Yes, it's time to reform Kentucky's School-Based Decision-Making Councils

In my latest guest editorial for Kentucky Fried Politics, I argue that it's past time to reform Kentucky's law governing School-Based Decision-Making (SBDM) Councils.

But unlike proposed legislation that would divest SBDM Councils of all their power and give it to the district superintendent, I argue that a better path would be changing the make-up of the Councils to give parents and the public an equal seat at the table with educators:

Superintendents are only as accountable to the public as the local boards of education make them. And as many voters have discovered over the last year when it came to mask mandates or addressing legitimate concerns about what is being taught in schools, local board members can be highly defensive and, especially in districts where they are controlled by teachers unions, utterly deaf to the voices of ordinary parents.

SBDM Councils have the capacity to be much more responsive to parents, but only if their basic power structure is changed. Lawmakers should consider changing SBDM law to give parents and equal number of seats on the Council as teachers hold and add another seat for a non-parent member of the community.

Read the whole thing here.

Related posts:

• Kentucky's SBDM Councils and critical race theory
• Unleashing parent power in education