This would be the largest single pay raise for public school educators in at least the last 40 years.

Governor Beshear releases his education proposal a day after his Republican challenger did the same.

So how do they compare?

Just encourage our community to become involved, to become informed so that they can engage and help build a healthy community in Lexington.

The message behind a new exhibit coming to the Lexington Public Library.

I've never really like but that alpacas would make something that would be so useful and learn how researchers at the University of Kentucky are using the llama look alikes to target a protein linked to cancer.

The forest giant has really elevated BERNHEIM story, both regionally, nationally and internationally as well, to be honest.

Plus, how these larger than life statues draw in visitors and introduce them to local art production of Kentucky Edition is made possible in part by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions, the Leonard Press Endowment for Public Affairs and the KET Millennium Fund.

Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition on this Wednesday, August the 16th.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Good to be back with you and thank you for spending some of your Wednesday night with us.

Education is the latest topic to dominate the Kentucky governor's race.

Governor Andy Beshear released his education proposal this morning, one day after his Republican challenger did the same.

Beshear is upping the ante by calling for the largest pay raise in decades to Kentucky's public school personnel.

Specifically, some of Bashir's proposals include an 11% pay raise for all school employees, fully funding universal pre-K and student transportation and increasing teacher, a student loan forgiveness.

Failing to adequately compensate school system employees makes us less competitive and worse.

It impoverishes our Kentucky families that choose education as a career and total.

Beshear says his education plan would cost the state more than $1 billion over two years.

That's if he wins reelection and if a Republican dominated General Assembly approves his budget request next year, Beshear says his relationship with the legislative leadership may be strained, but adds it isn't preventing Kentucky from moving forward.

We have established over four years a relationship.

It's not always a perfect relationship, but certainly you're not going to hear good things from from the other side during an election.

But certainly the type of relationship where we can get these things done.

But in the end, now, when we fight for medical marijuana, Daniel Cameron wasn't there, didn't help, and we got it passed.

We fought for sports betting.

Daniel Cameron wasn't there, didn't help, and we got it passed.

All these passed budgets, half a billion dollars in clean drinking water, broadband, 240 plus million dollars in career and technical renovations.

It goes on and on.

Daniel Cameron wasn't there.

He didn't help, but we got it passed.

If Daniel Cameron has had such a has such a great relationship with the General Assembly, where's he been?

Right.

Why wasn't he pushing for teacher raises anything in the last three years if he claims he could get it done?

Where's he been on on other plans that are out there now?

The fact is we've been out pushing and getting the legislation passed that needs to get passed.

Kentucky House Education Committee Chairman James Tipton issued a response to the governor's education plan.

He says Beshear, quote, nor any member of his office has reached out to me to discuss any plan.

Daniel Cameron has the education framework released by Daniel Cameron has a much better chance of passing than anything proposed by this governor and his administration.

End quote.

Yesterday, we told you about Republican Daniel Cameron's education policy.

He, too, was calling for raising starting salaries for teachers and bolstering discipline in classrooms.

And Cameron is proposing state backed tutoring programs to help students recover from learning loss because of the pandemic.

We'll break down each plan in greater detail with public radio journalist Rylan Barton.

And just a few moments that required speaking of education, it was back to school today for students and the state's second largest district, Fayette County.

Across Lexington this morning, elementary, middle and high school students met their teachers and settled in for the school year.

Fayette County Superintendent Demetrius Ligon says he thinks the school year is getting off to a strong start.

I've never felt so good about a school year in my career and this is I'm going into my 24th year as an educator and this is indeed the most excited.

I felt the best energy I felt on day one and preparing.

It's good to see the kids here.

It's good to see the teachers excited.

Starting my day at the bus barn, they're excited.

Everyone's excited about today and this year, so it's going to be a great year.

Liggins also says school safety remains a top priority.

He says expect to see more school resource officers in Fayette County schools in the very near future.

Our police department works very closely with the city's police department, and so it's really a partnership to ensure that our our schools are safe.

Our students and our staff are safe as well.

We have not for every elementary campus a full time person, but for every two there's at least one full time.

And by 2025, it's our goal to have one full time police officer at a minimum, at each of our campuses.

More than 40,000 students attend Fayette County Public Schools.

In other news, the Kentucky Supreme Court heard arguments today on a new change of venue law.

Senate Bill 126 allows defendants to request a change of venue for cases challenging state laws.

It mandates the clerk of the state Supreme Court randomly pick a new circuit court and any Kentucky county to hear the case.

The state Supreme Court justices were asked to weigh in on the constitutionality of the law after Attorney General Daniel Cameron tried to get a case involving gray machines moved out of Franklin Circuit Court.

Cameron is a defendant in that case.

Supporters of the new law say it allows lawsuit participants to move cases out of courtrooms where they believe a judge is biased.

Those who oppose it say it amounts to, quote, judge shopping and targets.

The Franklin Circuit Court, where many of the cases challenging the constitutionality of laws are heard.

If you look at this statute, this amendment, it says the notice shall be transferred, admitted forthwith to the clerk of the Supreme Court, who shall direct the transfer of the action to a different circuit court chosen by random selection.

And then it later says the circuit court shall immediately transfer the action to the designated court.

I would ask where is the court's rulemaking discretion in that process?

And as we talked about before, even if the court were to attempt rulemaking on what criteria would it be based?

We're talking about strategic venue selections.

Any plaintiff's lawyer worth his or her salt is going to say, can I file in more than one venue in which venue is best for my client?

Mr.

True got to make that decision.

Senate Bill 126 is saying we're taking that out of constitutional challenges.

If a defendant wants to file a notice of transfer, any advantage, whether it's a real advantage or not, is out because we want to spread these these constitutional challenges out among the commonwealth.

This statute is not about one judge.

The statute is about every circuit judge in the Commonwealth.

It's about the way or not the who a judicial decision making.

Typically in a change of venue situation, it is because one party or the other both acknowledge that perhaps there is bias or there is an unfair implication in the venue in which you're currently sitting.

But there's a you know, the court works with those parties to find an alternative that might work.

This takes all that away from the parties and puts it into names in a hat.

And I think that just seems to me to be going back in time, about 100 years in the way we do things in addition to the Gray Machines case.

Cameron asked that a lawsuit brought by the Kentucky Education Association involving dues collection also be moved out of Franklin Circuit Court.

Time now for a midweek check in of some major political news so far this week with our good friend Roland Barton, managing editor of Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you.

Good to see you, too.

So let's talk about the governor's race and these dueling education plans.

We had the law enforcement piece a couple of weeks ago.

Now we're hitting the educators, right?

Yeah, we are.

And I mean, I think to a certain extent, Kentuckians, voters, voters benefit from this.

It's actually a policy centered discussion that's happening for once.

And that can sometimes be a rare thing in American politics.

But, yeah, Daniel Cameron unveiled an education plan earlier this week.

You know, I think part of this is a little bit of an attempt to woo educators who often folks think that, you know, teacher that this is kind of got the teacher vote locked down.

You know, Cameron unleashed that released this plan that includes a a floor for four teacher salaries which would be a raise for some to I think it's 41 $500 this year released his own plan a little bit later.

That would include an across the board 11% raise for all teachers and and school workers.

Cameron's plan was a lot of it was focused on attacking what he called learning loss that took place during the coronavirus pandemic.

And he was really slamming Governor Beshear for, you know, recommend doing it at times, deciding to close to to move education, to move schools into remote learning throughout the pandemic and really kind of blaming that on the governor.

So I think this is something we're going to see a lot in the in the coming months, especially once these two end up on the debate stage and talking over these issues.

You know, a lot of what Beshear proposed sounded a lot of a lot like what he's been proposing during his budgets for the last three years, which, again, you know, the governor proposed this, his idea of what the budget's going to look like.

Then the Republican led legislature ends up really deciding what the budget's going to look like.

And and they they've kind of picked and chosen like taking the governor's lead on some things, but not gone across the board with it.

So it's important to remember that if Governor Beshear gets reelected, then he's still going to be dealing with a super majority Republican legislature that will ultimately be driving the the bus in these cases.

And there's going to be a there would be a really different vibe if if Cameron were elected and we'd have a Republican governor and a Republican legislature.

Yeah, we'll see if there's harmony or not.

Right.

We've we've had these tests before on that.

So we'll see if if that shakes out to be the case, what it'll actually look like.

Speaking of debates or joint appearances by the governor and the attorney general, the schedule has been set right.

We know where these two will be so far in the next few weeks together.

Yeah.

And so there's going to be four joint appearances, at least at this point.

And they're also going to be making some of their own independent kind of forums as well.

The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce is holding a forum on September 20th.

The Paducah Chamber of Commerce will be holding one in western Kentucky.

It will be aired by the BBC on October 12th.

My favorite one of these forums, the one on Katie, will be hosted on October 23rd.

And then W.K.

will also have one on October 24th.

So throughout September and October, voters, again, they're going to get a good chance to see these candidates on stage together.

In some cases, you're talking back and forth at one of the and one another of the last two.

The only time we've gotten to see that so far was at Fancy Farm, which, you know, has its own particular kind of political event.

I don't think we can necessarily call it a policy driven one.

But, you know, I think voters are hoping for that in these in these candidate forums.

And so along those same lines, there have been we're getting more word of endorsements that are coming out.

And this week, the Fraternal Order of Police, the state Fraternal Order of Police, has put their endorsement behind the attorney general, Daniel Cameron, and 2019 Governor Andy Beshear had earned that.

So is this significant?

It is to the law enforcement community.

It is significant.

And I think that I mean, I don't think it was a real surprise that Cameron was going to get the endorsement this time around.

If anything, it was kind of surprising that Beshear got it in 2019.

Part of that really had to do with former Governor Bevin and his pension policies.

A lot of, you know, law enforcement was really unhappy with some of the proposals that he put out there to kind of, you know, tweak pension benefits for for new employees.

So they've endorsed him.

They said that he was the obvious choice in this case.

Beshear definitely tried to woo them a lot.

There was the he had his own law enforcement proposal that came out earlier this year that included, you know, boosts proposals for raises for for teachers, for for state troopers, and also a kind of sweetening of the pension benefits.

But they ultimately decided to go with Cameron.

So two more items, not really related, one legislative related.

And this is the fact that the Republican delegation in Jefferson County is calling for some intervention, I shall say, and Jefferson County Public Schools, one of the being along with school choice, but also splitting up the district.

Talk to us a little bit about that.

Yeah, a group of 12 Republican lawmakers are calling for, you know, really a lot more calling for governor Beshear to call a special session to to address issues related to Jefferson County Public Schools, the largest school district in the state.

A lot of this was spurred by the the debacle that's taking place in in the Louisville area with bussing as as you know, on the first day of school.

And since then that the district has decided to pause classes until late this week at the earliest.

So it's they want a lot more oversight of that.

That's something that Republicans have been calling for for a long time.

This was a big thing during former Governor Matt Bevin's administration.

But yeah, so there's that.

There's the issue of, you know, there's the history of transportation, but also it's it's not something that's really going to it's very unlikely that Governor Andy Beshear is going to call a special session on this at this point, especially with a with an election coming up in November.

They will be back in January to, you know, and I think that this is going to be a big topic, but it's that has been an issue that has really rankled a lot of local educators in the Louisville area.

They've been very reticent to allow any sort of kind of state takeover or that kind of like legislative oversight of the district.

But I think there's a lot of people, a lot of unhappy people after this bus rollout.

So that discussion has changed a lot than it's been before.

Yeah, that's right, because this has been proposed before by State Representative Kevin Bratcher of Louisville.

And so maybe it has more legs given the recent debacle with the busing system there.

Well, we thank you so much, Rylan Barton, for always breaking it down for us.

Take good care and we'll see you next week.

Thanks, Renee.

The Lexington Public Library unveiled a new exhibit today at its main branch location called I'm Design the Red Line.

The exhibit highlights the practice of redlining, a tactic that was used to foster racial inequality in the US.

Although redlining was outlawed in 1968 with the Fair Housing Act, its impact is still felt throughout our community today.

At the Lexington Public Library, we believe in an informed and engaged community.

That's why we are pleased to announce that the library will host and design the red line this fall.

Redlining was a practice of structural racism where banks were not lending to black and brown residents in specific areas of the community.

So actual lines were drawn on city maps, red lines that showed where banks were not allowed to invest or provide mortgages to people.

And that caused a huge disinvestment in those communities, both in public services and in able the ability to build generate generational wealth through homeownership.

We invite all let's antonians to read Richard Rothstein's groundbreaking study, The Color of Law.

And join us at the library for a series of robust discussions and programs to help us better understand structural and institutionalized racism.

Our goal in hosting the exhibit and community read is to inform our citizens and spark conversation about the future.

We are here not to make public policy recommendations, although we hope that this endeavor will also help our elected leaders.

I'm convinced that our democracy depends on an informed citizenry.

And, you know, historically, we are one of the few countries in the world who started with the basic idea that education should be for everyone and should be free.

And the library is certainly a big part of that.

This exhibit and the community that goes along with it really helps to inform our community.

So that they are able to understand how did we get to where we are today and what are the actions we need to take as a community going forward to fix the damage that's been done?

I would just encourage our community to become involved, to become informed so that they can engage and help build a healthy community in Lexington.

The exhibit will open on September 22nd and will remain on display in the Lexington Central Library until November the 19th.

Could Alpacas hold the key to stopping the growth of some forms of cancer?

Researchers at the University of Kentucky believe so.

More on the new tool they've developed with the help of alpaca antibodies in today's medical news.

I'd never heard really like, but the alpacas would make something that would be so useful for us.

Pure three, which is what this research has focused on, has been involved, we know for, I guess, for the last 20 years that it's been involved in tumor spread throughout the body.

So cancer metastasis and it's linked with poor prognosis in patients in all sorts of cancers like breast cancer, melanoma, prostate cancer, colon cancer.

In my lab we were interested in trying to find new ways to treat cancer.

And so we found this protein PRL three is important for leukemia, which I guess is what my lab studies and you know, it just wasn't acceptable.

I guess that there weren't good tools to study it.

It was really holding us back.

And so my department has this genetic technologies core where they use alpacas to make new antibodies.

And so we thought, you know, this would be a great use of the core to develop an antibody that can specifically target zero three.

And we were able to screen through lots of phosphate traces and all the similar proteins and found that the antibodies that the alpacas made were very specific for here.

All three benefit also of Nanobodies is that they're very small, they're just like a small portion of an antibody, which is a big protein, and so they can actually get into cells and act as a drug in a way.

So antibodies are able to do that because they're so big.

But now antibodies have the potential to get into a cell and find target proteins idea.

But it was we wanted to make new research tools to use in the lab to kind of try to understand what PR three is doing and how it's promoting cancer metastasis.

But ultimately we wanted to couple in the antibody with the drug.

So then an antibody would bring a drug specifically to cells that expressed high levels of PRL three, so all the cancer cells and then just kind of like kill a cell, basically.

So it was dying.

UK researchers are partnering with a local alpaca farm as they continue their cancer research with more than 16,000 acres of protected land and over 40 miles of hiking trails, Bernheim Forest has a lot to offer, but many have come to know it as a home to gentle wooden giants.

The gigantic statues have introduced many guests to a more artistic side of bernheim that they never knew about.

More in this week's Arts and Culture segment we call Tapestry.

So we're standing here with Mama Lou Mari, and she is the mother of our forest giants by internationally renowned recycling artist Thomas Mntambo.

And you can see they get lots of love and attention and bring quite a bit of happiness to our guests here at the public Reception to the Giants has been amazing.

I mean, really, even from before they even got here, there was quite a bit of buzz generated throughout social media.

And then, of course, you know, the sculptures themselves are really accessible.

So from really small kids to older adults, the work is very appealing and it comes with this beautiful mission of sustainability.

You know, the artist Thomas, he creates these works out of materials that would otherwise be discarded or put into a landfill, and he kind of repurposes them into these beautiful, whimsical works of art.

Mama Lamarre is actually built with bourbon barrel staves that really speak to the bourbon industry in this region.

So when we originally installed the forest Giants, we really were just promising up to three years.

You know, really anything that gets installed into the natural environment inevitably has varying life expectancies.

We've also had to do some repairs over time.

You know, it's just inevitable that, you know, natural materials will start to deteriorate.

So, you know, the Giants, unfortunately, will not be with us forever.

But we are doing everything we can to really prolong their life while they're here, because they really are just bringing so much pleasure to our guests.

Look at hair.

It's made, I guess I guess for many people, the Forest Giants is really their first experience of art at Bernheim.

But truth be told, there's been a program here, an artist in residence program.

We're actually celebrating our 43rd year this year.

Obviously here at BERNHEIM.

We think the environment is important and so it's always been a goal for us to, you know, if somebody can connect to a work of art about the environment, inevitably they may take steps to protect that environment moving forward.

The Forest Giants has really elevated Bernheim story, both regionally, nationally and internationally as well, to be honest.

And so it's great that really positive environmental stories are coming out of the state and we're doing that and such a fun way, like we're addressing really sensitive topics and issues as it relates to climate and climate change.

But yet we're doing it through joyful experiences that give the community an opportunity to learn.

And so I think that in addition to the bourbon industry and even the Kentucky Derby and the food the table movement that's really prevalent throughout the state of Kentucky, arts is now a huge component and draw as well.

And we're really proud of that.

At Bernheim, Definitely worth a trip to Bullitt County to see.

Well, the Kentucky State Fair kicks off tomorrow.

We're going to show you more on that and tour some of the sights and sounds and tell you why one annual tradition of the fair won't be happening this year.

You'll get that story and more tomorrow night at 630 Eastern, 530 Central on Kentucky Edition, where we inform, Connect and Inspire.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Connect with us all the way as you see on your screen.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Take really good care and I'll see you right back here again tomorrow night.