LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The state Senate will consider confirming Gov. Andy Beshear's appointments to the Kentucky Board of Education on Wednesday, months after he became the first governor to reorganize the panel.
Senate Majority Caucus Chair Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville, filed resolutions Tuesday that would confirm the 11 voting members of the state education board appointed by Beshear on his first day in office.
Adams told WDRB News that her resolutions, if approved, would confirm the members to full terms. They'll be placed in the upper chamber's consent agenda for action Wednesday, she said.
Asked if she expected the education board's voting membership to be confirmed, Adams said she did not know how senators would vote.
Members representing Kentucky Supreme Court districts -- Vice Chair Lu Young, Holly Bloodworth, Patrice McCrary, Sharon Porter Robinson, Cody Pauley Johnson, JoAnn Adams and Mike Bowling -- would serve until April 14, 2024, if confirmed based on Beshear's executive order.
Those in at-large seats -- Chairman David Karem, Lee Todd, Alvis Johnson and Claire Batt -- would serve until April 14, 2022, if confirmed.
If the board is not confirmed, members can't be reconsidered for their seats for two years.
Beshear's newly appointed board, the fulfillment of a campaign promise, took swift action. The panel negotiated the resignation of former Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis days after their appointments and have initiated a national search for his replacement.
Efforts by most previous board members to block Beshear's reorganization order in court have thus far failed, though a federal lawsuit is pending.
They've argued that Beshear deprived them of their due process rights by removing them from the board without cause, but the governor has consistently said a Kentucky Supreme Court opinion that he lost as attorney general explicitly gives him the authority to reorganize the Kentucky Board of Education.
Rich Gimmel, one of the seven former board members suing Beshear in federal court, has said they offered a compromise to give Beshear control of the panel's voting majority, but he dismissed that proposition.
Beshear said April 2 that he would simply appoint new members if the Senate did not confirm his education board, though he suggested that lawmakers confirm them for a year while they continued to debate legislation that would prohibit governors from reorganizing the board and require its composition to reflect the political registrations of Kentucky's voters, among other demographics.
That legislation -- Senate Bill 10, sponsored by Senate President Robert Stivers -- did not clear the Senate in this year's session.
"Let's preserve the continuity," Beshear said at the time. "... They are an excellent group, especially to evaluate the search for a new commissioner of education."
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