BARDSTOWN, Ky. — Bill Osborne served on the Nelson County School Board from 1999 to 2006. "I completely forgot that I had this," he said, plucking a plaque off the shelf in his basement. It's his 'Outstanding Alumni' award, dated 2002, from the school district. That and a blown-up photograph of the 1996 championship football team remind him of a more unified Nelson County.
Out of the country on vacation, in January, he still watched the monthly board meeting on YouTube. Most the time, he's there in-person, speaking his three minutes during public comment, then sits and listens for hours. Over the past year, he's seen the disfunction between Superintendent Wes Bradley and the current school board grow. "Your board and your administration have to work together," he said.
Disagreements between Bradley and the board boiled over in October when students and teachers protested a board-proposed high school merger the superintendent disagreed with. Instead, Bradley favored a plan putting middle schoolers and high schoolers on the same campus—known as the Community Campus Plan.
"The building project that he wanted to do was so expensive, we just felt like at some point we had to go another direction," Jack Seay said. He led the NCCARES effort to sue over that project.
The current board chair, Amanda Deaton, was originally part of the lawsuit until she ran for the school board.
The Monday night decision by the board removing Bradley represents hours of deliberations since the beginning of the year. The Kentucky Department of Education commissioner has the final say on whether or not that removal will go through.
Osborne, originally a supporter of Bradley, believes the district is worse off now than in 2018 when the superintendent took the job. "When the test scores were released," the former board member said, "they were recognized as one of the top-ten schools in the state as far as workforce development. They celebrated that, but nobody wants to talk about academically where we stood in the state."
Using a New York Times tool, we compared state data of Nelson County Schools against nearby school districts. You can see the dark blue line at the bottom, they're about a year's worth of learning behind bordering counties.
"We've got a lot of work to do to get those back up," Seay said. Work Seay thinks will be easier without Bradley. Osborne agreed.
"I feel bad for Wes," he confessed, "but part of me wants to say, 'well, Wes, a lot of this was your fault.' You know, the board tried to tell you, 'get on board, work with us,' and I might be wrong, but I didn't see it."
What he wants to see instead is unity.
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