Some Kentucky lawmakers want to consider splitting up JCPS. Could that really happen?

Is Jefferson County Public Schools too big?

Some — including all of Louisville's GOP legislators in Frankfort — argue yes, pushing to consider breaking up the 96,000-student district.

“My interest is to STUDY splitting the district into 2 or more districts with ALL interested parties at the table,” Rep. Kevin Bratcher, R-Louisville, said in an email. “Like a COMMISSION of many voices to see if this is something we should pursue.”

JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio has been opposed to the idea, pointing out a series of potentially serious flaws in dividing the district.

“I don't want to say it's not possible, but I think it would be the most disruptive thing to this community,” Pollio told reporters in August. “And I will say once again, I think especially students in high poverty areas would suffer more than anywhere else as a result of that.”

But what could multiple school districts potentially look like in Jefferson County? Could it even be done? And should it be?

Can JCPS be legally split up?

There are two types of school districts in Kentucky: county and independent. Kentucky has 51 independent districts, which tend to loosely follow the boundaries of towns or cities, on top of its 120 county districts.

Officials would likely need to break off pieces of the current county district — which are required by law — and turn them into independent districts.

There’s just one problem. According to Kentucky Department of Education spokeswoman Toni Konz Tatman, new independent school districts can’t be created under state law. There simply are no policies, laws or processes explaining how an independent district would break away from a county district in Kentucky - nothing governing, say, who gets control of existing schools, where teachers and staff go, or who gets dibs on the superintendent.

But lawmakers could still pass legislation to either immediately change the law or to study the issue for potential legislation.

Following JCPS’ bus-driven disastrous start to the school year — when at least hundreds of students were late getting home — a group of Republican state lawmakers pushed for a special session that would consider, among other things, a commission to study whether or not the district should be divided.

And it wasn’t the first time the idea has come up in the legislature this year.

In a surprise move toward the end of Kentucky’s legislative session last spring, lawmakers tried to call for an audit of JCPS. The auditor’s office would have had to include recommendations as to how JCPS could be “reconstituted into two or more school districts for consideration by the General Assembly” by November.

“Don't put in a predetermined decision with a recommendation to break up our district into multiple districts,” Pollio told lawmakers at the time. “That is not good for the community. And it will be one of the most devastating decisions for education in Jefferson County in 50 years.”

The audit failed on a bipartisan 9-6-3 vote. One lawmaker who voted for it, Rep. Steven Doan, R-Erlanger, later pointed out that the tough sell may have become even tougher after House leadership removed Doan and Rep. Josh Calloway, R-Irvington — another yes vote — from the committee.

'The first thing I hear there is resegregation'

Rep. Lisa Willner, a Louisville Democrat and former JCPS school board vice chair, was blunt when faced with a bill that could cause the district to be split up in March.

“The first thing I hear there is resegregation,” she said.

JCPS in its current form was created in the 1970s when a court ordered Louisville to desegregate its schools, forcing the merger of the predominantly Black city school system and the predominantly white county system.

Decades later, with limited change to housing patterns in the county, it would likely be difficult to divide JCPS into smaller districts again without resegregating schools.

“If you divide our district in any way, because of the housing in Jefferson County, the racial and socioeconomic divide, what will happen will be an extreme poverty district any way you slice Jefferson County, and that is a major problem,” Pollio told lawmakers in March.

A 2015 Office of Education Accountability report found that independent districts tend to be at the extremes of most rankings, including socioeconomic status and academic achievement. But, generally, independent districts are demographically similar to county districts.

That’s not necessarily guaranteed should Louisville divide into independent districts, which tend to loosely follow the boundaries of designated cities.

For example, Jefferson County has 84 designated cities. Of those, 28 are large enough to potentially qualify to have their own districts. The vast majority of these cities are in the East End — which tends to skew wealthier and whiter than Louisville as a whole.

One of them is Anchorage, which already has an independent district. Only 6.4% of its roughly 400 students live at or near the poverty line, according to state education data, and nearly 90% of students are white.

To compare, two-thirds of JCPS students live in low-income households. The district is majority-minority, meaning more than 60% of its students identify as something other than white.

Jeffersontown, St. Matthews, Shively, Lyndon and Middletown seem to be the most likely potential candidates for independent districts, should JCPS be divided.

All but Shively skew more white, while Shively has more than double the percent of Black residents than the county itself.

New inefficiencies, taxes possible

A quest to make public education more efficient also could create new inefficiencies or have unintended consequences.

The district’s popular magnet schools, which pull students from across the district, could be suddenly inaccessible to many students. Or programs would need to be replicated in each district.

For example, around 60% of Manual’s students for the 2021-22 school year came from an East End ZIP code. At Male, that figure is about 44%.

“Every student at Manual has to go somewhere else in their own district. Every student at Male has to go somewhere else in their own district,” Pollio told reporters in August. “Like, how would you possibly peel that apart?”

Every district also would need its own superintendent, its own central office, its own transportation system, all funded by its own taxbase.

“If we go to multiple districts, two or three, right off the bat, three times the administration staff will be necessary in order to implement this plan,” Pollio told lawmakers in March.

Having more districts could potentially exacerbate staffing shortages, too, with wealthier districts that can offer higher pay and better benefits having an upper hand.

The 2015 OEA report found independent school districts “grapple with unique circumstances given their boundary limitations,” making their spending per student higher than for county districts. Independent school districts don’t spend their money in substantially different ways than county districts.

More districts could mean some homeowners seeing higher taxes. Independents tend to rely more on local taxes to support themselves compared to county districts, the report found, and tend to get the same or less from the state or other revenue streams.

Since independent districts are smaller, they tend to tax their property “at a significantly higher rate” than counties — meaning some of Louisville’s wealthiest areas could see their taxes jump while more impoverished areas would be left with fewer resources.

Under state law, independent districts are not required to have a high school. Four of Kentucky’s 51 independents — including Anchorage — only offer classes from kindergarten to eighth grade.

Independent districts get another luxury county districts do not: the ability to shut down and merge with the local county district.

Over the last century, hundreds of Kentucky school districts consolidated with others, largely due to financial strain or concerns with academic achievement.

Seven mergers have happened since 1988, including three in the last decade: Monticello with Wayne County, Silver Grove with Campbell County and West Point with Hardin County.

Under state law, county districts are required to merge with the independent district should the latter’s school board request it. The process includes absorbing all of the independent’s students and debts.

Reach Olivia Krauth at okrauth@courierjournal.com and on Twitter at @oliviakrauth.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Can JCPS be split into more districts? What could happen