Ahead of a potential vote on a charter schools bill, Tom Shelton of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents said he has been overwhelmed with text messages and phone calls from state lawmakers.

During a meeting of the Green River Regional Educational Cooperative on Tuesday, Shelton told the group of regional superintendents that House Bill 520 would likely be heard by the Senate’s Standing Committee on Education on Wednesday.

“We just believe the bill should be consistent and it should be local decisions made by local school boards because those are the people who’ve been elected to manage the schools in their communities,” Shelton, executive director of KASS, said in an interview after the meeting.

Republican state Sen. Mike Wilson of Bowling Green chairs the Senate’s education committee and said in a text Monday that it “seems likely at this point” that the bill will be heard. The bill passed out of committee Wednesday morning and is headed to the Senate floor for a vote. “We are still waiting to make sure we can get agreement to changes we want to make,” Wilson said in the text message.

Wilson declined to go into details on the changes because the negotiations were still pending at the time.

The committee began its meeting Wednesday and was hearing testimony on the issue including from one charter school student who said he was bored in a traditional classroom where sitting in it was like watching paint dry, according to a tweet from @RylandKy.

House Bill 520 would allow local school boards and the mayors of Louisville and Lexington to approve an unlimited amount of charter schools in their districts. The bill passed out of the House this month but still needs to be heard by the Senate’s education committee before it can be voted on. However, time is running out for lawmakers to act before a planned veto-recess Thursday.

Following the meeting, Shelton described several provisions of the bill that local districts oppose. They include extending authorization power to the mayors of Louisville and Lexington and adding regional charter schools to Kenton and Campbell counties, which are the two counties in the state with four or more local school districts as the bill provides.

“Our concern there is that if we’re going to have these regional academies they should be local board decisions and local community decisions,” Shelton said. “Our struggle is stepping outside of that.”

Shelton also described the appeals process for denied charter applicants as “frustrating” because it puts the decision in the hands of the Kentucky Board of Education.

“The problem with that is that there’s no way that a state-level board can know what needs to happen at a local community as well as the local community and officials do there,” he said. “So the process should be for an appeal is to appeal only in regard to was the process followed.”

Shelton said the bill has no provision for funding for the charter schools and is concerned it would drive down state funding public schools receive based on the number of students they teach.

Gary Houchens, an associate professor at Western Kentucky University, is a supporter of school choice and described House Bill 520 as “one of the most district-friendly” in the country. Houchens said the legislation would give school districts “enormous” influence by making them the primary authorizers for charters and requires charter applicants to prove there’s a local demand for one and that they have the capacity to meet it.

“There are provisions within the bill that would ensure that a charter application is not going to appear where there is no demand for one,” he said.

Houchens approves including mayors as authorizers because, like school board officials, they are also elected. He’s satisfied with the current appeals process and doesn’t want local school districts to be able to arbitrarily dismiss charter applicants.

During the meeting, Brad Hughes of the Kentucky School Boards Association told the superintendents attending to keep talking to their lawmakers because it’s having an impact.

“The message that you all are delivering about the concerns about charter schools is making an impact,” he said. “The pro-charter movement is no longer just sitting back and saying ‘We got this.’ ”