Kentucky lawmakers aren’t giving up on a proposed school choice amendment after recent court rulings struck down laws to publicly fund private and charter schools.
Huddling with reporters Tuesday, Senate President Robert Stivers said lawmakers are discussing a vote to put a proposed school choice amendment on the 2024 general election ballot. What Stivers couldn’t say is if a proposed amendment to allow public funding for non-public schools can actually pass the 38-member Senate and 100-member House.
“There’s a lot of discussion about an amendment – are the votes there?” he said.
Placing a proposed amendment before Kentucky voters requires 23 votes in the Senate and 60 votes in the House. Hitting that threshold would likely require support from urban and rural lawmakers. However, not all lawmakers – even ones from the same county and the same party – always vote alike.
“That’s where you’ll get into again a regional dynamic rather than a political dynamic,” said Stivers, focusing most of his remarks on Jefferson County.
Jefferson County has roughly 30,000 school-age children who attend private and or parochial schools and over 90,000 schoolchildren who attend public school, according to Stivers. It is the (public) Jefferson County School System that successfully fought alongside Dayton Independent Schools in Campbell County to have a 2022 charter school funding law (House Bill 9) declared unconstitutional in Franklin Circuit Court last year. That law, as written, required the establishment of charter schools in both Louisville and Northern Kentucky.
HB 9 is the second school choice law in as many years to be found unconstitutional in the commonwealth. A 2021 law (HB 563) allowing public tax credits for donors who fund private school tuition was struck down by the Kentucky Supreme Court in 2022.
With lawmakers from Jefferson County and NKY filling over a third of all seats in the state legislature, a certain degree of support from those delegations is needed should a proposed school choice amendment make the ballot. The question is how many of those lawmakers are willing to back the proposed change.
“The reality of this is probably more a reflection of doing something with the Jefferson County Public School System,” said Stivers. “If you look at all the cases (in court) it was pretty much focused on JCPS. That’s where you get into, again, a regional dynamic more than a political dynamic – a rural-urban type of scenario. But as a state senator you have to think about the state,” he told reporters.
There is now a proposed school choice amendment in the Kentucky House waiting to be assigned to committee. Rep. Josh Calloway (R-Irvington) sponsors that amendment (HB 208). Should it make the ballot, the proposal would ask Kentucky voters to change the state constitution “to authorize the General Assembly to provide for the educational costs of students outside of the public school system.”
Among the co-sponsors of the bill are four legislators from NKY’s core counties of Boone, Campbell, and Kenton: Rep. Stephanie Dietz (R-Edgewood), Rep. Steven Doan (R-Erlanger), Rep. Marianne Proctor (R-Union), and Rep. Steve Rawlings (R-Burlington).
Only five cosponsors of the proposed amendment are from Louisville in Jefferson County, which holds 18 Kentucky House seats – most of those held by Democrats.
