LOL, hi! Me again, apologies.
In a mad dash last night to get the newsletter out so everyone had ample time to join TGP’s 2026 Bracket Contest (which you should still be able to join, btw), I didn’t do the depth of journalism I wanted to do prior to publication.
But, have no fear, I spent a few hours after publication attempting to map the proposed JCPS school board boundaries under the new version of Senate Bill 4.
Heavy emphasis on attempt: Turns out, more than half of Jefferson County’s current voter precincts are excluded from SB 4’s set of proposed board seats. (And SB 4 listed a few precincts that don’t seem to exist.)
I updated the online version of Wednesday’s newsletter with a copy of my map and details about what I found, but those changes don’t get reflected in the copies in your inboxes.
Seeing as this bill is slated for a House floor vote Friday morning, I’m sending out the updated SB 4 section from last night’s newsletter as a separate newsletter right … now.
(And stay tuned to the end for some updates on what I found out about it today!)
Changing up Lou, Lex school boards
Remember how they wanted to get rid of Louisville and Lexington’s school boards and just have the mayor appoint them?
OK, so it looks like instead of that, they’re going with a much more seasoned (but still a lil spicy) approach by tacking on new language to Senate Bill 4 (which is already halfway through the legislative process).
This one, which got pitched to and approved by a House education committee Wednesday morning, would call for the Republican state treasurer to appoint two at-large members with some sort of financial expertise to the JCPS and FCPS boards. Those members would have full voting powers as board members.
It would also shrink JCPS’ board from seven locally elected members to five, and outlines proposed new boundaries for those new board districts. (I haven’t seen a proposed map of those boundaries, so I might map it myself if I get a free moment. It is by voting precinct, so if one of y’all wanna map it, let me know!)
Update: I have mapped the map. Well, I tried to.
The bill lists several voting precincts that do not exist, and obviously, it excludes hundreds of active precincts.
Jefferson County has 646 voting precincts. Only 283 of them are specifically mentioned in SB 4’s breakdown of which precincts would make up each new board seat. Based on February’s voter registration numbers, around 52.8% of all Jefferson County voters live in a precinct not currently reflected in the proposed school board boundaries.
Because of this, the proposed board seats are not proportional. There’s a roughly 40,000-voter gap between the largest and smallest proposed districts:
- District One — hot pink — south Louisville: 65,398 voters
- District Two — salmon — northeast Louisville: 75,952
- District Three — teal — central/Newburg-ish: 35,742
- District Four — mustard — Highlands/St. Matts-ish: 52,779
- District Five — cornflower blue — West End/Shively: 45,573
You can still see general outlines of the desired proposed school board seats, and I’m not seeing any immediate red flags about loss of minority representation like discussed below.
But the bill’s precinct numbers need to be corrected ASAP.
OK, back to the initial story.
JCPS lobbyist Chuck Truesdell brought up no one has seen the map, so it might potentially weaken minority communities’ seats and say on the board.
Rep. Tina Bojanowski also asked about this, and Rep. Jason Nemes apparently had seen a map version of the proposed board boundaries and thought it was OK but also added that he believes the recent state Supreme Court ruling around not allowing legislation singling out JCPS makes the current board makeup illegal. He didn’t really elaborate, and I’m not sure if that’s true.
So, both boards would largely still be locally elected, and have seven members: five locally elected and two appointees.
SB 4 would also block board members from working for another district for more than 100 days a year — seemingly a direct attack on FCPS Board Chair Tyler Murphy, who teaches in a different district.
Why? Frankfort has always had beef with JCPS, but the district’s ongoing budget shortfall has increased legislative pressure for change. And Fayette County has been … yikes … but that’s been a more recent development.
The revised SB 4 passed out of committee with two key yes votes — one from JCPS educator Bojanowski and another from former JCPS board vice chair Rep. Lisa Willner.
And then updates from today
So, I’ve since seen a copy of Nemes’ draft map which looks pretty similar to the map I made and included above (and shared on Instagram and shared on TikTok today).
So, that’s good — it appears the vibes are accurate; it is just the precincts that are off. (But again, that’s … more than half of Louisville’s precincts.)
The bill also has a section saying any precinct they mention “that is redrawn, adjusted, or eliminated by local officials following the implementation of the 2022 state legislative redistricting plan, and the change is not reflected” in the bill, it is up to the county board of elections to fix. (But again, that’s … more than half of Louisville’s precincts.)
As of 10 p.m. Thursday, SB 4 is slated for a House floor vote Friday morning, but with a pretty hefty floor amendment from Louisville GOP Rep. Ken Fleming, who helped pitch this thing to committee Wednesday.
Under Fleming’s amendment, all current JCPS board members would be kicked out at the end of 2026. Mind you, school board elections for JCPS are staggered, and four of the seven seats were meant to be up for grabs already.
He’s proposing that this bill passes, the board boundaries change, folks have time to file to run before the filing deadline in June, and then all five new seats are on the ballot come November. Brand new board come January.
The folks elected for the new Districts Three and Four — so, think downtown, central Lou, Newburg-ish, Highlands — would serve two-year terms to start, so that we can keep some level of staggered elections.
Districts One, Two and Five — lowkey kinda everyone outside of the Watterson — would first be elected to the standard four-year term.
Does Fleming’s amendment do anything to fix the precinct issue? No.
It does, however, clarify that only portions of voter precincts that are in the boundaries of JCPS would be part of all of this — important to note for folks around Anchorage’s independent district.
The House puts things on its to-vote-on list and then ignores them all the time, so maybe this won’t get a full House vote Friday after all. Either way, it’ll need to go back to the Senate so they can agree to the changes.
Oh, and after weeks and weeks of not moving, Senate Bill 1 — the let’s try to give all the power to the JCPS superintendent over the school board again bill — got its first reading in the House Thursday. So, put that one back on your to-watch list.
--30--
Follow Olivia Krauth at The Gallery Pass.
Comments
