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Louisville’s Shawnee High School has earned more than its share of Bluegrass Institute attention over the years.

In our “How Whites and Blacks Perform in Jefferson County,” Shawnee produced some of the lowest high school graduation rates for both white and black males of any school in the Jefferson County school district, and the five-year decline in black male graduation rates in this school was the largest of any high school in Louisville.

In the Institute’s “Bang for the Buck,” Shawnee turned in the worst performance in the state when we compared test scores (the “bang”) to per pupil expenditures.

Others agree that Shawnee is a troubled school. It has failed to meet No Child Left Behind goals for years. According to Ann Elmore, a Jefferson County school board member, the school struggles with test scores, attendance rates, and discipline issues.

Now, the Courier-Journal reports a proposed district-wide attendance plan for schools – aimed at improving all of Louisville’s schools – is raising more concerns that Shawnee will be left behind, again.

Per the Courier, the district’s plan is supposed to leave no school with, “more than half its students from low-income, low-education and high-minority neighborhoods.” But, the plan won’t accomplish that for Shawnee, where 87 percent of the students will still come from disadvantaged homes.

The “fix” is supposedly making Shawnee into a magnet school. But, hold on. Shawnee already is a magnet school with a special aviation program, and that has not worked. The district appears to be out of ideas to fix this troubled school.

If ever there was a need for more school choice options such as charter schools largely free from the restrictions that tie Jefferson County’s hands, Shawnee has to be a prime example. For example, the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools in other states do a great job despite high ratios of high poverty enrollment, but Kentucky first needs to legalize charter schools before we can adopt a KIPP model.

Maybe our legislators will finally learn from Shawnee’s long-time plight and finally give our state what kids in more than 40 states already have – a charter school law that can really work for our students – even when they’re in high poverty situations.

Kentucky’s educators cringe at the very thought of kids competing in school academics. But, one teacher down Texas way has broken the code – done right, it works. Here’s the story.

If any Kentucky teacher ever tried this approach, I certainly never heard about it.

Remember way back in June when Gov. Steve Beshear and the General Assembly got together to “fix” the public employee benefits system? They created payment schedules to get the funding of the various pension and health benefit plans up so the state might not go bankrupt.

They have already starting backing up on the deal.

Beshear promoted in a press conference today a bill by Rep. Mike Cherry that kicks the funding schedule for county governments’ health plans to the curb.

Those plans were already $5.35 billion underfunded on June 30, before the stock market tanked. That is the most recent data available.

This move is being promoted as a $37.5 million bailout of the local governments. The point is that something will always come up that prevents our politicians from properly funding these liabilities.

The latest unfunded liability figure for all the public employee plans is $29 billion. There will never be an easy time to make those payments. If we continue the head-in-sand routine, we will soon face something much like what California now faces.

Lee Iacocca knew when he got the federal government to save Chrysler with loan guarantees in 1979, it was a one-time deal. The current auto bailouts look like a way of life for us going forward.

Just as cities and states turn to Uncle Sam for some trillion dollar love, everyone has to know that once won’t be enough. Rewarding the bad habits that got our big-spenders into trouble will practically guarantee it.

In that context, it is interesting to see a Louisville elementary school PTA featured in the Wall Street Journal for “discussing helping to pay the salary of a teacher aide whose job might get cut.”

It’s not hard to imagine that turning into a trend. In fact, at the end of the article, another parent group extricated itself from just such a mess:

“The Eldorado Community School PTA in Santa Fe, N.M., this year has put the brakes on funding teacher salaries after it raised $61,000 last year to save a physical-education instructor’s job. “After that we decided we’re not going to pay district responsibilities like salaries” because of concern that it was setting a precedent that could not be maintained, says PTA president Kathy Ritschel. To the district, “we said, ‘You guys figure it out.'”

Every school district in Kentucky must post every dime of expenditures on the internet so taxpayers have the information to judge the needs of their local schools. This should be done before any more parents get sucked into a similar scam.

The Boston Herald reports Massachusetts, New York, and Minnesota are looking into selling their state lotteries and other assets to help clean up their fiscal situations.

Kentucky can possibly try to borrow money to get through the current downturn and hope for the best, but the more solid strategy for Kentucky taxpayers would be getting state and local government out of a lot of businesses.

Now that Sen. Mitch McConnell is starting to respond to calls to halt the bailouts, Kentucky needs to move quickly to get its house in order. Remember, even if we get a bailout our state budget is still structurally unsound. And unless President Obama plans on giving us $33.4 billion, we still have our public employee benefits mess heading our way like a freight train.

The Kentucky public employee benefits plans were underfunded by $29 billion as of June 30, despite House Speaker Jody Richards’ suggestion that same week that the General Assembly had just fixed the problem during their expensive special session.

There can be no question the problem is far worse now.

So, Gov. Steve Beshear has called a press conference for tomorrow at 11 am to make an announcement “regarding pension reform.”

A Beshear spokeswoman declined to offer any details of his plan prior to the dog-and-pony show.

Maybe we will have another Blue Ribbon Commission.

Nothing positive will happen on this front until public employee benefits in Kentucky are scaled way back to more closely reflect what is available to taxpayers in the private sector. And more government spending must immediately be redirected toward lowering the unfunded benefits before Kentucky goes bankrupt.