“All you do in charter schools is create potential haves versus have nots,” Gov. Andy Beshear told LINK nky Monday in an end-of-year interview in Frankfort.
His comments came just a day before Northern Kentucky University’s Board of Regents decided not to vote on a resolution to make them the authorizer of a charter school in Northern Kentucky, which effectively meant they declined to oversee the school.
Beshear elaborated that he doesn’t think charter schools are the answer to some of the state’s public education woes.
“The answer to making the public education system work for every child isn’t to pull some of them out of it and then to let those new groups have fewer rules than the ones you apply to the public school system,” Beshear said.
In the state report card released in October, Northern Kentucky schools didn’t fare so well. For the first time since 2019, the state reported federal statuses for individual schools, such as “Comprehensive School Improvement” and “Targeted School Improvement.”
Multiple Northern Kentucky schools were rated as CSI, which the state describes as those in the bottom 5% of student performance. The Kentucky Department of Education stated that about 50 schools would be identified as CSI on a yearly basis.
In Northern Kentucky, Grandview Elementary in Bellevue; Holmes High School and Ninth District Elementary in Covington; and Newport’s middle school grades received the designation, putting them in the bottom 5% of schools in the state.
As a supporter of public education, Beshear blamed the Republican legislature for issues with the state’s education system.
“We can’t have a General Assembly that puts us at 44th in teacher pay, that doesn’t invest in in the physical structures the way they need, to cut SNAP benefits,” Beshear said. “So many of our impoverished students show up hungrier than they were even a year ago, in the midst of the pandemic, and expect the schools to perform.”
He then went on to say that it’s time to put Republican and Democratic politics aside in order to foster success in the public school system — and that success doesn’t come from diverting public school money to the private sector, Beshear said.
“Charter schools are out there because of the amount of money we put in our public school system,” Beshear said. “The answer isn’t to starve our public school system of even more dollars.”
While charter schools are a big topic in the region, the Brent Spence Bridge is another important conversation.
Earlier this year, Gov. Beshear signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Ohio Governor Mike Dewine at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center that cemented the two states working together to get funding for the bridge.
Afterward, Kentucky and Ohio jointly applied for the Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant seeking $2 billion from the 2021 Federal Infrastructure Bill. The grant is currently at the federal level.
Beshear said at the event that he hopes to break ground on the project next year and is optimistic that the project will move forward in 2023.
“We expect a decision from the federal government on the two major grant programs that we applied for by the end of the year,” Beshear said. “So if I said we’re sitting on pins and needles, that would be an understatement.”
It’s the number one project in the United States, for both Ohio’s and Kentucky’s economies, as well as the U.S. economy, Beshear said.
“I don’t think there’s another project where you have a Democratic governor and Republican governor, Democratic senators and Republican senators, all of which came together to support the bipartisan infrastructure bill,” Beshear said.Â