Mark your calendar!
The Kentucky Department of Education's SBDM office is planning and preparing for next year’s SBDM trainings, including the endorsement training for coordinators. Please look at the training options and dates and mark them on your calendar.
Register for the endorsement training sessions using this Google Form. If you have specific topics that you would like to have addressed during the annual endorsement training, email those ideas to Mia Morales.
SBDM Coordinator/Trainer Endorsement Training (webinar)
- March 23 at 9:30 a.m. ET
- March 24 at 1 p.m. ET
- March 30 at 10 a.m. ET
Next Monthly Webinar
The webinars occur on the second Tuesday of the month, with the next webinar scheduled for Jan. 10 at 10 a.m. ET. A link to join will be emailed out closer to the webinar date.
SBDM coordinators are encouraged to reserve the second Tuesday of each month from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. ET. SBDM coordinators are encouraged to attend at least eight webinars a year.
Alternative Model Application
Pursuant to 701 KAR 5:100, school councils can add additional voting members, such as students and classified staff, to their council's membership through an alternative SBDM application. Schools interested in adding voting student members are encouraged to consult their local board attorney prior to doing so.
Beginning Jan. 1 through Feb. 28, a school may submit an application for an alternative model for its school-based decision making council. An application is not required for schools that wish to add non-voting members or changes that maintain the parent, teacher, and administrator voting membership ratio as established in KRS 160.345.
The application and KDE guidance can be found at the bottom of the SBDM Technical Documents webpage.
 Audrey Gilbert
Interview with a Student SBDM Councilmember
School-based decision making councils can add non-voting members, including students, to their council without submitting an Alternative Model application. Audrey Gilbert, a student intern at KDE, interviewed Amelia Tucker, a student council member at Apollo High School (Daviess County), on her role and experience as a student member of her school’s SBDM council.
Audrey Gilbert is a senior at Frankfort High School (Frankfort Independent) and an education advocate. She is the school climate audit co-lead and the Measurement, Assessment, and Accountability lead for the Kentucky Student Voice Team. She has served as an Educators Rising National Student Ambassador, founded the chapter at her school, and is the 2022-2023 Educators Rising-Kentucky President. Gilbert wants to become a high school English teacher. In her free time, she loves to read, crochet, watch television and play with her dogs.
Amelia Tucker is a senior at Apollo High School in Daviess County, where she serves as the student council executive president and the student life representative on the School-Based Decision Making Council. In her role on the council, she brings the thoughts, opinions and experiences of students to the relevant and meaningful conversations that are happening in council meetings. Tucker has a designated item on the agenda at each meeting and brings other students with her to ensure that she is being inclusive in her role.
Q: What have been the most important moments for you on the council?
A: I’ll start with the personal effect. I want to pursue a career in education, so for me personally getting to sit in the school-based meetings and kind of be in the backstage of the school, if you will, see the things that not everyone gets to see or understand why decisions are handed down a certain way, I think has been really, really cool for me. …
As far as the student body goes, something really cool that we did this year is that we started having more students join the council [meetings]. I go every time, but we have at least two or three other students who come every time and also have a spot in the student life section to say what they want to say.
Q: How would you like to see this position used going forward?
A: Something I have really made a point to do this year is make sure that the student life perspective is not the perspective of Amelia Tucker. Making a point of getting the perspective of other students and to actively talk to them about what [they] want to see in our school.
So, I would love to see more of that going forward, more of a direct connection between the entire student body’s opinion and council. To have a way to make sure every student’s voice is heard or had the opportunity to be heard, I think, would be really, really cool. The meeting is open, but having a direct invitation makes [a] world of difference.
Q: What advice would you give to other councils and schools that might be interested in putting a student on their SBDM council?
A: I definitely think that a school that doesn’t have a student on their school-based council should get one! I think that while the majority of the decisions are being made by the adults in the building, the majority of the people in the building are the students. I think that while the idea that you would look at the entirety of your school population and have the majority of the people there not having a voice on your decision-making council is just crazy to me.
When you have a voice in the place that you are and your opinion matters, I think it makes you want to be there all the more. It makes you feel really a part of it.
The Apollo High School SBDM Council has used the alternative model to bring in more stakeholder voice to important education decisions. Councils can add student and classified staff non-voting members without getting board approval using the Alternative Model application and making applicable changes to their policies; voting students and classified member can be added with Kentucky Board of Education approval.
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