I had the pleasure yesterday to attend the inaugural meeting of Kentucky’s new Charter School Advisory Council in Frankfort. This is something very new for Kentucky and marks an important step along the road to bringing some real school choice to the state.

The new council, chaired by UK Professor Wayne Lewis, wasted no time getting down to business. After an important reminder that the council is subject to Kentucky’s Open Meetings and Open Records laws, the council reviewed four separate charter school draft regulations that provide necessary detail for Kentucky’s House Bill 520 from the 2017 Regular Legislative Session. These regulations are:701 KAR 8:010 Student application, lottery, and enrollment701 KAR 8:020 Evaluation of authorizer performance701 KAR 8:030 Revocation and nonrenewal process for authorizers and 701 KAR 8:040 Conversion charter school creation and operation.

It was clear that a lot of good work has already gone into creating these new regulations, and the council made some good suggestions to further improve the drafts.

Next step, the Kentucky Board of Education, which eventually must approve these new regulations, will have its first look at them in its next regular meeting on August 2, 2017.After that, approved changes will be incorporated into the drafts and the new Charter School Advisory Council will examine those revised regulations once more before the next state board meeting in October 2017.Clearly, it was a historic, new day for public education in Kentucky. The Courier-Journal sent a reporter to cover the full day’s activities, and you can read the report here.

The Herald-Leader’s education reporter was also on site, but I have not seen an article, so far.

In any event, some really great progress is being made to offer the state’s students some more choices in where they get their education, and everyone seems serious about getting this right. That is really exciting for Kentucky’s students.