FRANKFORT, Ky. — Who decides what is taught in Kentucky classrooms?

What You Need To Know

  • Kentucky state lawmakers held a hearing about school-based decision-making councils Tuesday

  • SBDM councils typically decide a school’s curriculum
  • Republican lawmakers have proposed limiting the teaching of critical race theory in public schools

  • Lawmakers are discussing potential legislation ahead of the next legislative session in January

State lawmakers focused their attention Tuesday on the role school-based decision-making (SBDM) councils have in crafting the curriculum.

Republicans who are in charge of the committee invited a couple parents to testify about difficulties they’ve faced with these councils.  

“Parents want their children educated, not indoctrinated,” said Beanie Geoghegan, a parent from Louisville. “As much as I appreciate an audience with you today, we should not have to go to our state legislators to ensure that it happens.”

Geoghegan runs the Kentucky chapter of No Left Turn In Education, a group that opposes the teaching of critical race theory in schools and supports other traditionally conservative education policies.

SBDM councils are boards made up of teachers, parents, and administrators that make decisions at the school level and they’re separate from the local school board voters elect.

During last month’s discussion on a bill to limit the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, many school administrators said SBDM councils have the final say on what exactly is taught in each school, at least for the districts that utilize them.

State Rep. Lisa Willner (D-Louisville) says if a bill to alter the power of SBDM councils is introduced, it’s because the Republicans in charge want more say in what’s happening in the classroom.

“Interestingly, we’ve heard these suggestions, these intimations, that somehow the SBDM’s aren’t operating transparently, that the SBDM’s are hiding curricula, and nothing could be further from the truth,” she said.

Despite members of the Kentucky Department of Education, Jefferson County Public Schools and other districts telling lawmakers critical race theory isn’t taught in any K-12 school, supporters of BR 69 say any discussion promoting or discriminating against any particular race should be limited.

“When you begin to take students and divide them by race; when you begin to say that every system within America is built upon the concept of racism, that becomes a problem,” said bill co-sponsor and state Rep. Matt Lockett (R-Nicholasville) last month.

Willner said the discussion over CRT has nothing to do with the actual children.

“I think it has been a political distraction. I think it has been to stir up the base. I think it’s been to mobilize political contributions, frankly,” she said.

And what kids are taught will be a conversation that only grows before the new session starts in January.

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