Outside Student Union Room 107A at Northern Kentucky University on Tuesday, public educators from around the region spoke animatedly in groups after NKU’s Board of Regents declined to vote on whether it would become an authorizer for the region’s impending charter school.
Authorizers are the institutions that can approve, deny, and oversee charter school schools.
The scene after the meeting contrasted with the absolute silence moments before when Board Chair Rich Boehne requested a motion to vote on the resolution to become the authorizer – after repeating the call three times for a motion and no regent coming forward, the board declined to come to a vote.
By declining to call a vote, the university effectively declined to be the authorizer.
Before calling the motion, Boehne gave his opinion before opening up the floor to comments from NKU’s regents.
No one else spoke.
“There are a number of issues there that will make it enormously difficult, in my opinion, for the university to be a successful authorizer,” Boehne said. “And we’re certainly not interested in overseeing any failure — most importantly, the failure of a potential school.”
The concerns Boehne outlined included a lack of start-up funding available to the authorizer, which would place NKU in an interesting position due to its recent budget issues and dismissal of President Ashish Vaidya.
He also cited the aggressive timeline for approving the strategy, operator, and opening of the school; the cost of legal challenges to the charter school’s long-term funding strategy; and the financial viability of a small-scale charter school’s operation, among others.
“So just a lot of little nuts and bolts that maybe weren’t quite thought of when they put the deal together, that for us, we thought just made it unworkable,” Boehne said.
When House Bill 9 — which created a funding mechanism for charter schools in Kentucky and created the state’s pilot school charter program — first appeared in the legislature in March, representatives from NKU said they didn’t know anything about their inclusion in the bill.
“NKU was not consulted about being included as a potential charter school authorizer prior to our inclusion in HB9,” a statement from NKU said at the time. “Furthermore, we have not had the opportunity to fully understand what is in the bill.”
In speaking at Tuesday’s special meeting, Boehne reiterated that NKU didn’t have a chance to work with the legislators on the bill, whose main sponsor is Rep. Chad McCoy, an outgoing Republican legislator from Bardstown.
Rep. Lynn Belcher (R-Hopkins) is the second sponsor of the bill. Three Northern Kentucky representatives also co-sponsored the bill: Adam Koenig (R-Erlanger), Sal Santoro (R-Union), and Kim Moser (R-Taylor Mill).
“It [the bill] was put together without any input from the Board of Regents or university,” Boehne said. “We didn’t play any role at all in drafting the legislation, and unfortunately, we didn’t didn’t have an opportunity to work with the sponsors on some of the language.”
Boehne said he isn’t sure — if legislators were to rework the law in the upcoming legislative session — that things would necessarily change for NKU.
He also didn’t want to speculate where each board member stands on the issue.
“I don’t want to speak for all board members,” Boehne said. “I think there are those on the board who would support being an authorizer.”
At the beginning of the meeting, public school educators filed into the room donning buttons that read “All Kids Support Public Schools.”
“There’s an opportunity now that this has all been brought to light, and maybe as an education community, we all need to work together and look at some opportunities for folks,” Ludlow Superintendent and Northern Kentucky Education Council Advocacy Chair Mike Borchers said after the meeting.
The responsibility for the authorizer will now fall on local school districts. Local school boards will be required to put forward two members from each local board of a district located in a county that contains four or more local school districts.
These members will become the substitute pilot project authorizer, and Borchers said there’s a lot of gray area on what exactly are the next steps.
“I think that’s some of the things as superintendents we’re all going to have to look at and see what are the next steps now that Northern’s [NKU] not involved,” Borchers said.
He also said that local educators would be looking to Frankfort when the Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on another controversial education bill that passed the legislature in the spring.
House Bill 563 produces tax credits, or “education opportunity accounts,” allowing parents to pay for schools outside their districts. This also applies to tuition-based private schools.
A Franklin County Circuit Judge found the 2021 law unconstitutional. Attorney General Daniel Cameron appealed that decision to the state Supreme Court.
“That might go a long way on what the next steps may be in these types of instances,” Borchers said.
While public educators filled up most of the chairs at Tuesday’s meeting, two speakers spoke in favor of NKU becoming an authorizer during the public comment portion of the meeting.
Greg Fischer, chairman of Fischer Homes (who also sits on LINK nky’s managing board), spoke first.
“We must change the trajectory of education in NKY,” Fischer said, elaborating that he’s excited about the opportunities around House Bill 9.
Fischer said he’s part of a new organization called the Northern Kentucky Education Task Force.
Some prominent NKY leaders have expressed interest in the group, including former NKU President Jim Votruba (Votruba sits on LINK nky’s editorial board); Co-Founder & Board Member at TiER1 Performance Norm Desmarais; St. Elizabeth President and CEO Garren Colvin; former President and CEO of Victory Community Bank Jack Kenkel; and KLH Engineers CEO Bob Heil.
Fischer, along with community, business leaders, parents, and educators, have raised $2 million for the organization and expects to raise $20 million.
Charter school advocate Lynn Schaber also spoke during the meeting. She previously tried to bring a charter school to NKY via River Cities Academy and is working with local developer Bill Butler, the CEO of Corporex (Butler also sits on LINK nky’s managing board) on a potential private or charter school in Newport.
Schaber said she supports charters because she’s tired of people leaving the community because of schools.
“I know there are some bad charter schools, but there are some great ones, too,” Schaber said, elaborating that she favored NKU becoming the authorizer.
Whatever happens next, there are most likely to be constitutional legal challenges to the charter school bill.
Gov. Andy Beshear told LINK nky Monday that he doesn’t believe that charter schools are constitutional, which is something that superintendents have been saying across the Commonwealth.
“I think the constitution is very clear that public dollars have to go into the public school system,” Beshear said.
Borchers has been outspoken about the constitutionality of HB9, saying in a fall Local Superintendents Council Meeting that if NKU selected a district for a charter school, that district would have to use its funds to pay for students attending the school.
However, due to language in House Bill 9, students from other districts can attend the charter school, which means the local school district selected for a charter may have to spend funds on out-of-district students.
Borchers said that local school boards set the tax rate in each district, and those funds go for things in the community. With the state further reducing funding over the years, a lot more of that burden has fallen on local districts.
“So, to say that we’re going to take local funds and put it into another district, or another school that’s outside our region, I think that will be very problematic,” Borchers said.
