FRANKFORT — Kentucky Republican senators have introduced a slate of bills they say show their commitment to bettering public education in the commonwealth.  Some of the proposals are getting support from Democrats and educators, but others are more contentious.  Two of the priority bills passe d out of the Senate Education Committee Thursday. Senate Bill 1, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tempore David Givens, of Greensburg, mirrors a 2022 law deemed unconstitutional by the Kentucky Supreme Court that attempts to shift powers from the Jefferson County Public Schools Board to the district’s superintendent. The other, Senate Bill 3, sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, would require school districts to post various financial reports online as a means to increase transparency over public dollars spent following headlines of budget shortfalls in the state’s largest school districts, JCPS and Fayette County Public Schools.  JCPS officials told lawmakers they opposed the shift in governance outlined in SB 1, but see SB 3 as a way to better hold them accountable.  “It seems that you want to give me more authority, but I’m here to tell you I shouldn’t have it,” said JCPS Superintendent Brian Yearwood, adding that the original law was proposed before he joined the district last year and he could not speak to the dynamic of the school board and superintendent before he arrived. Brian Yearwood speaks during a community forum in Louisville in May 2025. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley) He said the “collaborative relationship” he has now with board members is “necessary for us to succeed.” He later said SB 1 would be a “distraction in our community” when the district needs a common vision for students to succeed. “If we don’t have that, if I’m running against or they’re running against each other, we stand still, we go nowhere and our children cannot afford that,” Yearwood said.  The board’s vice chair, James Craig, said SB 3, the legislation requiring posting of financial information, would be a solution to “avoid what has happened in the past, going forward in the future.” In recent months, the school district has faced a projected $188 million budget shortfall.  Asked about the swath of priority education bills from Senate Republicans after the meeting, Givens said lawmakers must be “responsive to the people and the crises that are presented to us.” Several of the top 10 priority bills are responses to crises “around education leadership and education governance,” he added. “It’s in response to what we’ve seen over the course of the summer, not just in FCPS and JCPS, but even in rural districts. We’re hearing financial concerns about management of funds, roles and responsibilities across the commonwealth,” Givens said. “So, while we owe it to every student to provide a quality education that can move his or her life forward, we also owe it to every taxpayer to be certain their monies are spent wisely and with adequate oversight.”  Other Senate GOP priority education bills are:  Senate Bill 2, sponsored by Sen. Julie Raque Adams, of Louisville, would prohibit pay raise percentages for school administrators from outpacing those for teachers in school districts. Senate Bill 4, sponsored by Sen. Steve West, of Paris, would create a five-year professional development path for new principals.  Senate Bill 5, sponsored by Sen. Jason Howell, of Murray, would allow Kentucky school districts to buy produce for meals from local farmers.  Senate Bill 6, sponsored by Senate President Robert Stivers, of Manchester, would fund his previously passed endowed research consortium for Kentucky universities with $150 million. The goal of the endowment is to encourage universities to collaborate on research projects.  Advocates sound off Earlier this month, Stivers told reporters before the bills were filed that the legislation would reflect how Senate Republicans would “be focused on K-12 education” this session.  With the bills now public, not all advocates who regularly watch Frankfort agree on how they will impact Kentucky schools. Protect Our Public Schools, a coalition of public education groups, raised concerns about SB 1 and 3, as well as SB 114, which is not among the Senate’s top ten bills, but would make it so the school boards of JCPS and FCPS are appointed by local officials instead of elected by voters.  The coalition, which began as a political action committee that advocated against the defeated GOP-backed constitutional amendment to allow the General Assembly to fund nonpublic schools, said the bills “collectively divert attention away from the real challenges facing Kentucky’s public schools. Protect Our Public Schools was also critical of the House’s budget bill, which sets per pupil funding at $4,587 over the next two years, saying it “worsens the crisis by freezing and cutting key education funding, continuing a decades-long pattern of allowing school resources to fall further behind the cost of living.” House Republicans have called the bill a starting point in budget conversations to come.  “These bills are being presented as solutions, but they avoid the core issue Kentucky’s schools are grappling with: chronic underfunding,” said a spokesperson for Protect Our Schools KY. “And now the House budget proposal doubles down on that problem — freezing the SEEK base, cutting transportation funding, and offering no meaningful new investments in educators or early learning.” The 2024 budget approved by the General Assembly had per pupil funding at $4,326 for fiscal year 2024-25 and $4,586 in the next fiscal year.  Richard Innes, education analyst for the conservative Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, told the Lantern that increasing state spending on education without increasing oversight “just seems silly to me.”  “The legislators have a responsibility to shepherd those dollars and make sure that they’re being spent in an efficient way,” he said, noting that the state constitution says the General Assembly must “provide for an efficient system of common schools throughout the state.”  Innes also said that the Kentucky Supreme Court’s 1989 Rose decision also affirms that responsibility of state lawmakers, meaning that they have “the ultimate authority to be making decisions.” For the case of SB 1, Innes said it’s “very appropriate” for the General Assembly to intervene in JCPS governance.  “Policy is made all the time at the state level that is going to impact the freedom of local boards to do things, and sometimes that might be awfully constricting, but sometimes it’s necessary,” Innes said. “Local boards, for one thing, don’t have the resources available that we have at the state level to look into different things that they still are responsible for doing, and they may not be able to make the very best decisions on their own, simply because they just don’t have the resources to help them form those decisions. In cases like that, uniform statewide law is probably appropriate.”  From another perspective, Kentucky Association of School Administrators (KASA) CEO Rhonda Caldwell praised SB 4, the bill that would implement professional development for new principals. She called it “a very much needed positive step in the right direction towards supporting public education.” The legislation includes new principals receive mentorship from experienced principals and participate in regular training.  “The principal is second only to a teacher when it comes to determining a child’s success,” she said. “And right now, our teaching pipeline, nor our principal pipeline, is strong when it comes to recruiting and retaining educators into the profession for the short term or the long term.” As for SB 2, Caldwell said KASA is “still working to understand what’s behind that.” The proposal says any superintendent or administrator cannot receive a percentage pay increase greater than the average percentage pay increase for teachers in the district. Caldwell pointed out that some school employees are paid based on a state salary schedule. In other cases, individual school boards oversee the pay of some administrators, such as the superintendent. Caldwell later added that the policy in that bill is already the “current practice.”  “The concern that I have right now is the Senate Bill 2, it is very clear for superintendents and school administrators. And regardless of the role, it’s going to be a matter of what district can pay the most,” Caldwell said. “And so as we looked and really examined our teacher shortage very closely, what we clearly see is turnover rates that favor those districts who can provide higher salaries, whereas those who cannot, they constantly lose more teachers to other districts as well as principals.” Caldwell added that progress has been made when it comes to education salaries in Kentucky, but work must continue to keep up with a rising cost of living.  “Take any aspect of education and consider that salaries require more, the cost of a school bus — that requires more dollars, the cost of eggs requires more dollars. Everything requires (more), and at the end of the day, our students are the ones who are losing out,” she said. “And so I am hopeful that as we go through the budget process, that both the Senate and the House will continue to consider public education as a top priority, but also backing it up with dollars.”  At present, some of the GOP senators’ priority education bills have had a committee hearing. None have received a full floor vote in the chamber. Republicans hold a supermajority in the Senate with 32 seats to Democrats’ six. The post Kentucky GOP senators make public education a cornerstone of their priority bills appeared first on The Lexington Times. ...read more read less