved despite the objections of a Lexington high school teacher and others.

(The full Senate approved Senate Bill 1 Saturday.)

State Sen. John Schickel R- Union, who sponsored Senate Bill 1, said it would clarify that final decisions on curriculum be made by school district superintendents not just school council members and that would strengthen accountability by broadening superintendent authority to include hiring and firing of school principals.

Schickel said he had worked on similar legislation for six or seven years.

The legislation would require that the superintendent instead of just the council, made up of parents and school staff, determine curriculum after consulting with the principal. It would alter the principal hiring process requiring principals to be selected by the superintendent after consultation with school council.

Schickel said the bill won’t take away local control as critics allege. Some superintendents have said they currently lack the ability to affect major change.

Eric Kennedy, director of advocacy with the Kentucky School Boards Association, was among those who spoke in favor of the bill and said collaboration among parents and school staff was at the heart of it.

Liz Erwin of the Kentucky Association of School Councils and Kentucky Education Association President Eddie Campbell said they opposed the legislation. Erwin said the bill would result in “terrible outcomes” for students and harm schools because teacher voice would be eliminated.

Campbell said that since the General Assembly passed the Kentucky Education Reform Act in 1990, school based decision making councils have been a driver in student success. More than 7,000 people in Kentucky serve on the councils, including parents, teachers and principals, he said.

Campbell said Senate Bill 1 “clouds transparency and throws a veil of secrecy” over important leadership decisions.

Jody Cabble, a social studies and government teacher from Henry Clay High School in Lexington, has been a teacher representative on the Henry Clay decision making council. She said the fact that lawmakers didn’t trust parents and teachers to pick their principals in consultation with the superintendent is “a little bit offensive.”

“Shame on some of you,” said Cabble.

This story was originally published January 6, 2022 at 4:00 PM.