The Kentucky Senate education committee passed a bill Thursday that would transfer power away from the elected Jefferson County Board of Education toward the district’s recently chosen superintendent.
Senate Bill 1 is making its way through the General Assembly just over a month after the state Supreme Court ruled nearly identical language unconstitutional in a reversal of a previous decision.
“This body, this committee, and the Senate and the House passed Senate Bill 1 in 2022 targeting — in a very positive way — the role of the superintendent and the role of the school board in our largest school district here in Kentucky,” said sponsor GOP Sen. David Givens of Greensburg.
Givens argued the state’s largest district faces unique challenges and therefore needs a different governance structure than other districts: a structure that gives the board less power and oversight over day-to-day affairs and allows the superintendent more overarching authority.
“Hire the best and put them in charge, and give them the authority to make those decisions,” Givens told reporters.
The bill passed with a “yes” vote from all Republicans on the committee, with the two Democrats voting “no.” That was after JCPS board Vice Chair James Craig, Superintendent Brian Yearwood and Jefferson County Teachers Association President Maddie Shepard voiced their strong opposition to the bill.
Yearwood, who would essentially be the beneficiary of greater authority under SB1, said he has a collaborative relationship with the board and has no need for more power.
“It seems that you want to give me more authority, but I'm here to tell you — I shouldn't have it,” Yearwood told the committee.
Yearwood said he does not believe the legislation would bring JCPS any closer to its goals of improving student outcomes.
“This bill is about adults, not students, and that is where our focus should be,” Yearwood said. “This bill is about a power dynamic of the past, and I want to focus on what's ahead, the future of all children in our commonwealth.”
Both the current and previous SB1 would require the board of education to delegate authority to the superintendent over all day-to-day operations and grants the superintendent control over almost all administrative duties that aren’t explicitly the responsibility of the board. It limits the board from meeting more than once every month, with a couple of exceptions. The bill would also require the board to muster up a two-thirds majority to overrule any policy statements or rules that the superintendent suggests.
Craig said the legislation would not prevent future crises in the district. He pointed to the 2023 transportation crisis and the district’s current budgeting issues — both dilemmas he argued could have been avoided with better board oversight.
“I will tell you that a solution to preventing something similar from happening in the future is not less oversight, because less oversight then was the source of that problem,” Craig said. “I'll take my ownership, full responsibility, for my part as one of the seven board members … but I must tell you that less oversight of management would not prevent a similar outcome in the future.”
A scathing 2024 audit of JCPS’s busing catastrophe found one contributing factor was that district staff underinformed the school board and the public about plans to overhaul student assignment and transportation. Some Jefferson County school board members also have suggested that the district’s current financial crisis resulted in part because the prior superintendent and his staff were not sufficiently forthcoming with the district’s financial picture.
When asked if Yearwood or Craig’s staunch objections gave him pause, Givens said they did not change his mind. He said elected school board members would still have the ultimate say in hiring and firing the superintendent, safeguarding the democratic process.
“I think with regard to accountability to the voters, the board is that connection to the voters in this case, and then the connection to the superintendent having that authority to say he or she must go, is the ultimate authority,” Givens said.
Givens has also filed Senate Bill 114, which would change the school boards in Jefferson and Fayette counties to appointed rather than elected officials. While it’s unclear if the bill will move through the legislature, Givens said it’s “getting a lot of momentum right now.”
One Republican on the committee, Sen. Aaron Reed of Shelbyville, expressed misgivings about the bill, saying he was concerned about limiting the power of the only elected officials in control of public schools.
“I try to champion every opportunity the idea that the elected are the ones who can be held accountable, because when you have bureaucracy, good luck trying to complain to them and make the changes that you do need,” Reed said even as he voted “yes” on the legislation.
Democratic Sen. Gerald Neal, who represents a portion of west and south Louisville, said he recognizes that the issues within JCPS “cannot persist,” but that lawmakers need to give the new superintendent time to create change in the district before implementing sweeping governance overhauls.
“I'm a critic of some of those outcomes that come out, particularly for people in my district, some of them,” Neal said. “Now I feel there's an opportunity. Now I have confidence in this process. Now I have confidence in the people, and I have confidence in the moment, and we should give them the ability to do that.”
At the same time as lawmakers look to once again pass SB 1, a separate House committee is reviewing a citizen petition to impeach the swing vote in the Supreme Court case that threw out the previous legislative attempt to limit JCPS’s board.
In December 2024, a different 4-3 majority of the Supreme Court upheld the first version of SB 1 as constitutional. But that would change once newly elected Justice Pamela Goodwine replaced a retiring justice in January 2025, as she was the swing vote of a 4-3 decision to rehear the JCPS case that April, and then part of the new 4-3 majority decision striking down the law at the end of the year. They ruled that the General Assembly cannot single out a specific county government or school district “unreasonably.”
Now, the House has formed a committee to consider impeaching Goodwine over what a petitioner alleges is a conflict of interest.
Senate Education Chairman Stephen West alluded to that alleged conflict of interest Thursday as he questioned Shepard over the large donations her teachers’ union gave to a political action committee (PAC) that purchased ads supporting Goodwine’s election.
“Is it possible to think that maybe the general public and even the General Assembly might view that as a quid pro quo?” West asked. “Do you see how some members of the General Assembly or general public might have some consternation with that?”
Shepard responded that teachers have as much right to pool their money and contribute to a PAC as “every other constituent in Kentucky.”
That impeachment committee is scheduled to meet again Thursday afternoon. They are also charged with considering three other impeachment petitions.
Lawmakers have appeared to put a laser focus on education this session, with numerous pieces of priority legislation in the Senate targeting reforms in the state’s public schools, from limiting administrator pay increases to requiring more transparency around school budgeting.
