Gay Adelmann, a tenacious champion of public schools in Kentucky, especially Jefferson County Louisville) reports here on the effort by Republicans to pass funding for charter schools.

She writes:

Hello friends,

I regret to inform you that the harmful charter school legislation that we’ve managed to stave off in Kentucky since 2017, (https://www.wdrb.com/news/education/revised-version-of-charter-schools-bill-passes-kentucky-house-and-senate/article_f77f2afe-203c-56aa-9b0a-a2ac6c66eec0.html) was rumored to be awakened from the dead on March 15, and sure enough, at 8:11 PM on March 21, we learned that the Kracken would be unleashed from a different committee than it was originally assigned to at 8 AM on March 22 – with less than 12 hours’ notice.

Charters have technically been the law of the land since the bill passed on the last day of session in 2017, but not one charter school had ever opened in Kentucky because they lacked the funding mechanism, or a way for “the money to follow the child.” All that changes if House Bill 9 passes this year, where it only needs a simple majority vote because 2022 is a budget year. It passed out of Committee with ease, with the chair herself safely voting “no” to appease her base, despite every speaker who showed up for that early morning meeting having spoken against the bill. Almost as if it was a bad movie, on Tuesday evening, HB9 passed the full House by one vote.

If those maneuvers weren’t suspect enough, there were some last-minute committee member swaps and peculiar posturing from the House Education Chair herself that raised some eyebrows and even got a mention from a couple of other Representatives. And, I mean, if you’re truly opposed to charters, as we’re supposed to assume by the House Education Committee’s chair Regina Huff’s “no” vote, why did you agree to bring it out of committee in the first place? Are you playing games with our children’s lives and educational outcomes and opportunities? Especially with bills that are proven to be harmful to the very children you pretend you are trying to help?

One of Tuesday night’s “Yes” votes on the House Floor (one could argue a “deciding vote” came from KY House Representative Jason Nemes, one of Kentucky’s most controversial House Representatives, who consistently earns the teachers’ union’s endorsement, despite consistently voting against teachers and students, and especially our students of color, EVERY SINGLE CHANCE HE GETS. Good news, there’s an amazing public school champion running against him in the November election. Her name is Kate Turner, and she can be found explaining her positions on charter schools and dozens of other issues on her TikTok channel here: (https://www.tiktok.com/@kateforkentucky).

I wrote this piece regarding these events, which was published in Forward KY. Please share.

https://forwardky.com/more-charter-bill-badness-call-now/

I also did this interview with a station out of Cincinnati/Northern KY.

Charter school funding bill clears Kentucky House, heads to Senate | WKRC (local12.com)

The bill will be heard in a specially called Senate Education Committee meeting on Monday at 3 PM and, if it passes, most likely will head to the Senate Floor when they gavel in on Tuesday at 1 PM. Calling and emailing them doesn’t work. We have to show up. We almost shut them down in 2018, but since we didn’t finish the job, we have to show up Monday and Tuesday.

Entrenched white “allied” union leaders that accused some of their own members of participating in “rogue groups” and “spreading disinformation” (https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/education/2019/03/27/jcps-unions-tell-members-ignore-misinformation-rogue-advocacy-groups/3287669002/) in years past, and even had one of their lackeys write this piece that told everyone why they should not sick out on the last day of 2019’s legislative session (“JCPS sickout: Teacher says it’s not necessary for one (courier-journal.com)and not fight for pensions and for the profession, have been relatively silent this go around. What did we expect when they’ve spent more energy fighting us than they ever did privatizers? It’s almost as if they’re working for dark money groups instead of those who pay for their representation. Since ALEC and McConnell’s dark money seems to have infiltrated every nook and cranny of Kentucky’s education advocacy and communication infrastructure, we sure could use some national attention on this travesty. Our primaries are May 17 and we have a lot of people we need to replace this November, including Rand Paul (Charles Booker for KY).

#AllEyesOnKentucky #NowAreYouStartingToGetIt? #StopChartersInKY

Thanks everyone!

#KeepGoing

Gay

www.dearjcps.com

www.saveourschoolsky.org

502-565-8397

Breonna Taylor was a JCPS Graduate. We demand justice for Breonna and ALL Black JCPS Students and Educators.