JCPS school board member Chris Kolb resigns 'effective immediately'

Jefferson County Board of Education member Chris Kolb has resigned from the Jefferson County Board of Education "effective immediately," citing a desire to teach in the upcoming school year in a letter sent to board leadership Thursday.

The decision comes more than a month after Kolb, who has served on the board since 2017, announced he would not be running again for his District 2 seat, which represents the Highlands and its surrounding neighborhoods, The Courier Journal previously reported . Members of the board are also not allowed to work for the district during their tenure.

In the letter, Kolb said he is proud to have helped in many initiatives that have helped to improve the district like investing more into impoverished schools and challenging the commonwealth's testing model for students, but criticized Board Chairman Corrie Shull and Vice-Chair James Craig for not raising revenue to address the current staffing issues.

He went on to claim that board members were putting "their own political aspirations above the needs of JCPS students" and that evaluations of Superintendent Marty Pollio have not been based on the student outcomes he was asked to achieve, but the desires of individual board members.

"I realize now that I will not be successful in convincing this board to focus on student outcomes or to raise the revenue needed to address the staffing crisis, so I am choosing to do what I can as an individual by becoming a JCPS teacher," he wrote. "However, I am just one person and the board itself has only three choices in the face of the staffing crisis: raise the revenue required to attract and retain staff, join me and resign from the board to work for JCPS, or admit to yourselves and the community that you don’t care that much about the future of the district."

Kolb made headlines in May after he criticized JCPS principals for opposing the new start time proposals , which sparked a petition calling for his resignation.

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This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: JCPS school board member Chris Kolb resigns 'effective immediately'