How’s that? With SBDMs Kentucky doesn’t really have any public schools?

Definitions from an Ed School prof makes it seem so

A recent Education Week article by Professor Sarah M. Stitzlein from the University of Cincinnati just caught my attention.

Stitzlein talks about “five responsibilities schools must meet to truly be called ‘public’." Her third criterion is:

“They should be responsive to the public, enabling community members to vote out school officials or change school policies through meaningful and viable avenues like elections, referendums, and open school meetings.” (Note: “Community” is spelled correctly in the print edition of this article but the online version does have a typographical error)

So, community members in a real public school system – at least according to Stitzlein – should be able to vote out school officials and should also have control over school policies through elections and referendums. Citizens should also have free and easy access to school meetings, so those meetings need to be clearly and publicly announced.

Well, Kentucky’s current public school system, which doesn’t have any charter schools at present, flunks Stitzlein’s requirements.

Under Kentucky’s School Based Decision Making (SBDM) system, locally elected school boards have no control over key policy areas in schools such as staff selection, final spending decisions, and selection of curriculum. These major policy areas and more are completely determined by the school council in each school. But, those councils are firmly – by law – under control of teachers and the principal. There are no provisions for the general public to have any control over these school policies – not through elections, not through referendums, not in any way.

In Kentucky, the only individuals the public gets to elect are local school board members. The only school official that board can remove is the district superintendent. Furthermore, that superintendent is as powerless as the board when it comes to many major school policies.

In fact, Kentucky’s SBDM law actually insulates school councils from any real public control.

By law, the standard school council consists of the school principal, three teachers and only two parents; so, parent council members are completely outnumbered. The parent members are elected by the largest parent organization in the school (Usually the PTA) and the teachers on the council are elected only by the school staffers.

Since a majority rules, even parents in the school do not have control. The general public has no representation and no say what so ever.

In Kentucky’s public schools, teachers are firmly in the driver’s seat. What’s more, thanks to the SBDM laws no one can really hold those teachers accountable. For sure, there is no voting out either teachers or the principal by the general public. There is no public control over many school policies, either.

Basically, Kentucky’s citizens get to pay taxes but have no say about how those dollars are ultimately spent in the schools.

Even Professor Stitzlein – whose article isn’t exactly friendly to charter schools – would have to admit that the Kentucky SBDM model doesn’t provide the public with what she thinks is necessary to have a real public school system.