State education board open to idea of charter schools for Kentucky

Members of the Kentucky Board of Education appear open to charter schools for Kentucky, although the panel did not take a position after a daylong study session Monday.

The board is going to review other states’ laws and is expected to come to a consensus at its December meeting in advance of the 2017 General Assembly.

No legislation had been prefiled in the General Assembly by Monday. In 2016, a bill failed in the legislature that would have allowed charter schools as a pilot in Fayette and Jefferson counties, urban districts that are grappling with an achievement gap between minority, disabled and low-income students and other students. But a charter school bill is much more likely to pass in the coming legislative session after Republicans won control of the state House in the election earlier this month.

“What I’ve not heard from anybody is absolutely we don’t want this to be part of the agenda,” Education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt told state board members at Monday’s meeting in Frankfort. Pruitt said department officials would come back with recommendations “around what we’ve heard today.”

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article117559328.html