Controversial Wilson Sears To Lead Superintendents' Group

This from Mark Hebert:

The local school chief who led the charge to make it tougher for private and parochial high school to recruit athletes has been named the new head of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents.

Wilson Sears retired from his job as superintendent of Somerset Independent School District at the end of last school year. He had previously led the Bowling Green and Meade County School districts. But Sears is best known as the spokesman for a huge group of public school administrators who almost got Kentucky's rules on school transfers changed to make it tougher for private and parochial high schools to recruit middle school athletes. The Kentucky High School Athletic Association overwhelmingly approved the change but the proposed "feeder schools" regulation was ultimately rejected by the Kentucky legislature.

As the head of KASS, Sears will be the main lobbyist for Kentucky school chiefs. He may have a tough time convincing catholic legislators like Sen. Tim Shaughnessy because of the divisive fight over the public vs. private school issue...

Public Schools consider boycott of private schools

Public high schools recently were knocked to the canvas in their ongoing sports dispute with private schools, but one leading advocate for public schools said not to count them out yet.

Somerset Superintendent Wilson Sears sent an email last week to every superintendent in the state outlining five possible reactions – including a boycott of private schools.

Sears, who has been on the frontline for the public schools in this nearly three-year debate, said it was "too early to talk about" the next step. He said that public schools still feel that private schools have an unfair athletic advantage and that his group doesn’t plan to walk away without a fight."We have heard from a whole lot of people," Sears said. "If anybody feels like this has gone away they are mistaken. It’s not going to go away."We’re not inclined to give it up for our kids.

There will be some strategy sessions that will happen among public school leaders. It’s not over."The final — and most controversial — suggestion in the email was for public schools to band together and refuse to play private schools during the regular season."It would take a huge buy-in for that to work, and we don’t know if that’s possible," Sears said. "Everyone hopes it doesn’t come to that. But I do think if the guys that voted on this don’t go back and reconsider it — and I have no reason to believe they would – but if they don’t reconsider it and no discussion...

"Do people really expect the public school people across the state – which is 90 percent of the population – to tuck our tails and say we lost?"...

This from the Courier-Journal.