Sneaky backdoor charters?!
+ HB 1 results.
Despite this being the heat of Kentucky’s 2026 legislative session, the last week or so has felt a lil slower than expected. A lil sluggish.
We have just over two weeks left in #KYGA26, and I’m expecting things to get increasingly chaotic — especially this week, as bill sponsors try to take their slowly dying bills off life support and get them moving before it’s too late.
I’m also increasingly on the watch for anything sneaky and/or wackadoodle and/or controversial on the prowl because we haven’t really seen much like that and IDK — it is like when you know a storm is supposed to be on the forecast, but you walk outside to a sunny 72 degrees.
I don’t trust it.
Beshear vetoes “school choice” bill
Let’s pick up right where we left off, shall we?
Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed House Bill 1 — the federal scholarship tax credit — Friday afternoon. It was just his second veto of session, but easily the most controversial (hence why I wrote hundreds of words dissecting his options ~14 hours before he announced the veto.)
Was I wrong that he would let it become law without his signature? Obvs (but also so were several of y’all who voted in my poll about it).
But was I right that the man loves his brand and his talking points? Yes, because his veto message managed to bring up the 2024 Amendment 2 vote (even though it isn’t particularly relevant because that’s a state money issue and this is federal), Kentucky’s natural disasters, and his unsuccessful efforts around universal preschool and statewide teachers raises.
And was my makeshift veto message generally on the same wavelength as Beshear’s veto message? Yeah — he spent the chunk of the message pointing out how the legislature has repeatedly refused to fully and adequately fund public education, and maybe we should take care of that first.
He also spent some time preemptively defending himself from potential blowback, including very clearly defending teachers’ unions — “they should be appreciated instead of attacked” — and reminding folks he has been both critical and supportive of both Republicans and Democrats during his time in state-level office.
“As a product of Kentucky’s public schools, I will not lose faith in our system,” Beshear wrote in closing.
Of course, the GOP — and, incredibly, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board — promptly skewered him alive for this.
“‘...the country has learned something important about Mr. Beshear’s values and priorities - and none of it is good,’” a quote from the WSJ reaction piece tweeted by GOP Rep. Kim Moser, HB 1’s sponsor, on Sunday.
The Republican supermajority legislature is already halfway through overriding the veto, with the House voting 77-14-1 Monday to override. Expect the Senate to follow suit in the next few days and send it off to Secretary of State Michael Adams for it to become law.
Adams would also be in charge of overseeing Kentucky’s entry into this federal program — not Beshear.
When Beshear vetoed the bill, Adams quickly retorted online: “Fine, I’ll sign it.”
Sneaky backdoor charters?!
Remember how the state Supreme Court struck down Kentucky’s charter school funding law because it was unconstitutional?
Yeah, OK, it looks like they’ve found a way to lowkey kinda still bring charter school energy to Kentucky.
Imma need y’all to stick with me for this one.
Senate Bill 263 from Senate Education Chair Sen. Stephen West (R-Paris) deals with “schools of innovation” — basically ways schools can get out of current regulations in order to have the same types of flexibility as, say, a charter or private school would have to best meet their students’ needs.
West did something like this last year, and it got put into law over Beshear’s veto. Now, he’s expanding on it to specifically make it easier for districts to bring in education service providers — typically the groups tasked with running charter schools — “to assist in the management and operation of a school or program.”
Basically, SB 263 requires the Kentucky Board of Education to have a list of “expedited waivers” on hand for districts to quickly use that would waive all regulations tied to not allowing them to use education service providers. (It is the only type of expedited waiver mentioned in the bill; otherwise, districts would need to request individual waivers for specific regulations.)
The waiver request would have to come from a school board, and Kentucky’s Education Commissioner would only be able to reject these waiver requests if he can show saying yes would “substantially” hurt the operations or impede student learning at a school or program.
Now, KBE can already waive a ton of stuff thanks to West’s bill from last year, but this specifically aims at making it even easier for this one thing to happen.
So, basically, these would be traditional public schools — not charters — but they would be allowed to have essentially charter school operators come in and “assist” with management and operation of said school. Since the entire energy of the bill is ridding schools of unnecessary regulations, the bill does not elaborate on just how much or how little the ESPs can do.
So, instead of diverting tax dollars to a charter through a long-term funding mechanism, this would basically be like a school board asking for a waiver, getting it, and then hiring a contractor to run a school.
And, yes, I’ve spent basically my entire career covering the debate over “school choice” in Kentucky and I don’t know of any district’s school board that would be like, “Mmm, you know what? We should do charter schools.”
SB 263 would give school boards more control over if and when and where Not-Charter-Charters happen in their district — and when they need to take back the school.
But you also have SB 1 — which could potentially transfer this outsourcing power to just the JCPS superintendent — and SB 114 — which would replace the school boards in Louisville and Lexington with people picked by one individual and are not directly accountable to the public. Again, it is far easier to control one individual — particularly one who may be overwhelmed in a new place and a new job — than it is to control five or seven.
SB 263 also calls for a new pot of money — pitched as a mix of gifts and grants, but also state and federal dollars — to go towards a pilot project to fund at least three schools of innovation, but doesn’t specify that those schools need to go after the charter-lite waivers. But those schools would have to match the state funds with their own district dollars or outside philanthropic gifts/private investment.
In pitching the bill to his own committee Thursday, West said they already have an interested party in NKY. He didn’t give additional details, and no one on the committee explicitly asked for them.
But I immediately had flashbacks to the Ovation project in Newport circa 2022, where Rep. Kim Banta helped clear the way for the charter school funding law while her husband was working on a big development project where they wanted to bring a private “urban academy” on the property.
Banta has been abstaining from this year’s HB 1 votes.
SB 263 cleared committee last week, and was supposed to get a full Senate vote Monday but it was passed over. Maybe tomorrow? We’ll see.
Damn, Daniel (again)
Oh, in other news, Rep. Daniel Grossberg is threatening to sue one of his primary opponents for saying Grossberg had been accused of sexual harassment. (Which Grossberg has been accused of.)
Max Morley got served a cease-and-desist last week by Grossberg’s new attorney — who, I shit you not, I shit you not, is former state Sen. Adrienne Southworth.
Morley said he was asked to delete some social media posts and make a public apology to Grossberg; Morley is not interested in doing either, and dropped a lengthy apology largely focused on apologizing to those Grossberg has hurt.
“Grossberg has consistently redefined hypocrisy, but believing he is the one owed an apology here is beyond the pale,” Morely said. “I would recommend he begin by finally apologizing to the women he sexually harassed.”
Monday evening, Morley told me they’re basically in wait-and-see mode to see if Grossberg actually sues or if it was a scare tactic.
Of all the people who have talked shit about Grossberg online over the last year, it appears Morley — one of his top primary opponents — is the only one to who been threatened with legal action over it.
Nailed it on the Banta stuff. My understanding is that her fingers are into all the things that smell like charters.