Divided Kentucky House passes bill funding charter schools after vigorous debate
After a lengthy House floor debate with several opponents voicing concerns from both sides of the political aisle, a bill funding charter schools passed on a thin 51-46 margin.
Charter schools – schools that are publicly funded but operated by independent groups with fewer regulations than most public schools – are technically legal in Kentucky but House Bill 9 creates a mechanism for funding them with public dollars. The bill also mandates the creation of two pilot charter schools, one in Louisville and another in Northern Kentucky.
Sponsor Rep. Chad McCoy, R-Bardstown, has billed the legislation as a way to expand school choice in areas where public schools are struggling.
Fayette County Public Schools opposes the bill, with the district’s lobbyist Abby Piper pointing out that the bill would force school districts to send a proportionate share of students’ state school funding, called SEEK, local property and tax revenue, and federal funds with them if they went to a charter school.
House Bill 9 recently was reassigned from the House Appropriations & Revenue Committee to the House Education Committee. One of the main House opponents, Rep. Tina Bojanowski, D-Louisville, claims that happened because it did not have the support to pass through Appropriations & Revenue.
Debate on the bill took up nearly three hours.
Bojanowski, herself an educator in Louisville, kicked it off by proposing five separate amendments to the bill, including provisions aimed at eliminating “sweep contracts” that place charter school employees outside of the Teachers Retirement System and one that removes an appropriation of local funding to charter schools. All of those efforts failed on the floor.
“The driving force here is not innovation. It is profits, and selling our children’s education for a profit is wrong,” Bojanowski said. “For-profit charter management companies are registered to lobby here in Kentucky… they aren’t here to bring innovative education; they are here to do business.”
Rep. Timmy Truett, R-McKee, is an elementary school principal who also opposed the bill. He urged members to ask their local superintendent what they thought about the bill, indicating that those administrators would be opposed.
“I’m all for parents having a choice, but I’m not for giving certain schools unfair advantages,” Truett said. “In my opinion, House Bill 9 is a vote against public education.”
McCoy emphasized that a provision within the bill allows school districts with fewer than 7,500 students to essentially veto the formation of a charter school within their district.
The version of the bill passed by the House allows any school board or collaborative of school boards to approve such a charter contract, as well as a mayor of a consolidated local government or chief executive of an urban-county government. The only two such merged government entities in Kentucky are Louisville Metro Government and Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government.
Rep. Mary Lou Marzian said that she believes the bill favors private interests over student outcomes.
“If you’re a charter school operator or you want to come into Kentucky to be one, this is a great bill for you to be at the trough and to take as much money as you can from the Kentucky taxpayer pocket,” Marzian said.
On a similar note, Rep. Josie Raymond asked McCoy what would happen if Jefferson County Public Schools did not get a charter school proposal that met its standards. McCoy responded that he is “confident” they would.
Rep. Kevin Bratcher, R-Louisville, pointed out that several states of varying political stripes – Tennessee, Indiana, California and Illinois among others – have already implemented charter schools successfully. Parents in his district, he said, also want more choice.
Reps. Lisa Willner, D-Louisville, and Killian Timoney, R-Lexington, both voted against the bill and stressed how much choice is already available to parents in their respective urban districts without charter schools in place.
“It seems fundamentally unfair to me, unjust, but it also just doesn’t make sense. If the goal is to give parents… choice, why locate and require these charters to be in the areas that already have the most choice?” Willner said.
McCoy said that school choice in Louisville and Northern Kentucky exists there only for people of means, and that this is an appropriate step towards addressing school conditions in Louisville’s historically Black West End.
Louisville Democratic Reps. Attica Scott and Pamela Stevenson both said that House Bill 9 was not what Black Louisvillians needed, and came down hard on the bill.
“My kids in the West End of Louisville are not some horrible failures to be continuously beat up on by this chamber,” Scott said.
A majority of Appalachian legislators both Democrat and Republican voted against the bill, with Rep. Angie Hatton, D-Whitesburg, saying that she hopes a vote for House Bill 9 brings some shame to legislators. A charter school, she said, is unlikely to open in her home county of just over 21,000.
“For districts like mine, this bill will bring nothing good and it has the potential to bring a lot of bad to our mountain and rural areas… (it will) siphon off money and resources that are already in such short supply.”
22 Republicans, many from rural areas, voted against the measure while all present Democrats also voted against it.
The bill now heads to the Senate. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear has said he would veto the bill if it passes, but GOP majorities in both chambers can override a governor’s veto, as they’ve done on multiple bills already this session.
This story was originally published March 22, 2022 at 8:38 PM.
