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Dear Colleagues:
With only a month left in this legislative session, it is unclear what will happen with a bill aimed at opening charter schools in Kentucky. House Bill (HB) 9 was introduced two weeks ago and was expected to be heard in the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee on Thursday. It was removed from the committee’s agenda at the last minute, and today there is discussion of it possibly now appearing before the House Education Committee.
To be clear, I am not ideologically opposed to (nor supportive of) charter schools. Having had direct experience working with them, I have seen charter schools that provide a quality education to students, bring innovation and new school models forward, and place a high value on equity and serving all children. I have also seen charter schools that do none of these things.
Ignoring the thinning of educational resources that the proliferation of schools creates, charter schools are a decidedly mixed bag when it comes to experiences for students and their impact on the community.
A “charter” is really a contract between a school authorizer (such as a school board or a state agency) and an operator (which can range from community-based nonprofits to out-of-state, for-profit organizations). What ultimately determines whether a charter school will be a value-add to students and their community has a great deal to do with how they are authorized and the contracts (and conditions) under which they operate.
The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) has established a set of standards and principles when it comes to quality charter authorization. These foundational tenets are good benchmarks to hold any charter legislation up against in determining whether it will lead to the opening of more quality schools, or just simply the opening of more schools.
HB 9 fails to meet the criteria set forth by NACSA in ensuring that any charter schools in Kentucky that open are of quality. Instead, this is another rushed piece of school choice legislation that stands a good chance of making the education landscape even more challenging in Kentucky for students and families.
Rather than taking the time to learn the important lessons of states around the country who made mistakes with their charter school laws and policies, HB 9 seems intent on repeating them. Rather than ensuring that quality standards are in place for charter schools and their authorizers, HB 9 creates a vacuous space ripe for corruption and graft. Rather than ensuring that charter schools are really committed to serving all students (especially low-income, minority and those with disabilities), HB 9 sets up an environment where all forms of “cream skimming” and exclusionary practices will be practiced. And rather than creating the necessary clarity around how funding for charter school operations and construction will be addressed, HB 9 sets us up for another round of lawsuits where we must look to the courts to decide how important education decisions will be made, or if they are even legal under the state constitution.
Opening charter schools in Kentucky represents a seismic shift in school governance and operations. I urge the legislature to slow down and do this right – and stop rushing through a fundamentally badly constructed bill.
On another legislative topic, the Senate has passed its budget proposal and, as expected, it is lower than the House’s budget, including less funding overall for education. The final budget almost certainly will be somewhere between the House and Senate versions and will represent a large increase in education funding over the past several biennia. I have seen (and deeply appreciate) the strong statements from Kentucky’s superintendents on making sure that the funding for full-day kindergarten is restored in whatever final budget comes forward. We cannot reasonably operate schools with kindergarten being the football pulled away from our families and communities at the last minute.
Finally, I’d like to invite you to tune in at 9 p.m. ET tonight to Kentucky Educational Television (KET) for an important forum on “Mental Health in Education.”
I will be participating in this forum along with Kentucky educators, who will share their classroom experience since the COVID-19 outbreak and discuss how they’re addressing the mental health concerns among their teaching colleagues and their students. Among the scheduled guests is Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr., a French and English teacher with Montgomery County High School and Kentucky’s 2022 Teacher of the Year.
If you can’t watch tonight’s broadcast, the forum will air several more times. The schedule and participants are available on KET’s website.
Please join us as we discuss this important topic.
Kind regards,
Jason E. Glass, Ed.D.
Commissioner and Chief Learner
Participation in Illegal Passing Survey
After two years of not holding the National Association for State Directors of Pupil Transportation’s (NASDPTS) Illegal Passing Survey due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the association and the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) will be conducting the survey once again.
KDE will report the total number of passes statewide to NASDPTS. KDE is encouraging as many districts as possible to participate. The last two surveys only had 77 school districts participate.
If a district cannot participate with all its buses, please consider having some of your buses participate. KDE uses this information not only for the national survey, but also for the many inquiries it receives regarding stop arm cameras, considerations for laws by legislators, from the media and students.
School buses remain the safest way for students to get to and from school, however student riders are most vulnerable when they are outside the bus and in the danger zone. It is anticipated that much has changed during the pandemic with respect to student and motorist behavior. Because of these changes, having a current measurement of illegal passing of stopped school buses has never been more important.
On April 20, KDE is asking for volunteers to be on each of your district’s school buses to observe and report any instances of motorists illegally passing the school buses using the attached form. Even buses that have no illegal passing on the day of the survey should turn in the form to help get accurate data on how many illegal passes occur per day, per bus. If your district is unable to participate on that day but would like to choose a different day, please be sure to enter the date into the survey.
The volunteers can be reliable students, monitors, teachers, parents, etc. This survey should be done during each of the runs for the day. The total number of illegal passes for each district will be tallied and reported to KDE and nationally.
Please instruct volunteers to pay particular attention to the instructions and safety precautions. As always, everyone’s primary duty is the safety of the students on the school bus. Please have your volunteers note on the bottom of the form they are to report only illegal passes that occur while the bus driver is stopped with red warning lights flashing and stop arm(s) deployed in full compliance with our state training and procedures.
Results should be reported no later than May 2. Once the data is collected from each bus, enter the compiled data into the online survey. If you are unable to participate or have concerns about the survey, email Elisa Hanley or call her at (502) 564-5279, ext. 4406.
For your convenience, attached is:
- The reporting form drivers should use to ensure that they record illegal passing in a nationally consistent format; and
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A spreadsheet to collect and total the data from each of the individual driver forms (the local reporting form).
Thank you for your help with this important initiative.
Scholarship Opportunity for Students Supported through an IEP
Applications are being accepted for the Powered By Inclusion Scholarship Opportunity, which provides a scholarship opportunity for students supported through an Individual Education Program (IEP) who have achieved postsecondary readiness. The scholarship is funded through the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Early Learning (OSEEL) American Rescue Plan funding.
Applications are encouraged to be completed through each Kentucky school district for seniors or students in Grade 14 who plan on entering a postsecondary education or training program for the 2022-2023 school year. The deadline to apply is April 11.
For questions or additional information, see the attached scholarship information or contact ARPTransition@education.ky.gov.
Updated Model Curriculum Framework Now Available!
An updated version of the Model Curriculum Framework (MCF) is now available on the Model Curriculum Framework webpage on KYstandards.org.
Per KRS 158.6451, the MCF provides guidance for schools and districts in implementing educational best practices in a way that creates curricular coherence at the local level to positively impact student achievement.
This guidance supports school and district leaders in aligning their local curriculum, instructional resources, assessment and evidenced-based instructional practices with the Kentucky Academic Standards (KAS).
 The first section of the MCF, the Curriculum Development Process, has been updated to include additional support for designing a standards-aligned local curriculum and selecting high-quality instructional resources to support implementation. The toolkit located in Appendix A contains new tools and resources to support school and district leaders as they work through each phase of the curriculum development process.
The newly published section four of the MCF focuses on the role of evidenced-based instructional practices in helping to support strong, standards-aligned instruction and creating a more equitable learning environment for students. This section provides an overview of what evidence-based instructional practices are and why they are important, and examines six evidence-based practices that can support students in reaching the grade-level expectations within the KAS. In addition, Appendix E contains a toolkit that includes professional learning supports and content-specific resources for each evidence-based practice.
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