Grace Ramey McDowell/Daily News via AP
Supporters of Amendment 2 attend a rally on October 28, 2024, in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The amendment, which would have allowed public funds to be diverted to private schools, was defeated last week.
In a victory for public education, Kentucky voters defeated a ballot initiative that would have allowed the state legislature to steer public funds to private schools. Had the constitutional amendment passed, the state legislature would have been able to design “school choice” proposals to use tax dollars to fund charter and private schools in addition to public schools.
The Kentucky legislature had proposed a private school voucher system in 2021. But the state supreme court struck down the plan since it violated the state constitution’s stipulation that only “common schools,” that is, public schools that receive state taxpayer funding, are eligible to receive such funds.
After the amendment’s defeat, Gov. Andy Beshear (D) issued a statement urging state legislators to “recognize the will of the people” by ensuring every Kentucky child gets a “world-class public education.”
Despite the Republican Party’s support for school choice, for many state residents, public schools are the backbone of community life. Residents often view teachers not just as professional educators but as civic leaders. Even the buildings themselves are hives for local activities. In a largely rural and poor state, public schools are a better option, being more widely available to Kentucky’s students.
“There’s a significant attachment to [rural communities’] local [public] schools, because they’re the center for civic engagement in those communities,” says Ron Zimmer, director of the Martin School of Public Policy at the University of Kentucky.
The “no” vote won out in a landslide, 65 percent to 35 percent, and ran up high numbers in urban and rural counties—though Democratic-leaning urban counties had larger victory margins than the smaller rural ones. But in places like rural Monroe County, the margins were similar to that of Fayette County, home to Lexington, the state’s second-largest city.
A school voucher program would not benefit most state residents. Private schools are scarce in the eastern and western parts of the state. Most importantly, rural counties understood the implications a school voucher system could have for their economies. According to the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, the cost of launching a school voucher program would have been an estimated $1.19 billion annually, proportional to the system run by Florida, which has the largest state-run school voucher program in the country. Those costs would have “hit the state’s poorest rural areas the hardest because low property wealth makes them more dependent on state dollars for public education,” the report noted.
Beshear, who was outspoken in his opposition to the amendment, understands the power Kentucky educators hold. During the 2019 gubernatorial campaign, Beshear, then the attorney general, faced then-Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican who proposed a $198 million cut to K-12 school funding and a $72 million cut to public universities.
The underdog in that race, Beshear won seven of eight counties where public universities are located. The Kentucky Education Association unanimously endorsed Beshear in that campaign. In his acceptance speech in 2019, he thanked teachers: “To our educators, your courage to stand up and fight against all the bullying and name-calling helped galvanize our entire state.”
Re-elected in 2023, the governor has always been an outspoken supporter of public education. When he served as Kentucky’s attorney general, he challenged a 2018 pension bill supported by the Republican legislature and Bevin, which would have restructured the state’s pension system and made it harder for existing and new teachers to receive retirement benefits. Later that year, the state supreme court struck down the plan.
Two other rural states defeated similar taxpayer-funded initiatives. In Nebraska, voters repealed a proposed law that would have set up a scholarship program for students attending private schools—using $10 million annually from state funds. And in Colorado, voters defeated a ballot measure that would have given K-12 students and their parents a “right to school choice.” In both of these states, private schools aren’t readily available to most students.
