Ky. Senate’s top priority puts school curriculum in the hands of the pitchfork crowd
It seems strange that in a state plagued by floods, a deadly pandemic, and now devastating tornadoes, the Kentucky Senate would make its top priority a bill to shift around the responsibilities of school councils.
Senate Bill 1 would move the power to pick a school’s curriculum and a school’s principal away from the councils, which are made up of the principal, teachers and parents chosen in school wide elections. This legislation has been the dearest wish of school boards and superintendents since councils were created in 1990; it’s been presented in one form or another nearly every year since then, but has been turned back by coalitions of teachers and parents. An interesting, substantive educational issue, yes, but the tippy-top priority of the state’s most powerful body?
But now, it seems, its time has come. Why is that? Well, it’s about “accountability,” the bill’s sponsor John Schickel, R-Union, who is not a member of the Senate Education Committee, said. “There’s a lot of interest in curriculum,” he said Thursday at the hearing that passed the bill 9-1. “This puts the final say about curriculum with the citizens of the community.”
Why is curriculum suddenly so important? Is it because students aren’t learning enough or is it because in the wake of our country’s racial reckoning in 2020, angry, deluded citizens are suddenly flooding school board meetings to squawk about critical race theory and that their children might learn about Martin Luther King, Jr.? Under Senate Bill 1, those parents could march straight to a school board meeting, rather than hearing that a council made up of a principal, teachers and parents thought their child should learn some basic U.S. History. Then they could vote in some new school board members who agree with them that students should not learn about our country’s less savory moments, and hire superintendents who feel the same way.
There was a telling moment in Thursday’s meeting from Sen. David Givens who asked whether a taxpaying citizen with no children in a school had any sway over that school’s curriculum. No, Schickel responded. My response would be, if you’re not a parent or teacher in that school, why should you have sway its curriculum? But that’s not the point he was trying to make.
“If you peel back the layers of the onion, ultimately this is a way for a Board of Education to censor history or anything they deem offensive for their community schools and I don’t understand why other people can’t see this,” said Nema Brewer, co-founder of 120 Strong, a teacher group. “For this to be the number one priority for the Senate, when we have people without homes or schools in Western Kentucky is probably one of the most audacious and disgusting things I’ve seen in years.”
But it’s kind of brilliant, too. It’s a cleaner way to edge out the House Taliban Caucus, Rep. Joe Fischer, Rep. Savannah Maddox, et alia, with their merry band of anti-critical race theory bills that are really gag orders or censorship laws. House Bill 14, for example, would prohibit public K-12 schools from offering any curriculum or classroom discussions about “designated concepts related to race, sex, and religion.” It also bans diversity training in higher ed.
As the somewhat cooler heads in the Senate understand, the bill would be laughed out of the first court it would speedily end up in, and make Kentucky look even dumber to all those fancy firms we’re trying to attract. SB 1, on the other hand, bows to the pitchfork crowd with far fewer pitchforks.
‘Swing the pendulum’
What’s funny is that there are plenty of substantive debates to have over school councils, which were an innovation of the Kentucky Education Reform Act in 1990. Arguments include the fact that more students move from school to school and need the same curriculum wherever they go. Superintendents have long argued that they want more feedback into choosing principals, especially at low-performing schools because that role is so crucial to student success. Jefferson County got a special law passed a few years back to allow that.
The answer is, as always, compromise. Superintendents usually are, and should be part of a council’s deliberations in choosing school leaders. Councils should be part of larger discussions about curriculum.
“I think trying to find a balance between district leadership and school based leadership and parents and teachers is a good thing,” said Education Commissioner Jason Glass. “This is trying to swing the pendulum way over into a district based perspective ... I’d prefer a better balance between that.”
Glass, who was not asked for his opinion on the bill, said that kind of consultation could be better defined in statute. Incidentally, he said his top legislative priorities would be recruitment and retention of teachers, helping students overcome the disruptions of COVID, and getting school districts in Western Kentucky up and working again. “We have a lot of heavy lifting to focus on,” he said.
School councils were also designed to stem the good old boy cronyism and nepotism that plagued Kentucky schools for decades by cutting into the hiring power of a superintendent. I certainly hope we’re beyond the days of a superintendent unilaterally picking his best buddy as the elementary school principal, and maybe we are.
From watching groups of parents who were very angry about school shutdowns during COVID, it seems to me that they’ve been asking for more local input into schools, not less. If anything, there should be more parents on councils and at the high school level, more students on councils, a position supported by the Kentucky Student Voice Team, which opposes the bill.
SB1 is about politics taking control of schools, not parents and teachers. Making a school board bow to the loudest and angriest voices is one way to run a school district, but not the best way. It’s also already happening. In Floyd County last year, one parent’s complaints ended up in the district scrapping an entire curriculum because it featured books, like Robert Coles’ “The Story of Ruby Bridges,” a classic children’s book describing the first Black child to integrate New Orleans schools.
So maybe, like me, you didn’t have on your 2022 bingo card that Black Lives Matter protests would bring about the 30-year-old wish of the Kentucky School Boards Association. They’ll get it, but it may be a lot more than they bargained for. The GOP majority has waged a long war against KERA in particular and public education in general, from its fights with teachers to its now successful battle for tax vouchers that will eke funding away from public schools. Senate Bill 1 is just more of the same.
This story was originally published January 7, 2022 at 8:40 AM with the headline "Ky. Senate’s top priority puts school curriculum in the hands of the pitchfork crowd."
