FRANKFORT, Ky. – Efforts to allow parents or school staff to convert chronically failing public schools into charter schools went down in flames this week thanks to the Kentucky teachers union.

The legislation’s defeat means Kentucky will remain of the handful of states that does not allow charter schools.

“The teachers union is absolutely, vehemently opposed to it, and the teachers union owns the Kentucky House,” said Richard Innes, education analyst at the Bluegrass Institute.  “We’ve had charter school bills proposed before. They always died in the House.”

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Lawmakers wanted to allow school staff or parents in the state’s lowest performing public schools to propose a conversion to charter school status if 20 percent of either population signed a petition requesting the change.

The bill would have required two-thirds of parents, or two thirds of school staff – depending on the petition – to vote in favor of a proposed conversion to make it a reality, Heartlander reports.

Local school boards would have retained control over the new charter schools.

The bill had significant potential to help address areas like Jefferson County, where 16 of 18 low performing schools have shown no improvements at all in the last three years. Those schools are facing closure or state takeover, the news site reports.

“We wanted to provide a third option to those schools, which would be charter schools,” state Sen. Mike Wilson, the sponsor of the legislation, told Heartlander.

Only underperforming schools that are not already engaged in turnaround efforts could have been potentially affected by Wilson’s proposal – a total of about 41 schools, Heartlander reports.

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The legislation passed the state Senate, but failed to garner enough support in the House, where the state’s teachers union has considerable political clout.

Teachers unions in Kentucky have attempted to liken charter schools to privileged private schools, despite the fact that most charter schools serve low-income minority students, Innes told Heartlander.

Some legislators were smart enough to see through the union opposition. They understand that unions hate charters because the non-unionized schools provide an attractive alternative to dismal public schools, and represent a significant threat to the union monopoly of public education.

Unfortunately other lawmakers and school officials in Kentucky continue to buy into the union’s misleading propaganda that poverty, and a lack of parental involvement and school funding, are the only real reasons students are failing.

“Some parents are overwhelmed by poverty or homelessness; others can’t cope with the complexity of the system and are given the short straw,” Jefferson County school board member David Jones Jr. told Heartlander. “Whatever the cause, our system collects the kids whose families don’t engage successfully with schools, disproportionately, in the lowest-performing schools.”

Perhaps the “overwhelmed” parents Jones speaks of would be more inclined to get engaged if there was a viable way to improve the system. Currently, public schools are tied down with burdensome union rules that disenfranchise parents and drag down student learning.

It appears that sad reality will continue to plague Kentucky schools for the foreseeable future.