Joint Statement Opposing Kentucky SB 152 

Feb. 24, 2026
Contact: Lisa McKinney, Communications Director, The Prichard Committee
(cell) 859-475-7202
lisa@prichardcommittee.org

The Prichard Committee, the Kentucky Association of School Councils and Kentucky PTA urge lawmakers to vote against bill that moves schools away from shared decision making.  

LEXINGTON, Ky. — As Kentucky organizations dedicated to strong public schools and meaningful family and community involvement, we respectfully oppose SB 152.

For more than 30 years, Kentucky’s School-Based Decision-Making (SBDM) councils, made up of principals, teachers, and parents, have helped make sure that important school decisions stay close to the students they affect. This approach was created on purpose: to build trust, keep decision-making transparent, and ensure that families and educators have a real voice in shaping their schools.

SB 152 would take away much of this shared decision-making. Instead, it would shift major responsibilities— professional development planning, budgeting priorities, and instructional practices—away from councils and place them almost entirely in the hands of principals and district administrators. The councils that remain would serve only in an advisory role, with no real authority.

This change would affect every school, including those where SBDM councils are working well and contributing to strong student outcomes. Moving to a model where decisions are made primarily by one person, rather than by a group that includes teachers and families, reduces community input and distances decisions from the people who know students best.

Kentucky already has an accountability system that draws clear lines of responsibility—principals report to superintendents, superintendents report to local school boards, and school boards report to voters. We can strengthen these systems without dismantling the collaborative decision-making model that has served our schools and our students so well for decades.

When families and educators share responsibility for decisions, schools benefit from stronger implementation, more trust, and more lasting improvements. We are eager to work with policymakers on thoughtful updates—such as more comprehensive training, clearer expectations, and stronger accountability—without eliminating the meaningful participation of parents and teachers in school governance.

For these reasons, we respectfully urge you to oppose SB 152.

Quotes: 

“The Kentucky Association of School Councils, the largest Kentucky organization of school council members, values collaborative decision making, transparency of school decisions, and, most of all, increasing student achievement—we urge you to Vote NO on SB 152,” said Liz Erwin, Executive Director of the Kentucky Association of School Councils. 

“School based decision making, which includes parents and teachers, is core to Kentucky’s longstanding commitment to bringing the public into the public education for which they pay,” said Brigitte Blom, President and CEO of the Prichard Committee. “Shared decision making and collaboration between the principal, teachers, and parents helps ensure the system is held accountable to and by those it serves. Districts can strengthen outcomes by ensuring collaboration is meaningful, transparent, and focused on student achievement. School-based decision-making councils provide the structure to do just that.”  

“Kentucky PTA has always seen the value of SBDM councils, which foster true partnership between families and the schools,” said Kentucky PTA President Autumn Neagle. “It allows for an equal voice for parents/guardians. Diminishing the SBDM Council to simple ‘advisors’ with no accountability for the principal, would essentially be shutting out the families’ voice. It could lead to principals making unilateral decisions regardless of the advice from their advisory board, who would have no recourse.”

The Prichard Committee believes in the power and promise of public education –early childhood through college– to ensure Kentuckians’ economic and social well-being. We are a citizen-led, non-partisan, solutions-focused nonprofit, established in 1983 with a singular mission of realizing a path to a larger life for Kentuckians with education at the core.