Beshear did not sign or veto the bill, instead returning it to the General Assembly without his signature and allowing it to become law.
The bill initially just provided five calamity days for school districts that had been hit hard by flooding and other factors this school year, but Senate Republicans merged it with another bill that prohibits lawmakers from putting an enrollment cap on virtual academies.
The merged bill aimed to keep open Cloverport Independent School District’s controversial virtual academy, which has come under fire for low test scores, as well as failing to adhere to state guidelines for class sizes and standardized testing participation. The formerly small school district has about 275 students enrolled in in-person classes and 2,600 enrolled in the virtual academy.
“The governor’s action is due to the General Assembly’s contradiction of their own actions and attitudes toward in-person learning. The General Assembly previously mandated that children return to in-person learning during the pandemic, yet now they are promoting all-virtual learning,” Beshesar said Tuesday night in a news release.
The original version of the bill, which only allowed school districts to be forgiven for five attendance days, was filed by Timmy Truett, R-McKee. The Senate Education Committee changed the bill to also prohibit lawmakers from installing an enrollment cap or other regulations on virtual schools, like Cloverport’s Kentucky Virtual Academy.
Critics argued the revised bill was another way for some GOP lawmakers to achieve school choice, allowing taxpayer funds to be used for programs other than public schools.
But parents at a legislative committee hearing testified that the Kentucky Virtual Academy had helped their children academically in ways that traditional schooling could not.
The bill passed 91-0 in the Kentucky House.
Cloverport, in Breckinridge County on the Ohio River, receives state funding for the virtual academy based on average daily attendance. In the 2022-2023 school year, prior to the creation of the virtual program, Cloverport had just 276 students in the district.
Last school year, the first with a virtual academy, enrollment increased to 1,227. Enrollment jumped to 3,069 by Jan. 21 of this year, and enrollment as of last week was about 2,600.
The Kentucky Board of Education had sought to cap enrollment at such virtual academies to 10 percent of the district’s in-person enrollment, which would have shut down the Kentucky Virtual Academy.
CloverportIndependent Schools district has paid an education management organization nearly $8.6 million to manage the academy since opening nearly two years ago, school records reviewed by the Herald-Leader reveal.
The organization — Stride, formerly known as K12 — is a for-profit company that operates online schooling programs that function as alternatives to traditional schools, including the Kentucky Virtual Academy in the Cloverport Independent School District.
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