At one point I had three children in daycare, which was a very expensive period of our life.

Find out why some say it's parents and the state that are paying a high price when it comes to child care.

We we're just excited to be one of the first few in the state of Kentucky.

The bus may still be yellow, but it's a greener, cleaner way to get your kids to school.

Not many people can walk seven miles, but on a railway he can.

Plus, a new way to ride the rails.

Walls out in sales.

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 Thursday, August the 17th.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Thank you so much for winding down your Thursday with us.

Some school kids in Jefferson County are experiencing an extended summer after the bus transportation fiasco put classes on pause for six days.

The state's largest school district has come under fire from parents and policymakers for the disastrous rollout of new bus routes and staggered school start times.

Some busses are set to get rolling again tomorrow as the district is implementing a handful of changes to prevent hopefully a repeat of last week.

I spoke with Jess Clark, Education and Learning reporter for Louisville Public Media about the causes and fixes to the busing debacle.

There are multiple failures that led to the disaster last week.

The main one being that is kind of coming to the fore in the initial days of reporting is that they used a company called Alpha out to create a new route network that they said would allow the district to move 60,000 kids to and from school with just 600 bus drivers.

Alpha Route created that route network.

But then in the last month, before school started, the district added an additional 5000 stops to that route network that was created by artificial intelligence.

And they did not properly account for the time that that would add.

And so bus drivers were telling folks when they when they got their route sheets, hey, these routes are impossible to complete in the time you're requiring me to.

But higher ups did not listen.

And so then on the first day of school, you know, it played out just like bus drivers thought it would.

It was it was a catastrophe.

So Alpha Route has a checkered past, actually.

There's been some reporting that shows that Ohio has had some issues with this and other states have as well.

So did JCPenney make an error or even trusting this company to help make these bus routes more efficiently, more efficient, considering that there are more stops and maybe not enough bus drivers?

Well, I think it's probably too early to say.

I've asked Superintendent Marty Pouliot if he thinks that the company is to blame, and he is very clear that he does not think Alpha Brown is to blame and that the the the onus falls on Jefferson County Public Schools and how the staff then used the plan that Alpha route created and kind of misused it in a way and or implementation.

That said, you mentioned there were issues in Columbus.

So I think that does raise questions about, you know, was this the right company to to do this job?

A lot of people have been frustrated that the folks came in from out of town and questions about pay.

Do they actually understand the way our traffic works in Louisville?

So I think there's there's a lot of questions about it.

But so far, higher ups are saying that they do not blame the company.

That contract Jacobs signed a contract for with Alpha out back in 2022 for $265,000 to create that route network.

Hmm.

So we'll keep that.

I know your reporting will give us more information as that develops.

So let's talk about today.

Just shortly before you joined us, you actually went on a bus route.

So tell us about that experience and what are you noticing?

Yeah, so I didn't.

Just to clarify, I didn't actually go with a driver.

It was hard to get a driver to let us to come with them because they're fearful of losing their jobs if they did something like that.

Right.

So my colleague Justin Hicks and I, we managed to get stops and times for all of the school busses in the district and we made our own route sheets.

So we did it without gaps and it was really hard, but we ended up being 30 minutes late.

And so, you know, the kids who would have, you know, the imaginary kids that would have been on our bus would have been late to school, pretty much every stop along the way.

Of course, we're not professional bus drivers, so it's kind of hard to say how much is our analysis and, you know, how much is the way the routes are designed.

It did seem like even if you were able to complete them perfectly, there's very little room for error.

You know, there were something like 5 minutes in between the time you drop off the kids from school and first spell in many cases.

And so, you know, that doesn't leave a lot of room for error when you have 48 stops.

Yeah.

So you can see how the issue compounded it made it.

It really illustrated how difficult these routes are and how easy it is for tardiness to compound.

Right.

And did bus drivers have enough time to practice these routes or did were they added stops?

You know, well, after they had rehearsed what they would be doing, What do we know about their ability to kind of get up to speed on their routes?

Well, we have reports on social media and then the district's higher ups have confirmed that drivers did not feel like they had enough time to practice.

They were actually given more days than in years past to practice the routes.

But the routes were so much more complex than they usually are.

Like one driver I talked to, usually the route sheet's like five pages long.

This year it was 20 pages long.

And so they're not using GPS.

They're literally really using sheets of paper stapled together with turn by turn instructions.

And they cannot use their phone.

They can't use Google Maps.

And so that's you know, that was very difficult for them to do.

What's the schedule now for CPS to restart school and to hopefully have these bus routes in order where the kids get to school on time and they get home at a decent time?

Right.

So they're sending elementary and middle school students back Friday.

It will be really interesting to see how that goes.

They've been pretty clear that there will probably still be significant delays because they really need to do a full overhaul of the routes, but they do not have time to do that.

And so what they're doing is kind of these more short term fixes, like, for example, on some of the more complicated routes they're actually recruiting teachers to be shoulder buddies.

And they're going to sit behind the bus driver with their own phone and GPS up until the bus driver where to go if they get lost.

So it's these kind of like short term fixes that they're hoping will make things go a little bit more smoothly.

Friday And then Monday, they plan to bring back high school students.

So we'll see how it goes.

I know, Jess Clark, you're going to be on comment on Kentucky Friday.

So what?

We didn't get in.

You'll be able to give more analysis of then.

So thank you for your time.

We appreciate it.

Thanks, Renee.

Something many new parents in Louisville found an unexpected need for these past few days is child care.

A new survey by the United Way and the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence finds 72% of voters want to see the state do a better job of ensuring access to and funding for quality child care.

Both groups shared the results of the survey on Wednesday, saying an investment in child care has a direct impact on the state's workforce.

Parents are clearly indicating and voters support that parents need access to child care, to early learning programs, to preschool programs while they're at work.

To our city and most cities, economic development is one of our highest priorities.

And the simple fact is to have strong economic development, you need to have a strong workforce to have a strong workforce, you need an educated workforce.

We're among the ten lowest states when it comes to workforce participation.

And Kentuckians say one of the barriers to participating meaningfully in the workforce is the lack of childcare and the lack of childcare that they can trust and feel confident in.

I couldn't work for a year and a half while we tried to find a place with two spaces for our kids.

And and it's really challenging to find the space at the same center.

So affordability is a big problem, especially when you're thinking about a dual income family and multiple children.

If a parent is able to stay home, they may choose to do that if they can't afford childcare rather than participate in the workforce.

At one point I had three children in daycare, which was a very expensive period of our life.

I'm in a two income households.

We have two white collar jobs that are well paid.

And we struggled.

We struggled to make our childcare payments and just think about having to pay double and triple your salary to someone else to watch your kids.

That's not something that the individual workers can always support.

It needs public sector support.

Child care costs as much each year as college tuition cost each year.

And we cannot expect the parents of young children to bear all of the costs associated with being the parents of young children and pay for, in essence, the cost of college tuition for their two and three and four year olds.

I really value these professionals who work with my children every day.

It is a skill set.

It is a very it's something I could never accomplish.

And yet they do it every day.

So I don't think they're paid enough for the work that they do.

I want to see that the that the centers themselves are more supported financially because they have such they have such a challenge hiring people and hiring staff and being able to support.

There's tons of cost of the facilities that have nothing to do with serving children, creating the conditions in the state for child care, to grow as an industry is important.

The state has already responded to it in a way that has improved the child care as a business model by increasing the reimbursement rate.

So we want to maintain those improvements that have been made over the last couple of years and then also deepen that investment in child care, deepen the investment in public preschool, ensure that child care can be part of the preschool delivery mix and within the next year or a couple of years, all those things, again, in service to creating the conditions where a child care is increasingly accessible and affordable for parents.

Other findings from the survey Almost 40% of parents who responded said they delayed a major purchase or reduced essential spending to pay for childcare, and almost 30% said they used emergency savings or even asked friends and family for financial help to pay for child care.

Well, the Kentucky State Fair kicked off today.

The annual ten day event takes place at the Expo Center in Louisville.

There is something for everybody.

Beyond the rides, cooking exhibitions, a dog show, a music ranging from Eddie Montgomery to the Oak Ridge Boys.

But one yearly tradition is not happening this year.

For more than a decade, the Fairness Campaign has protested Kentucky Farm burros, country ham Breakfast at the Fair, citing what it calls Kentucky Farm Bureau's discriminatory policies.

Well, last week, Chris Hartmann with the Fairness Campaign told me he thinks his group has accomplished what it set out to do.

I think given the challenges that we've been facing in the Kentucky General Assembly, the attacks on transgender kids, not just here in the Commonwealth, but all across the nation, frankly, the Kentucky Farm Bureau feels a little bit like small potatoes to us these days.

So I think this year we're going to be retiring.

The action against the Kentucky Farm Bureau.

And the main reason is that we've accomplished so many of our goals.

The Kentucky Farm Bureau hides these Anti-lgbtq policies now, their anti-union policies, their anti-choice policies.

They don't print the booklet that they used to send to state lawmakers.

More than 50,000 Kentuckians have dropped their Kentucky Farm Bureau insurance since we started protesting them nearly a dozen years ago.

And tens of thousands of Kentuckians are well aware of the discriminatory policies that they promoted in the past.

I think we've accomplished our goals against the Kentucky Farm Bureau, and we're certainly going to set our sights on the state lawmakers who are truly trying to make trans kids lives miserable right now.

The Kentucky State Fair runs through August the 27th.

We'll take you there tomorrow on Kentucky Edition.

Kentuckians impacted by last year's devastating floods will have more access to legal help.

The Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Kentucky or Apple Read Legal Aid received a $1.3 million grant, which it will use to add staff to its disaster response team.

The staff will help provide legal aid to low income Kentuckians who are still trying to navigate the FEMA appeal process, title and home ownership issues and other civil and legal matters.

Apple Read Legal Aid is one of 14 organizations chosen by the Legal Services Corporation to receive funding as part of a national disaster response.

The town of Dawson Springs is getting more help from FEMA.

The agency is reimbursing the small Hopkins County city nearly $6 million for the demolition and rebuilding of an apartment complex that was destroyed by an EF four tornado in December of 2021.

The apartments were for low income families and individuals.

The $5.8 million from FEMA will cover 90% of the cost of rebuilding the complex.

The state and the Dawson Springs Housing Authority will cover the remaining costs three weeks from today.

Sports gambling can begin in Kentucky.

Seven racetracks in the state have filed applications for sports gambling licenses.

The tracks to apply are Churchill Downs, Cumberland Run, Alice Park, Oak Grove, Red Mile and Lexington.

Sand is gaming and racing in Ashland and Turf Way Park.

It's now up to the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, which oversees sports betting to vote on the applications, which Governor Andy Beshear says will take place on August the 22nd.

Lawmakers passed a bill legalizing sports gambling earlier this year, but bets can't be made until September 7th at racetracks and online betting can begin on September 28.

Today, the governor announced Kentuckians can begin pre-registering for mobile accounts beginning August the 28th.

Experts predict sports betting will bring in more than $20 million a year to the state.

Most of the money will be dedicated to the Kentucky Permanent pension Fund.

Two and a half percent of the revenue will be set aside to help combat gambling addiction.

The Richmond Police Department has joined several other of the Commonwealth's first responder agencies and deploying a mental health specialist as a call responder for behavioral health emergencies, thanks to a recent amendment to the state Medicaid plan.

More Kentucky communities could begin using similar services.

We've all seen somebody on the street, right, who's maybe screaming or crying or or right in some sort of crisis.

And it's not that they're breaking the law, but it's that they're having some sort of behavioral health crisis.

It's really providing some services in the community that can help folks who are in crisis.

That's why it's called mobile crisis.

But instead of expecting people to come in to a center, actually, it is how we can meet folks even in the streets.

Every police policing agency across the country is being called more and more on calls that aren't really law enforcement related.

But people don't know who to call, and sometimes there isn't anyone to call.

And I'm talking about being homeless, which is not a crime, but people don't know what to do, so they call the police.

The police are not some of them are trained, but not extensively trained to deal with people who are having mental health crises.

And I think partnering up with someone, I think every police officer here would welcome that for sure, because nobody here wants to make the situation worse, potentially make someone who's in the middle of a crisis make it even worse for them.

And I think that people are very conscious of that.

And I think partnering up with someone who has experience in dealing with people that are in crisis is a fantastic idea.

We're going to fund some communities by the $100,000 planning grant, but then slowly bring up what the community's participation needs to be.

And so it could be a co responder with an EMS, with a fire department coming up with something new that has to relate to that dispatch, that 911 and and now hopefully with a suicide prevention hotline, the 988 number to be able to actually work on who gets dispatched.

Sometimes getting a meal for them, maybe the only thing that I can do on that day.

But I think that you have to look at everything as being a bridge instead of a door.

You know, I try to connect with people and where they are and kind of say, You may not want my help now, but I'm here.

And if you need here's the way that you can get in touch with me and that's that has to be good enough for that day.

Apart from funding for these mobile crisis teams, Kentucky's recently accepted Medicaid plan amendment also has plans for a 23 hour crisis observation and stabilization services.

As students head back to school, Most of them will begin and end their day.

Of course, on the bus and Bowling Green, kids will ride on brand new busses among the first of their kind in Kentucky.

Our Laura Rogers took a ride this morning.

Bowling Green Independent School District transports around 2300 students a day.

Several of them will soon notice some changes.

Oh, it's exciting.

We're definitely proud and put in a lot of work research, you know, going into this process.

Hopefully, we're going to set the trend for everybody else.

Through a $5.1 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the district is adding 13 electric school busses to its fleet.

We've got to prove that, that it works, that it's efficient, that we are going to save money on fuel, we're going to save money on maintenance costs.

We're looking at an average expenditure of around $0.49 a mile for a diesel bus versus what we're looking at for an electric bus of about $0.14 a mile.

The school district on average for a bus might be looking at a savings of anywhere from 4000 to $11000.

Aside from the cost savings, there's the comfort of a smoother, quieter ride and the environmental benefits.

The big thing that kids will notice this is low noise and and low emissions.

It was great to be on a bus for the first time in my life and I didn't get off thinking that I was standing behind a tailpipe.

And it's not just passengers that will know this, but Bowling Green neighborhoods, too.

So when our busses are going through there, they're not only making a lot of noise, they're putting a lot of diesel fumes out.

So I think it's going to be a real benefit.

Depending on the bus model, it can carry 72 or 84 students for up to 120 miles on a single charge.

Dotson Electric partnered with the school district to set up charging ports and infrastructure.

It's so new, we're just learning and we feel like we got the opportunity to do our first project with a great group of people and very innovative.

Cedric Browning says school officials attended the N Expo in Reno, where they were able to learn more about electric powered busses, which will make for an easier transition when the busses officially hit the road in September.

And it was a green bus summit, so we wanted to go out there, learn as much as we could from districts out on the West Coast that are already utilizing electric busses.

We did have an opportunity to talk to several, and it is common thought that as time goes on, more school districts will choose to invest in the technology.

I think this is definitely the future.

Just as with automobiles where you have the major manufacturers committing to electric fleets going forward, I think we're going to see the same thing with bus fleets.

This is the beginning of a of a new generation of student transportation, not just for our district, but in the state for Kentucky.

Edition.

I'm Laura Rogers.

Thank you, Laura.

The grant to purchase the Bluebird Electric School bus fleet comes from the bipartisan infrastructure law.

Billions of dollars are being allocated nationwide for clean school bus transportation.

Our final story tonight, a new eco tourism business has rolled out.

And Woodford County Rail Explorers allows riders to pedal rail bikes along the Bluegrass Scenic Railroad.

And as we saw on opening day, people are eager to get on board.

Woodford County's newest attraction.

Not many people can walk or hike seven miles, but on a rail bike you can and been so low to the ground.

You have this real visceral feeling and it just captivated everybody that rode with us.

These vehicles are, dare I say it, as close to idiot proof as you can get.

They are almost impossible to to derail.

We've had since we since we started in 2015, we've had over half a million riders and they all survived real explorers as well as a lot of things.

But we are an eco tourism company that takes rail bikes out onto the tracks and gives you a full adventure.

We're always out looking for interesting track.

And one of our one of my coworkers saw the track out here and just thought it was really interesting looking.

And we brought our bike out and we were running on it in February and we were like, Yep, this is this is going to work.

So.

So the one thing that was really neat about rail explorers is I looked at their different places.

They were in America and they're in these picturesque scenic places.

And when they identified Woodford County and specifically this rail line as part of that, I knew that this was a perfect place for them.

Because you talk about the Adirondack Mountains, you talk about some of the other places that they are.

We are right there with them in some of the most beautiful scenery that you'll ever see.

And that's what Kentucky is about.

So without further ado, we are going to officially launch their the first ride.

We've got the mayor and the judge, Mary, Julie and Alex, and we're going to cut the ribbon.

Yeah, it's really great.

So there's a biography actually changes between here and the river, which is where we turn around.

There are gorgeous forests.

We've got some cutouts that we rode right through.

There's lots of horse farms.

And then, of course, there's the Kentucky River.

And yet our tourism economy is booming.

A lot of people are coming to see the beautiful horse farms, the scenery, the bourbon tours that we have to offer.

And it's just a great place to come and spend your time, bring your family and have a great time.

It's very, very scenic and there's no more scenic stretch of railroad.

Then you'll find on the Rail Rail Explorers tour.

One of the things that we all share is that, you know, even if we have reluctant teenagers or, you know, kids that are scared initially, everybody comes back with smiles, great memories, great family memories.

I cannot wait to do that.

And I cannot wait to see you tomorrow night at 630 Eastern, 530 Central for Kentucky Edition.

That would do it for us tonight.

And I'll see you tomorrow.

Take a ten.