Statement on Senate Bill 1

Two months ago, our team lauded efforts by the Kentucky Board of Education to diversify representation on School-Based Decision Making Councils (SBDMs) by allowing non-voting student members. Today, we are speaking up to strongly oppose Senate Bill 1 which would roll back the essence of those improvements and undermine the role of SBDMs more broadly.

From dress code to discipline and from extracurriculars to curriculum, SBDMs govern integral aspects of our lives and education experience and aspire to represent the full range of primary school stakeholders: families, educators, administrators and, crucially, students.

By reflecting the diversity of our communities, SBDMs embrace local control and provide a democratic mechanism to govern policy in public schools. Classroom voices should inform classroom policy and are essential to creating a more equitable, just, and meaningful education experience for the entire student body.

Disempowering elected SBDMs will stifle Kentucky students as the essential partners we can be in discussions and decisions that make our schools the safest, most inclusive, and most engaging they can be.

For these reasons, we oppose the anti-democratic SB 1.

The Kentucky Student Voice Team is a statewide organization of young people who are co-creating more just, democratic Kentucky schools & communities as research, policy & advocacy partners.