Will Kentucky’s Districts of Innovation program get a black eye?

LSCDicks

During efforts to fend off a true charter school bill a few years ago, legislative friends of adults running Kentucky’s traditional schools passed the Districts of Innovation bill, which supposedly allow traditional school districts in the state to do many of the same things that work well around the country in charter schools.

But the Districts of Innovation program was never a suitable replacement for real charter school legislation.

For one thing, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest among many of Kentucky’s traditional schools in the Districts of Innovation program. Only seven of Kentucky’s 170+ school districts ever successfully applied to enter the program. There hasn’t been a new District of Innovation since 2014.

Even among those limited districts that are part of the Districts of Innovation program, a serious problem has surfaced. Not surprisingly, the trouble is in the Jefferson County Public School District (JCPS); the school in trouble is Maupin Elementary.

The Courier-Journal reports that the JCPS Board of Education was briefed recentlty that Maupin, which tried to reform itself as a type of Waldorf School, is doing so poorly that it may well become a Priority School when the current school term is over. The Courier article certainly outlines a list of problems at Maupin -- issues that might have been avoided if a real charter school had been in place, instead.

The losers in this story are the children at Maupin; they didn’t get the opportunity to go to a real charter school. They -- not school-system adults -- are the ones who will really suffer for the problems at this so-called School of Innovation.

Maybe 2016 be the year Kentucky’s legislators finally move beyond the idea that the interests of adults in the school system come first. It’s time for Kentucky’s legislators to provide students some education choices that really work.