Senate Bill 1, the top priority bill for the Republican supermajority in that chamber, is a second attempt to impose different rules of governance on Jefferson County Public Schools after a 2022 law was rejected by the Kentucky Supreme Court last month.
The legislation, filed Wednesday by GOP Sen. David Givens of Greensburg, would limit the power of the Jefferson County Board of Education and delegate more authority to the district’s superintendent in the exact same way the original Senate Bill 1 of the 2022 legislative session attempted.
Givens told reporters after filing his bill that he believes the Supreme Court left the door cracked open for another attempt at legislating how JCPS is governed.
“They're effectively saying they didn't find it unconstitutional on the merits of the bill,” Givens said. “They found it unconstitutional because they felt like we didn't give sufficient reason for treating Jefferson County differently.”
The 4-3 majority decision that struck down SB 1 in December 2025 ruled that the General Assembly cannot single out a specific county government — like Louisville’s unique consolidated local government — “unreasonably.”
A slim majority of justices ruled the bill violated the Kentucky Constitution by targeting one specific school district, and laid out a test to determine if targeted legislation is reasonable. Among their questions is: “Does the legislature have good reasons for doing all of this?”
It’s a question Givens said he sought to answer in his new bill that includes more than 40 findings that he said justify the legislation. He said it’s hampering the school district’s success to have an overactive board.
“We don't need a board that has to be involved in that level of operation. They should hire the best, and from what I'm hearing, their new leader is doing a fine job of making some tough decisions,” Givens said. “Let's focus this district and these kids on learning, and let's get all the other noise away.”
A scathing 2024 audit of JCPS’s transportation catastrophe the previous year found that one contributing factor was that district staff underinformed the school board and the public about plans to overhaul student assignment and transportation. Some Jefferson County school board members also have suggested that the district’s current financial crisis resulted in part because the prior superintendent and his staff were not sufficiently forthcoming with the district’s financial picture.
Though Givens is now arguing his bill is designed to address problems at JCPS, the office of Attorney General Russell Coleman argued to the state Supreme Court last year that the 2022 law was constitutional because it did not actually single out JCPS. They posited that any other county could potentially grow its population enough and vote to become a consolidated local government in the future, like Jefferson County, but the majority opinion of the court rejected that argument in its December opinion.
The previous December, in 2024, a different 4-3 majority of the Supreme Court came to a different ruling on SB 1, upholding the law as constitutional. But that would change once newly-elected Justice Pamela Goodwine replaced a retiring justice in January 2025, as she was the swing vote of a 4-3 decision to rehear the JCPS case that April, and then part of the new 4-3 majority decision striking down the law at the end of the year. The House has also formed a committee to consider impeaching Goodwine over what a petitioner alleges is a conflict of interest.
Givens’ new SB 1 — and the old one — would require that the board of education delegate authority to the superintendent over all day-to-day operations and grants the superintendent control over almost all administrative duties that aren’t explicitly the responsibility of the board. It limits the board from meeting more than once every month, with a couple exceptions. The bill would also require the board to muster up a two-thirds majority to overrule any policy statements or rules that the superintendent suggests.
When asked why Givens would want to shift power away from elected board members to an unelected appointee like the superintendent, Givens said board members are not operations specialists and should focus on the bigger picture.
Jefferson County Board of Education Chair Corrie Shull and board member James Craig did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting's Jess Clark contributed to this report.
