It’s been dubbed the school choice amendment. But the proposed change to the Kentucky Constitution, one of two ballot measures that voters will decide this November, actually doesn’t create any new educational options for K-12 students and their parents in the commonwealth.
What Amendment 2 would do, if approved by a majority of voters, is allow state lawmakers to allocate public funds to privately operated schools, such as charter schools or church-affiliated schools. The amendment would enable legislators to ignore seven sections of Kentucky’s 1891 constitution that currently allow tax dollars to support only public schools (or what the constitution calls “common” schools).
Attorney and school choice advocate Chad Meredith says the amendment won’t require lawmakers to financially support private education or families who wish to pursue that option. It simply removes constitutional restrictions that he says no longer make sense for the commonwealth.
“The amendment does one very simple and very important thing,” says Meredith. “It gives the people of Kentucky through their elected legislators the right to set education policy for themselves as opposed to having it determined for them in large measure by people in the 1800s.”
Public education advocates contend the mandate of public dollars for public schools remains as vital today as when it was written because traditional schools are required to educate all children, while private schools only serve a select few. They also fear what the Republic-controlled General Assembly would do if given free rein to support private education.
“This would shred the 133-year-old constitutional commitment to public education as a right to all Kentuckians and the legislature’s responsibility to fund that,” says Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.
Better to Support Traditional Schools or Fund New Options?
School choice advocates have worked for years to bring more educational options to the commonwealth. In 2017, lawmakers approved a bill to allow the formation of charter schools in Kentucky. In 2021, they created a funding mechanism to assist families that want to send their children to private or charter schools, but that law was later struck down by the Kentucky Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
That’s when Republican leaders decided to promote a constitutional amendment that would enable them to bypass or “notwithstand” the provisions that have prohibited them from allocating public funds to private educational options. The amendment proposed in House Bill 2 passed the General Assembly in March along partisan lines.
Supporters of the amendment say Kentucky public schools are struggling with persistently poor scores, achievement gaps, chronic absenteeism, and other issues. Given these failures, they contend parents deserve to have other state-supported options for educating their children. Jim Waters, president of Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, says simply throwing more money at public schools, even the good ones, isn’t the answer.
“We need new ideas,” says Waters. “If it’s not giving parents options and empowering parents, giving them freedom, then is it going to be propping up this system so it continues to fail?”
Public educators argue their schools have been underfunded for more than a decade on everything from teacher pay to textbooks to student transportation. They fear their allocations would shrink if tax dollars could also go to support private education options. That impact would be greatest on smaller, rural districts, which they say depend more on state dollars since they have lower local property tax revenues to draw from.
“These public schools are vital to our rural communities,” says Kentucky Education Association Vice President Joel Wolford. “We consider this amendment to be extremely dangerous.”
About 58,000 Kentucky children attend non-public schools, according to Bailey.
Since half of the state’s private schools are located in only three counties, he says that means rural taxpayers would be supporting private school options that their children couldn’t access. He also contends that the voucher programs that can result from public funding of private education tend to support students who are already enrolled at a privately operated school.
“So we’re taking dollars away from the public school system that serves everybody and giving it to those who already are better off on average,” says Bailey. “We can’t afford that.”
Concerns about Trust and Accountability
Some 45 states allow public charter schools and Waters says 33 states also have other non-public school options available to families. He says that proves that private education doesn’t threaten public education. In fact, he argues, the competition generated by school choice can improve academic performance and economic efficiency of public schools.
“If school choice would destroy public education, we would’ve seen this happen in many other states,” says Waters.
Bailey counters that school choice experiments in other places have proven harmful to public education, and that voucher programs have expanded so rapidly that they are threatening state budgets. He points to Florida, which now spends $4 billion on private school vouchers. He says Ohio and Arizona are sending $1.1 billion each to their voucher programs. Bailey acknowledges the challenges facing Kentucky’s public schools, but he contends that allowing publicly funded private schools makes no sense.
“We have our hands full as a poor state running our system of public schools. Do we want to add a whole other system on to that?” says Bailey. “I think the voters of Kentucky should be very wary before tossing out a commitment to public education when we see what’s happening in other states.”
Traditional school advocates also say new private schools won’t be held to the same financial and academic accountability standards as public schools, and they will be able to cherry-pick the students they enroll. Wolford says he worries lawmakers, once freed of the constitutional requirement to fund public schools, won’t do right by them.
“They would have unfettered, unchecked power to do what they want with our public schools,” says Wolford. “People in Kentucky trust their public schools. They trust public educators.”
“You want to talk about trust? Let’s trust parents,” counters Waters. “I think parents know what’s best for their children versus the bureaucrats, the superintendents, the system.”
Waters adds that the ultimate accountability for private schools comes when parents decide whether to send their child to that institution. If those schools don’t perform, he says, enrollment will drop and they will close.
Even if the amendment passes, Meredith says the General Assembly will still be required to fund public schools. But he says lawmakers also won’t be obligated to fund private schools or create voucher or scholarship programs. Instead, he says they will be able to debate a full range of policy options to determine what’s best for Kentucky families and taxpayers.
“This is not the death sentence for public schools in Kentucky. All this does is it take the shackles off of public policy for the legislature,” says Meredith. “I trust our legislators... (They) want to make right decisions.”
