LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The task force studying Jefferson County Public Schools is requesting more time.

In a letter to Senate and House leadership, the Efficient and Effective School Governance Task Force is asking to extend its work into 2025.

What You Need To Know

  • The Efficient and Effective School Governance Task Force, studying JCPS, asks to extend its work in 2025

  •  The task force has met 10 times since July

  •  The co-chair of the task force said they need more time to gather information to make informed recommendations

  • The Senate president and the Speaker of the House must ok the extension

The task force has been meeting since July discussing how JCPS is operating.

“To teach our students the best they can to help the district out in any way we can, with recommendations are with legislation, to help them,” said State Sen. Michael Nemes, R-Shepherdsville.

Nemes is the co-chair of the task force. The group has met 10 times but needs more information to make suggestions; he said.

“To make good recommendations, we don’t want to make rash decisions, and time is of the essence. We want to take care of this,” he said.

The district is expecting a new superintendent next school year, so the extra time, Nemes said, will make sure the new leader is onboard with the recommendations. One of the many options the task force is exploring is breaking up or reorganizing JCPS.

“We had a specialist come in and talk about the sizes of districts, the consolidation. There wasn’t many break ups throughout the nation, but, yeah, that’s something that we were going to look at,” he said.

Nemes said breaking up the district is not the goal of the task force, but to explore options that will improve student outcomes.

“Well, I think that we need to see how we can teach our students the best they can. Now, whether you want to talk about breaking up or not, if you don’t do that, then there’s no purpose in breaking it up or keeping it whole,” he said.

The Jefferson County Teachers Association reacted to the extension request saying it’s grateful for the opportunity to have an open discussion about its challenges and opportunities, but the JCTA’s president said it is one more thing on their plate.

“The task force hasn’t been detrimental up until this point, but it is something that we have to spend time and resources on and, you know, those time and resources could be spent on serving students and innovating our school systems,” said JCTA president Maddie Shepard.

Next year, the task force could continue to explore options they said to make the district more efficient and effective.

“We want to find more data on what a lot of these good ideas seem to be that have the data and they have a plan to implement them, instead of just saying, this is what you need to do without a plan to do it, and the resources to do that,” Nemes said.

We reached out to the Jefferson County School District for a response to the task force’s extension request.

In a statement, JCPS spokesperson Carolyn Callahan said, “The Task force has seen and heard about the tremendous work and learning that’s happening every day in every JCPS school. We will continue to share information with task force members and look forward to furthering their understanding of our students, staff and district.”

 Now it’s up to the Senate president and the Speaker of the House to approve the extension.

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