Beshear reaffirms opposition to “school choice” bill as GOP names it a legislative priority
On the coattails of some Kentucky Republicans declaring their intention to file another “school choice” bill in the upcoming regular session, Gov. Andy Beshear on Tuesday reiterated his opposition to it.
“I’m opposed to any school choice amendment and any voucher program – anything that would take dollars from our public schools and send them to unaccountable private schools,” the Democrat said in a meeting with the Herald-Leader editorial board.
This puts the governor at odds with a faction of Republicans, who have signaled that passing such a bill will be a “priority” in the 2024 session.
School choice programs historically allow the diversion of public money from the public school system to private schools, including religiously affiliated ones.
Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, in his campaign for governor, has been less recently declarative than the rest of his party in supporting school choice measures.
In his capacity as AG, he unsuccessfully defended a law in court that would’ve set up a tax credit state scholarship fund allowing kids to attend schools other than their local public schools.
Cameron has largely avoided the topic in his run for office, stating that in general he “supports expanding opportunities and choices” in the state without getting into specifics and without mentioning school choice in his recently unveiled education plan.
However, he has in the past signaled support for a voucher program, or education opportunity account.
Last year, the Kentucky Supreme Court unanimously ruled a 2021 school voucher law was unconstitutional. The GOP-backed Education Opportunity Account Act created a privately funded, needs-based assistance program to cover educational expenses for families.
It also established a pilot program to offer tuition assistance for students to attend non-public schools in counties with more than 90,000 people.
Former high court Justice Lisabeth Hughes, who wrote the majority opinion in that case, affirming a Franklin Circuit judge’s ruling, said the law violated the Kentucky constitution, which limits the raising or collecting of money for “education other than in common schools.”
In other words, the state constitution expressly forbids the allocation of public funds for non-public K-12 school costs.
Amending the state constitution requires voter input. So, in the 2023 regular session, Rep. Josh Calloway, R-Irvington, filed a bill to put a constitutional amendment to voters – House Bill 174 — but it died in committee.
On Saturday, at a Kentucky Family Foundation policy forum, Calloway announced his plans to file another bill in the upcoming session to potentially go before voters next November. Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, said she would support it.
Speaking on the same panel Saturday, Calloway and Tichenor painted the need for a school choice option as a way for parents to reclaim authority over their children, who are being “indoctrinated” by radical leftist public school educators intent on pushing a pro-LGBTQ agenda.
“They are after our kids. They’re after their minds because the mind is the gateway to the heart,” Calloway told a crowd of a few hundred on Saturday in Lexington. “They want to control them at a young age (and) develop that world view.”
Calloway said the public education system needed to be “cleaned up.”
And “one of the single greatest things we can do to clean up that system is to give parents choice and give them the opportunity to choose where they send their child to be educated.”
Both lawmakers were vocal in their support of Senate Bill 150 earlier this year — a broad policy that bans gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth and restricts public school curriculum on gender and sexuality . It also requires schools to inform parents if a student uses pronouns “that do not conform to a child’s biological sex.”
Proponents of the bill argued such a law was necessary to restore parental rights in a larger fight to shield school-age kids from leftist indoctrination.
Tichenor, who sat on a panel alongside Calloway at Saturday’s forum called “It’s About Our Kids: the LGBTQ Revolution and Educational Freedom,” said the issues plaguing Kentucky’s public education system is the attempt at controlling children’s minds.
“It’s the idea that they have control of our kids, that they have some power over the direction of their lives as opposed to the parents having control of their own children’s lives,” Tichenor said.
Passing a constitutional amendment to ensure school choice “will be fought hard,” she said, but it’s necessary because it will “bring the public school system – and education in general – into a free market.”
Taking away funds from the public education system isn’t the answer, Beshear said. And he predicted the majority of voters would not support such a proposal.
“I would absolutely vote against a voucher or school choice program, and if it comes to a vote, I would work hard on mobilizing” voters to do the same, the governor said.
Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, a former public school educator, is in lock-step with Beshear.
“If you think charter schools won’t affect your district, you’re not paying attention. We need to be loyal to our people, and that means investing in our public schools, which are underfunded,” she said in 2022.
More recently on the campaign trail, Coleman likened Cameron’s education priorities, including his historic support of school choice, to taking a page out of former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin’s “old playbook.”
This story was originally published October 11, 2023 at 2:09 PM.
