Kentucky voters overwhelmingly reject Amendment 2, leaving tax dollars with public schools
Kentucky voters on Tuesday rejected a proposal to amend the state constitution and allow the legislature to spend tax dollars to pay for private, religious and charter schools.
The outcome was a blow to Republican leadership in the General Assembly who championed the proposal — Constitutional Amendment 2 — and put it on the ballot as one of two statewide referendums.
As of 8:20 p.m., with nearly half the commonwealth's votes counted , 65% of voters had rejected the amendment, and 35% had approved it.
Protect Our Schools KY, the group leading the 'No on 2' campaign, declared victory around 8 p.m.
Kelsey Coots, the campaign manager for Protect Our Schools KY, said the success of their effort is the result of teachers, students, parents and community leaders across the commonwealth working as a team.
"People coming together to send a powerful message that we believe in the promise of public education, and we will not stand by as that promise undermined," Coots said.
Kentucky Students First, a group backing the 'Yes on 2' effort, released a statement soon after that read: "The results may not have been in our favor.
"Our coalition of parents, educators, and concerned Kentuckians fought hard to change the status quo protected by Kentucky's education special interests," the group said. "Though the results may not have been in our favor, this campaign has been a powerful force for standing up to the Kentucky education bureaucracy. Perpetuating the low performance of Kentucky's education system is a disservice to our children and our Commonwealth.
"Kentucky students deserve better, and our resolve to serve students over systems remains unchanged."
The ballot question asked voters: "To give parents choices in educational opportunities for their children, are you in favor of enabling the General Assembly to provide financial support for the education costs of students in kindergarten through 12th grade who are outside the system of common (public) schools by amending the Constitution of Kentucky as stated below?"
And the majority of them, rural and urban alike, responded: no.
Opposition to Amendment 2
Champions of Amendment 2, and "school choice" bills before it, have characterized it as offering parents more choices in how to educate their children, as well as a way to incentivize public schools to improve as they compete for funding with non-public schools. They've also said it would lead to more education parity for school-aged kids.
Public school officials across Kentucky, including in the state's two largest school districts , publicly opposed Amendment 2, not only because it would funnel money away from the public school system, but because private and charter schools are not subject to the same accountability and transparency requirements as public schools, limiting oversight of how that money would be spent.
"If Kentucky voters approve Amendment 2 in November, it will send your tax dollars to voucher schemes for unaccountable and non-transparent private school programs and harm every public school district in the state," 42 Kentucky superintendents wrote in an Oct. 30 op-ed opposing Amendment 2.
In Kentucky, like other states, the vast majority of K-12-aged children attend public schools — roughly 90% in the commonwealth. In the case of surrounding states that have passed school voucher policies, the population of students most likely to choose vouchers are those already attending private schools .
Opponents of such measures have keyed in on this reality, saying voucher programs, in actuality, function mostly as a way to defray the cost of private school for families already paying to send their kids to private schools.
Repeat attempts to pass 'school choice' policy
Though passage of Amendment 2 would not have directly created policy, it was the fruition of a years-long effort by Republicans, who control the House and Senate, to do just that, and one that has been thwarted by the courts.
The General Assembly in 2021 passed a bill into law known as the Education Opportunity Account Act — over Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's veto — that would've created a tax credit-funded scholarship system for students to attend private schools. The law also would've required schools to be "without borders," so students could access benefits in another school district that might not be offered in the district in which they lived.
Opponents, which included public school teachers, administrators and advocates, decried the program, saying it would take money away from public schools and hand it to private schools in a roundabout way.
And in 2022, the GOP-controlled legislature succeeded in passing into law a funding mechanism for charter schools. Charter schools, which are publicly funded but are operated by independent groups with fewer regulations than most public schools, are legal in Kentucky. But House Bill 9 would've created a means to fund them using public dollars.
Both laws were eventually declared unconstitutional and prevented by the courts from taking effect.
The Kentucky Supreme Court struck down the Education Opportunity Account Act in 2022. In her majority opinion, former Deputy Chief Justice Lisabeth Hughes invoked Section 183 of the Kentucky Constitution , which states, "no sum shall be raised or collected for education other than in common schools."
"Common schools," according to state statute , refers to "an elementary or secondary school of the state supported in whole or in part by public taxation."
"We are compelled to agree that the (Education Opportunity Account Act) violates the plain language of Section 184," Hughes wrote. "Simply states, it puts the commonwealth in the business of raising sum(s) . . . for education other than in common schools."
In December 2023, Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd struck down the charter school law using the same logic. "The plain language of the Kentucky Constitution itself, yields the inescapable conclusion" that charter schools do not meet the definition of public schools, he wrote.
The only way to bypass these rulings and lawfully allow the use of tax dollars for non-public schools is to change the wording of the constitution. Amending Kentucky's constitution requires voter approval, which is how Amendment 2 came to be on the ballot this month.
Amendment 2 was the product of House Bill 2 , filed in the General Assembly's regular session earlier this year House Majority Caucus Chair Suzanne Miles, R-Owensboro.
"This has been a conversation for, really, multiple decades now. I think it's time for us to let the voters decide," Miles said in March.
