Senate committee approves school employee misconduct bill

Senate committee approves school employee misconduct bill March 4, 2025

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, speaks about Senate Bill 181 during Tuesday’s Senate Families and Children Committee meeting. The bill would require Kentucky’s public school districts to implement policies for using only traceable forms of communications between staff, coaches, and volunteers and their students. A high-resolution photo can be found here.

FRANKFORT — Legislators on the Senate Families and Children Committee unanimously approved a bill Tuesday that would require Kentucky’s public school districts to implement policies for using only traceable forms of communication between staff, coaches, and volunteers and their students.

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, testified during a meeting that Senate Bill 181 would put standards in place that protect the education profession and the proper relationships between students and those in authority. It would also return previously existing safeguards that protect children and their families, she said.

Tichenor asked committee members to recall their adolescent years and the old communication methods they most likely used. She said the lines that delineated proper relationships between authority and students have been diminished.

“Can you imagine or think of a time when a school volunteer or a teacher or a coach called you up just to chat privately? How would that have gone over with your family? Probably not well. It would have been quite awkward,” she said.

Tichenor said she has a stack of concerning stories in a folder from Kentucky counties.

“And they’re just a sampling of a few that make it into the news, and I will tell you, it crosses our state entirely,” she said.

Under SB 181, employees and volunteers would be required to report known direct, private communications at which point parents would be notified and the district will proceed with the appropriate action, Tichenor testified.

There’s also a provision in the bill that would protect the anonymity of minors during an investigation by the Education Professional Standards Board. SB 181 would also extend the time for investigations of a sexual nature to 120 days, Tichenor said.

Stacy Briscoe of Anderson County testified in favor of the bill, stating that her then-16-year-old daughter had interactions with an employee at Anderson County High School without parental consent. The communication included several text messages, she said.

“Please, put yourself in our parental shoes. Completely oblivious to an adult having unlimited, uncensored contact with our minor child,” Briscoe said.

Ashley Nation also testified, and said she is not only an advocate for student safety, but also a survivor of educator sexual abuse.

“As a student, I was targeted by a teacher who used in-person and electronic communications to groom and manipulate me. What began as seemingly harmless conversations and messages soon escalated into a situation where I felt trapped, vulnerable and unable to seek help,” she said.

Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer, R-Alexandria, said she’s an active volunteer in the Roman Catholic program, Protecting God’s Children. She said abuse of students is a terrible problem, and asked where the term traceable communication is defined.

“We actually have that defined in the bill, but we will clarify that a little bit as well,” Tichenor said. “Traceable communication could be old-school, like a parent’s note, a communication that’s on paper that can be traced. Email can be traceable, and there are so many apps they use these days…”

Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Paducah, asked Tichenor if she knows if schools already have policies about communications between school employees and students.

“There are some ethical standards, but I’m not seeing that they’re being followed or they’re not being disciplined if they’re not being followed,” she said.

Sen. Gex Williams, R-Verona, asked Tichenor if there’s a requirement, for example, for a teacher to report another teacher if direct communication is observed. He asked if it would fall under the requirement to report.

“It absolutely would, and we do specify in the language of the bill that if someone knows that there’s direct communication happening, they have a duty to report that,” she said.

Sen. Matthew Deneen, R-Elizabethtown, commented about platforms teachers use for communication and said he is in favor of the bill.

“The bill that you put together says that they must have one, and that’s an issue that I would say that I would like to see addressed a little bit wider in this bill because there are multiple platforms out there that are trackable that schools use from their athletic department to their teachers,” he said.

Tichenor said there will be a floor amendment to address the platforms.

Sen. Rick Girdler, R-Somerset, said he could have been convinced of anything in high school, and he would have been willing to run into a wall if his coach asked him to do it.

“I thank God every day that I was raised in the 50s and 60s, not in the 20s. But we send our kids to get an education, not to be abused or used,” he said.

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https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/publicservices/pio/release.html#sb181030425