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FRANKFORT — The Kentucky Senate did not agree with changes to one of its priorities that was aimed at establishing a professional development program for Kentucky principals. With House changes, the bill has morphed into remaking school boards in the state’s two largest cities and disqualifying the current chair of the Fayette County Public Schools board.
In a voice vote Tuesday afternoon, senators did not concur with the House’s additions to Senate Bill 4. House members adopted a committee substitute for the bill that added changes for members of the boards of Jefferson County and Fayette County public schools.
The revised bill passed the House last week with a mix of Republicans and Democrats voting against it.
If the House does not recede from its changes, the legislation will go to a conference committee where House and Senate members will attempt to agree on a version of the bill to move forward.
Republican Senate President Robert Stivers, of Manchester, told reporters that his caucus wants to have discussions “in hopes that we can get both sides together and come up with a compromise between the two pieces of legislation.”
SB 4 now says that members of local school boards in districts with more than 300,000 residents shall have some elected board members and two members appointed by the state treasurer, who is currently Republican Mark Metcalf. The school boards would also be required to regularly evaluate their own performance in a public meeting. Only Jefferson County and Fayette County school districts have more than 300,000 residents.
Board members may not be employees of a public school district for more than 100 days per year, under the House changes, which would remove Tyler Murphy, the Fayette County board chair, from the board as he is a social studies teacher at Boyle County High School.
It also says that a school board must appoint members to a critical school improvement advisory committee if the district has more than four schools identified as a comprehensive support and improvement school.
SB 4 was a priority bill for Senate Republicans that would create a five-year professional development path for new principals. It passed out of the Senate with unanimous support.
Sen. Steve West, R-Paris, the bill’s primary sponsor, appeared with Rep. Ken Fleming, R-Louisville, earlier this month during the House committee meeting at which the school board provisions were added to what began in the Senate as a professional development bill for school principals.
The Kentucky School Boards Association opposed the House changes to SB 4, and encouraged conference committee members “to remove the bill’s provisions that alter the composition of local school boards and prohibit board service based on employment in another district” in a Tuesday statement.
“KSBA has long supported the local decision-making authority of elected school boards who are best positioned to address local needs and are directly accountable to the communities they serve,” the statement said, before adding that the current version “undermines authority of locally elected boards of education and diminishes the voices of nearly 1 million voters in Kentucky’s two largest school districts.”
As it currently is, SB 4 would replace two nonpartisan elected JCPS board members with appointees from a partisan statewide officer, said KSBA, and in Fayette, the bill would add two unelected seats, “significantly weakening the power of the electorate.”
“KSBA believes that all individuals exercising governing authority over a local school district should be elected by the communities they represent,” the association said.
“KSBA also opposes any provision that would restrict otherwise qualified tax-paying citizens from serving on a local board of education based on their employment in a separate school district. Such limitations unnecessarily reduce the pool of experienced and knowledgeable candidates available for board service and undercut the principle that communities should decide who represents them through the electoral process.”
This article appears in March 1-24, 2026.