Kentucky’s Governor Wants School Choice for His Kids, But Not Yours

Kentucky legislators have in recent years fought an uphill battle to expand education options for children. Now, a law to belatedly fund a neglected charter school program faces a court challenge as well as opposition from the state’s governor, education commissioner, and the traditional public-school establishment. The outlook is grim for Kentucky families seeking something better than the one-size-fits-some schooling offered by government institutions—the sort of “better” their governor gave his own kids.

“Kentucky’s largest school district is suing over a new state law that would force the district to oversee one of the state’s first charter schools,” the Louisville Courier Journal reported earlier this month. “A lawsuit filed … on behalf of Jefferson County Public Schools, the Dayton Independent Board of Education and the Council for Better Education is seeking to block the implementation of House Bill 9.”

The Council for Better Education represents 168 of Kentucky’s 173 traditional public-school districts. Basically, government education bureaucrats are trying to head off competition.

For non-bureaucrats, House Bill 9 should be uncontroversial. It bankrolls popular publicly funded but independently managed charter schools. These are legal in 45 states and have grown to represent 7 percent of all public school students. Charters were nominally legalized in Kentucky 2017 but lacked any mechanism for getting them off the ground, a failing which the new law corrects. Well, it will if it survives the lawsuit by the traditional public-school establishment.

Lawmakers had to override Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of the charter school funding law last spring. Since then, the governor has shown no willingness to let families pick education that works for their kids without also paying taxes for government schools they don’t use.

“The charter school bill is unconstitutional,” Beshear insisted at a recent press conference. “The Kentucky Supreme Court’s recent opinion couldn’t be clearer—public dollars have to go to public schools. I believe that precedent will be applied—or should be applied—and I believe that it was clear enough that the Supreme Court will apply it.”

From Beshear’s perspective, only the wealthiest should truly get access to school choice. After all, that’s what he did with his own children. “Beshear’s children, 10-year-old Will and 9-year-old Lila, currently attend a Louisville private school,” The State Journal reported in 2019, when he took office. He praised public schools at the time but “said the family ‘fell