Helping secure a school choice constitutional amendment would secure Sen. Thayer's legacy

He’s the captain of the football team racing out of the tunnel leading his teammates onto the field holding high a huge American flag. He’s Union Admiral David Farragut shouting “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” amid the tumult of the battle of Mobile Bay.  Like Lyndon Baines Johnson was in the U.S. Senate, Republican Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer is the “Master of the Senate” in Kentucky’s General Assembly.

Brainy — in a committee hearing last year, Mr. Thayer called arguments I made against a bill he supported “specious,” and braggadocious— “Look at that, Mr. [Senate] President,” he once thundered with his usual hubris, “there are now 31 Republican Senators on this floor!” Both of those attributes describe one of the more consequential individuals who ever served in any branch of state government. After a 22-year-career representing the 17^th Senatorial district, including 12 as the Majority Floor Leader, the peppy 56-year-old Hashemite warrior with the Mr. Pennypacker three-piece suits is retiring after this year “to pursue other business interests.”

Thayer and Stivers have an impressive record of legislation

In tandem with long-time Senate President Robert Stivers, who tolerates his no. 2’s exuberance with infinite patience, and the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, over the last seven years, these united lawmakers have passed a container ship of conservative legislation including a right-to-work law, abolished prevailing wage standards, overhauled workers compensation, made elective killing of the unborn illegal, cut income taxes, saved the public employee pension system from insolvency, and promoted tourism with our world-class bourbon. As an exclamation point, this team passed pro-gambling legislation that has led to unprecedented growth in our signature horse racing industry when the sport everywhere else in the country outside of Oaklawn Park, Del Mar and Saratoga is cratering.

Which leaves one final mission on Senator Thayer’s impressive record to accomplish before he exits the Capitol stage: public education reform and, more specifically, helping push a school choice constitutional amendment across the finish line and onto this fall’s ballot. HB 208, introduced by state Rep. Josh Calloway (R.-Breckinridge County) and 18 other co-sponsors, would — if ratified by the voters — permit the General Assembly to pass legislation allowing parents to direct the education of their children instead of the government with some funding/tax credits to make those choices affordable.

The resolution needs at least 60 votes in the 100-member House and 23 “aye” votes out of 38 Senators for passage. Thankfully, such a measure cannot be vetoed by our hypocritical, anti-choice Governor. (Andy Beshear is pro-choice on abortion, medical cannabis, and betting on U of L or UK games, but opposes such freedom to allow us to pick our kids’ schools and some funding to go with those choices.) With swollen GOP majorities in both chambers, passage of this amendment doesn’t look daunting especially since both bodies have previously passed charter school and corporate tax credit legislation struck down by the courts.

Kentucky parents deserve school choice

Parents in the modern era need more choices on education — and the economic support to assist those not blessed with abundant wealth. This is overwhelmingly needed here in Jefferson County where an incompetent Board of Education has presided over a multi-generational atrocity — “genocide” a Democratic Education Commissioner once called it, accurately, in which two generations of our children have failed to receive the basic public education one would expect from one of the most lavishly-funded school systems in the United States ($2.2 billion per year).

Achievement gaps continue to widen between minority and other children in reading and math at grade levels. As recently reported by the Bluegrass Institute, JCPS’s National Assessment of Educational Progress scores show no improvement in closing the “proficiency rates going back to 2009.” But, in a liberty-loving land such as ours, parental economic choice in education should be enshrined in Kentucky’s constitution even if our public schools were rated the best in the nation. It’s that fundamental. Public school absolutists cry “wolf” with their dire predictions that such reforms would “destroy” public education. The only problem with that “specious” argument is that such a cataclysm has never occurred in the 43 other states that have some level of charter /private schools supported with public funding, vouchers, or tax credits. Such competition has tended to improve a state’s public education.

If Senator Thayer and his Republican colleagues do what’s right for Kentucky families and a school choice amendment they pass is ultimately ratified by the voters,  that would truly be a braggadocious legacy that any of them should be proud to have.  There’s nothing at stake here, only the future of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Bob Heleringer is an attorney and served in the Kentucky General Assembly from 1980-2002. He can be reached at helringr@bellsouth.net.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Thayer must secure school choice constitutional amendment for Kentucky