Kentucky governor vetoes charter school funding bill: ‘wrong for our commonwealth’

Gov. Andy Beshear on Thursday vetoed a bill aimed at opening charter schools in Kentucky.

House Bill 9, which would provide a funding mechanism for charter schools, is unconstitutional because public taxpayer dollars can only go to public schools, Beshear said. If the veto is overridden, he said he believes the courts will find the bill unconstitutional.

“I’m against charter schools. They are wrong for our commonwealth. They take taxpayer dollars away from the already underfunded public schools,” he said.

Kentucky approved charter schools in 2017, but without a funding mechanism, potential owners said they were hesitant to move forward and they did not open.

Charter schools — both nonprofit and for-profit, under the bill — could collect per-pupil funding from local school districts while operating under independent management contracts with those districts. They would be managed under fewer regulations than most district-run schools.

Taxpayer dollars should not be redirected to for-profit entities that run charter schools, Beshear said. When he was Kentucky’s attorney general, Beshear said for-profit colleges were prosecuted for taking advantage of people.

Charter schools have boards that are not elected and answerable to the public, so public dollars are spent without oversight. Charter schools do not have the same accountability measures and controls as public schools, he said.

Beshear said the answer to concerns about the performance of public schools “lies with actually funding and working with our public schools not trying to divert money away.”

He said House Bill 9 also improperly targets Northern Kentucky and Jefferson County, requiring them to authorize charter schools within a certain time frame.

“Our public schools and their employees, they are not enemies of the legislature, they are heroes of the people,” said Beshear. He said most lawmakers have their kids in a public school doing their very best for them.

“It’s time we do the very best for those public schools,” he said.

State Sen. Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, said Thursday he thought the House and Senate will continue to have the 51 and 20 votes necessary to override vetoes in both chambers.

House Bill 9, sponsored by State Rep. Chad McCoy, R- Bardstown, passed in the House by an unusually narrow margin — 51-to-46 — so it can’t lose many votes in that chamber if supporters want to succeed with a veto override next week. Three House members, Louisville Democrat Tom Burch as well as Republicans William Lawrence and Richard White, did not vote at the time.

Kentucky House Democratic Caucus Leaders after the veto said the bill clearly goes against the constitutional requirement that the General Assembly provide an “efficient system of common schools throughout the state.”

“The legislature needs to let this veto stand and focus more on how it can better support public education, not undermine it,” their statement said.

This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 1:35 PM.