LEXINGTON, Ky. — Confusion over a new state law banning personal electronic communication between public school employees and students has created multiple repercussions for high school sports teams this summer.

Senate Bill 181, aimed at preventing inappropriate sexual communication involving public school staff and students, earned unanimous support from the Legislature last session, was signed by the governor and took effect June 27. The law requires school staff and volunteers to communicate with students only via traceable forms of communication, such as school emails or a school-approved and monitored app unless explicit consent from a parent is placed on file with their school.

But criticism of the law flooded social media as soon as school districts began informing employees and families about its restrictions. And the ramifications of the well-intentioned rules began to be felt in mid-July as high school sports teams and other groups, including marching bands, started practices.

Many school districts, including Fayette County, will not have a state-mandated communications app in place until early to mid-August, too late for messages about July tryouts and practices.

And, until last week, there was little illumination from the state for public schools and parents about the law’s stipulations and ways parents can provide consent for teachers and coaches to communicate with students outside official emails and apps. Private schools have no restrictions on teacher and student communication.

Public school coaches around the state had to unfriend and unfollow their players on social media and eliminate player phone numbers from their phones and their old team apps such as TeamSnap and SportsYou that might have been used for years outside of their school district’s control.

Frustration over the new law prompted a petition urging the General Assembly to ask Gov. Andy Beshear to pause enforcement of the measure until it can be reviewed and amended.

“It creates a lot of problems, more than they ever thought of,” said Rowan County special education teacher Allison Slone, who was recognized as Kentucky Teacher of the Year in 2024 by the Kentucky Education Association and put together the online petition against the law at MoveOn.org that has garnered more than 13,000 signatures in less than a month.

Slone argues in the petition that S.B. 181 infringes on First Amendment freedoms and that its “ambiguous language and broad scope … have created confusion and fear among school employees, chilling their participation in personal, professional, and community activities that are unrelated to their duties in the educational system.”

Penalties for violating the law can include termination and loss of teacher certification.

“What’s crazy about this — they say it is to protect children, but only those that go to public school,” Slone told the Herald-Leader. “Like, you know, ‘Who cares about the kids in private school?’ And, apparently, ‘Who cares about kids that are homeschooled.’ … We know there’s things that happen in public school. It happens everywhere, though. But this law just literally targets only those of us at public school.”

Officials with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky said they are exploring whether S.B. 181, codified as KRS 160.145, violates the U.S. Constitution.

“The ACLU of Kentucky is investigating S.B. 181 and its impact on individuals’ lawful speech,” said William Sharp, senior staff attorney for the ACLU.

Lawmaker acknowledges concerns

Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, sponsored S.B. 181 as a way to tackle the increasing number of teachers and coaches who have been accused of sexual misconduct.

A 2022 Herald-Leader investigation found that of the 194 teachers whose teaching licenses were voluntarily surrendered, suspended or revoked by the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board from 2016 to 2021 the vast majority — 61% — trace back to sexual misconduct.

A study published in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse on Kentucky teacher misconduct cases showed 70% of those cases started with private, electronic communication between a student and a teacher.

In Slone’s own school district, former Rowan County assistant girls basketball coach Andrew Zaheri pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges last year related to a sexual relationship with a student. Andrew Zaheri is serving more than 20 years in federal prison for that crime.

After a Rowan County High School student protest against then-principal Jordan Mann in May, he was reassigned to other duties outside the school. Mann faces a civil suit accusing him of failing to act on multiple complaints about Zaheri’s behavior.

Last month, former Bardstown assistant football coach Jeremy Dale pleaded guilty to charges related to physical harassment of four girls.

Last week, Ronnie and Donnie Stoner, former football coaches at DuPont Manual in Louisville, were arraigned on dozens of charges related to alleged sexual abuse of girls in their care over nearly two decades.

Tichenor said she heard no objections or concerns about S.B. 181 when it was passed with unanimous bipartisan support in the House and the Senate earlier this year.

In response to some of the criticism that reached lawmakers in early July, Tichenor wrote an op-ed defending the law, but acknowledging concerns with a pledge to refine its language in the next legislative session.

Tichenor told the Herald-Leader she has heard from many school officials, parents and coaches about concerns about the bill and hiccups in implementing the measure that was meant to protect students.

“I take those concerns seriously and value the feedback I’m receiving,” Tichenor said. “My focus right now is on listening and working collaboratively to make sure the law is implemented in a way that supports both student safety and practical realities of our schools and extracurricular programs.”

Students and teachers say communication key to mentor relationships

On July 9, the Kentucky Student Voice Team, a student-led organization in continuous existence since 2012, expressed its concerns in a public statement about the law and the implications it “will have on the strong, trust-based relationships that we, as students, build with educators and school staff. Caring and consistent relationships with trusted adults are critical for student success — academically, socially, and emotionally. …

“S.B. 181 takes a punitive, one-size-fits-all approach that undermines healthy relationships and limits student and educator agency. In effect, it makes many students less safe.”

Coaches the Herald-Leader has spoken to and received messages from acknowledge the good intentions and need for the bill, but many question how well thought out it was given its consequences to routine matters and the countless positive interactions they take part in.

Frederick Douglass baseball coach Braden Johnson has been vocal on social media about his objections to the law and shared and signed Slone’s petition.

“Most of us that are out here coaching sports, regardless of what sport, you’re doing it to help kids,” Johnson said. “Coaching doesn’t just happen in person. … We’re helping kids with issues either at home or sometimes off the field or things like that. It kind of puts a barrier in some of the relationships you can have. And I know a lot of us coach for those relationships.”

Johnson’s Broncos have been rocked in the last two years by the death of a beloved alumnus and a junior varsity player killed in a car wreck last season.

“I’ve helped kids through taking texts and phone calls at all hours of the night — just grieving kids,” Johnson said. “I’ve had a kid I’ve picked up off the side of the road because his car broke down — all kinds of stuff we helped these kids through.”

Lexington Christian football coach Oakley Watkins, in his first year in charge of the Eagles after 12 years as an assistant, isn’t bound by the law, but empathized with the difficulties it poses for his public colleagues.

“I just can’t imagine not being able to take a phone call from a player that’s in a time of need,” Watkins said. “The relationships with these kids and helping hopefully build better people, and having that impact on those guys is why we do it.”

Bryan Station boys soccer coach Alex Tungate acknowledged communicating with his players about team news has been a challenge under the law. Some students at his school and others represent the only reliable way to communicate via phone or text with their families despite informational announcements made on the team’s Facebook and Instagram pages.

“A lot of our families don’t have a basic communication system,” Tungate said. “They really kind of use the oldest child in their family to communicate things. So, it’s not as easy as being able to just go on social media and look at something.”

The law also forbids coaches from tagging, liking or reposting social media posts from their players, a stipulation that could hurt their college recruiting prospects, coaches say.

“I think it hurts our ability to help the kids in recruiting,” Henry Clay football coach Phillip Hawkins said. “Because we do have access to so many college coaches that follow me on social media. (Social media) allowed us to celebrate the kids getting a college offer and it also broadcast that offer out to all these other colleges. And they look. … It’s chopped a massive amount of exposure immediately away from every one of our kids. And that’s a hangup for me.”

Potential conflicts for school employees abound

The law does not apply to public school employees and volunteers who are immediate family members or legal guardians of public school children, but it prohibits texting their children’s friends or a baby sitter who might be a public school student in their district.

It can also forbid contact between a select team coach to a player in their district. While the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE) recent guidance indicates teachers and coaches could communicate with students outside of their districts, that circumstance isn’t clearly defined by the law.

An example of the pitfalls of that exclusion occurred July 13 when there were unconfirmed reports of an “active aggressor” at the Kentucky Expo Center, the site of the Run 4 Roses Championship AAU basketball tournament in Louisville.

Because private club coaches are often also school employees, any coach who might try to immediately check on a player’s safety via text would have been in violation of S.B. 181 if consent for such communication wasn’t on file with that player’s school.

“They had to pause and think about, ‘Is this OK for me to do?’ ‘Is this OK for me to send out a text or a whatever way I could possibly get in contact with those students to make sure they were safe?’” Slone told WKYT in the wake of that scare.

Consent forms offer a way around the law, but present difficulties

While the law explicitly offers a way for parents to provide consent for coaches and teachers to use personal electronic communication formats and social media to contact students, there is no standard form from the state parents can sign.

That leaves parents and coaches at the mercy of consent forms crafted by schools and school districts. A sampling of consent forms online shows they often include stipulations or qualifications that aren’t part of the law.

Many suggest the consent form must be approved by the district. The law states districts cannot reject a properly worded consent form.

A Fayette County consent form circulated among many but not all high schools this month includes an expiration date of Aug. 12, 2025, making it only a stop-gap measure until the district’s approved app is ready.

The written consent part of the law doesn’t include a stipulation for an expiration date. It only says a parent can revoke consent at any time.

Other examples:

—Franklin County published a consent form on its Facebook page on July 7 that asks parents to provide the type of outside communications that will be part of the consent and the reasons why the parent is seeking consent.

—An Elizabethtown Independent Schools consent form searchable through Google and linked through the Kentucky School Boards Association Portal website stipulates that consent only applies to text, phone calls or voicemails and “applies only to communications that are necessary and school-related.”

—Forms online for Hancock County and Lincoln County also require the designated employee’s signature and asks parents for reasons why the consent is being sought.

None of those stipulations are part of the law.

While the law says a form may stipulate what kinds of communication parental consent pertains to, the control lies with the parent, not the school district. It can apply to texts, calls and social media, does not require an explanation as to why consent is being given and does not require the employee’s signature in addition to the parent’s.

Another potential headache for school districts is that a consent form can only pertain to one employee/volunteer. So, for instance, a parent cannot provide blanket consent for an entire coaching staff.

That means a varsity football team of 60 players and eight coaches might need as many as 480 individual consent letters that the district cannot deny and must keep on file.

A glance at Frederick Douglass High School on the ArbiterLive.com directory of KHSAA sports shows the school has 22 sports/activities that include 59 different teams. Its varsity football roster included more than 100 players last season. Keeping track of who signed consent and who did not poses more issues.

Fayette County Public Schools spokeswoman Miranda Scully declined to answer specific questions about the FCPS consent form.

“Fayette County Public Schools, like districts across the entire Commonwealth, is actively working to fully navigate and implement the requirements of this important new legislation,” Scully said in a statement. “Our primary goal is to ensure that all communication practices between our employees, volunteers, and students are in compliance with SB 181, enhancing student safety and transparency while maintaining effective school-home connections.”

Scully also did not clarify a timetable for when its designated app, ParentSquare, would be brought online.

“We are diligently updating our policies and establishing our district-approved communication platforms to align with these new statewide standards. To that end, Fayette County Public Schools will continue to utilize established and acceptable platforms such as FCPS emails, Infinite Campus, and Canvas,” Scully said.

What’s next?

In her statements to the Herald-Leader, Tichenor stopped short of saying what future changes to S.B. 181 may include or if she would support a temporary pause in enforcing S.B. 181 until the problems could be worked out.

“I remain committed to thoughtful dialogue and ongoing conversations with stakeholders to make any needed improvements in future sessions,” the senator said.

Meanwhile, Rowan County’s Slone is attempting to get a meeting with the governor in hopes he will hear the petitioners’ concerns in person. She plans on submitting her petition to Beshear, Tichenor and state legislative leaders at the end of the week, regardless.

“We’re hoping if there’s a special session for some other reason that he will add this to it,” Slone said. “We are still looking at potential legal action on how this affects our First Amendment and other civil rights. Then there might be some action taken between now and the next legislative session to see if there’s any way to put a stop to this bill until it can be fixed.”

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(Herald-Leader staff writer Beth Musgrave contributed to this article.)

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