Day 8: Reforming Jefferson County’s school board and other education policies (SB 4)
Kentucky’s largest school district, JCPS, has been dealing with real problems under its current board, including severe financial mismanagement and chronic academic underperformance in the district. SB 4 makes a structural change because the status quo wasn’t working.
The bill restructures how JCPS’s board is elected, moving from 7 to 5 elected members and establishing new election divisions for the district.. This isn’t a panacea, as no single bill fixes a district this large and badly run on its own, but with the current board being overhauled it gives our community a real chance to improve the district going forward. Recently, as many know, State Auditor Allison Ball’s office released a 500-page audit of JCPS, and the findings back up why change was needed: over the past 20 years, JCPS’s per-student revenue rose 62 percent while average teacher salaries rose only 12 percent, the district routinely overspent by millions, it lacked a cohesive strategic plan, and it had a workplace culture marked by fear of retaliation.
That alone would have been perhaps the most important bill of the session. The bill, however, does more. It also creates a statewide principal leadership development practicum, a structured, multi-year training program aimed at better preparing and supporting our school principals, who carry an enormous amount of responsibility for how well a school actually runs. The Department of Education will administer it starting with the 2027-2028 school year.
And in a piece that reaches into higher education, SB 4 establishes a new Center of American Civics at the University of Kentucky and tasks it, along with the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center, with developing curriculum materials for courses in American government and history.
Sponsored by Sen. Steve West, chair of the Senate Education Committee. The Governor vetoed the bill, and the General Assembly overrode that veto, passing it 78-19 in the House and 30-8 in the Senate.
