Ky. education chief wants names of teachers in ‘sickouts’
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Teacher protests have shut down Kentucky’s largest school district six times in recent weeks. The state’s education chief said he wants the names of educators who may have taken part in the massive demonstrations.
Jefferson County Public Schools, a 98,000-student district, was one of several Kentucky school systems forced to shutter because of orchestrated teacher “sickouts.”
Teachers in the Bluegrass State lack the legal right to strike. Instead, they stage sickouts, in which thousands of teachers call in sick on the same day, making it impossible for school districts to hire enough subs to remain open.
Teachers began the sickouts in 2018 as a surge of educator activism swept through several red states, including West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona.
Controversial education bills before the Kentucky Legislature spurred teachers back into action last month. Educators descended on the Capitol in Frankfort after staging a sickout Feb. 28 that shut down at least eight school districts.
Hundreds of teachers dressed in red jammed into legislative hearing rooms and swarmed the Capitol’s granite hallways. “We’re still here!” they chanted.
In the weeks since then, public education in Jefferson County has come to a halt five more times. During one sickout, the district was forced to reschedule a crucial college entrance exam. Students in Jefferson County have six days tacked on to the end of the school year to make up for the sickout closures.
Last week, the school district and its teacher union hatched a plan to let a limited delegation of 500 teachers go to Frankfort while keeping schools open. Teachers staged a sickout anyway.
That’s when Kentucky Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis asked the district to provide him with a list of teachers who called in sick during sickouts, as well as any documentation, such as doctor’s notes, that would prove they really were ill.
Lewis issued the same request to nine other Kentucky districts affected by teacher sickouts.
“Teachers, like any other citizen of this nation … have the right, the constitutional right, to be in Frankfort, to register their opposition, to make sure their voices are known,” Lewis said. “But teachers do not have the constitutional right to call in sick when you are not sick and force a work stoppage that results in Kentucky’s schools closing.”
Jefferson County’s school board issued a public call Tuesday for Lewis to back down.
Lewis refused to budge on his request but promised not to punish individual educators as long as they stop shutting down schools.
Jefferson County Public Schools and others asked the state for more time to fulfill the request and have until March 25 to deliver Lewis the lists of teachers’ names. State law grants the education commissioner the authority to ask for the records.