COVID cases are up again.

How much and should you be concerned?

As of right now, there's nowhere in central Kentucky that has these kind of boxes.

They're safe havens for babies and more of them could be on the way.

So one of the things you might notice, if you go to the fair, you're going to see a giant colon and the Kentucky State Fair has you covered from top to bottom.

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 for this Friday, August 25th.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Thank you for starting off your weekend with us.

Down, but not out.

That's the case for COVID 19, which is beginning to see a resurgence in the US and in the Commonwealth.

According to the CDC, 162 people were hospitalized with COVID 19 in Kentucky during the first full week of August.

While that number is relatively low, it's up almost 90% from the previous week.

Many experts are pointing to a new variant of COVID for the recent uptick.

Governor Andy Beshear discussed the situation yesterday during a weekly news conference.

We don't see anything in the numbers right now on hospitalizations, at least that I've seen that cause us alarm.

I don't think we are to the point yet where we can say this variant is causing any more serious disease than others.

And now everybody knows the steps that they can take if they want to take them to to protect themselves as cases are up and everyone has that ability and should consider their situation.

An updated vaccine is expected to roll out this fall.

We'll hear from a pharmacist with the University of Kentucky about what makes this new booster different and who should get it.

You'll learn that right here Monday night on Kentucky Edition.

As students return to school, many will be learning to read in a different way.

Legislation passed last year requires all Kentucky school districts to adopt literacy curriculum that aligns with what's called the science of reading.

Our Kelsey Starks hosted a forum on early literacy with an audience of educators, and they had some questions for the panelists.

More in tonight's Education Matters.

The Wall Street Journal today published a story about states who have changed their reading programs and have added a component where they will hold third graders back if they're not at a certain level.

They referenced Senator Mississippi, Tennessee.

So two two part question.

I don't think this was is part of the legislation that you all passed.

So.

Did you consider that?

And then secondly, for the whole panel, what do you think about that concept?

As it turns out, because of the appeal process and other parts of the legislation, not many children are actually being held back.

So maybe it's the carrot and the stick concept.

So I just curious, did you talk about it and what you all think?

The first year that I filed the bill.

Originally, I had that component in the legislation to retain a student in third grade who had not met that that level.

It was not politically popular.

We took that out.

I am aware of the study.

It's a Fordham Institute study that came out a few years ago.

But since they initially made that study, they have came out with a disclaimer, and I just happened to have copied that here because I think it might come up.

And it said they updated and it said based on their demographic study, it shows that retaining students was in fact not a major contributor.

The Mississippi's increase in reading improvement and as I look at it and I think it's a fair question, I asked that certain light, get the input here.

If you do everything, it's part of the bill that's in the bill, you're really not going to have you should not have that many students who are in a situation where they would have to retain have to be retained an extra year.

So I'll ask the question for those students who just haven't got it, very small percent, are they better off to be held back another year?

So that's the beautiful thing about the legislation.

It's pointing toward early identification and prevention, and that should be happening.

Kindergarten grade one, grade two.

And what the bill also does, you know, if you are retaining a student at grade three.

Well, the intent there is that they will have more intensive supports in practice.

Well, that's that's the point of the intervention.

And that that the enrichment, that's a part of the succeed act.

So we we believe and again, time will tell that we will see improvement in student outcomes even without that third grade retention piece woven into the legislation.

I would also add to that if you do wait to that point of waiting to third grade, then research says that it would take a teacher to close those skill gaps.

90 minutes to 3 hours per day for a long period of time.

Our educators do not have that amount of time to spend one on one small group instruction.

And so early intervention with our early literacy assessments is absolutely key.

You can learn more about the science of reading and how Kentucky teachers are implementing it in the classroom and a panel discussion next week.

This is happening on Monday night.

Early Literacy Forum is hosted by Kelsey Starks.

That's Monday at eight Eastern, seven Central right here on KCET.

Now to politics.

It was ham where the side of politics at the Kentucky Farm Bureau, Country Ham Breakfast and charity auction in Louisville yesterday, Kentucky agriculture was on the agenda on the menu and on the auction block.

Good morning and welcome to the 59th annual Kentucky Farm Bureau, Ham Breakfast and Charity Auction.

As we look back over my two terms as your commissioner, I can say that we made a difference.

We have grown the iconic Kentucky proud brand.

We have put local foods into nearly 1000 public schools across Kentucky.

We have grown our farm cash receipts the all time record high of $8 billion.

We developed low interest loans for our farmers and we responded to disasters.

And we did all this while at the same time shrinking the size of government and doing more with less.

And perhaps my greatest accomplishment working with you is that by working in the Farm Bureau and many in this room, we have reduced hunger across the Commonwealth going to and not now for me and our portfolio to make here now for on average eight 4 million, 100,000 on and on and on.

We want to build one about that bright shining light is the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture.

This new lab between UK and the Department of Agriculture will reinforce Central Kentucky reputation to be the go to hub for advanced agricultural research.

And it's going to have a special focus on cattle and horses.

Two things that we excel in.

The farm bill comes up every five years and funds things like food assistance programs, broadband and rural development, agriculture, research, conservation programs, plus the farm.

So we consider to be a safety net for the farm community, crop insurance and commodity programs.

But it is equally important for our consumer in rural and urban areas.

Food security is national security and that is why passage of a farm bill remains a priority for our organization.

Only in America and only in Kentucky can you grow up on a tobacco farm working for $1 an hour when they get a chance to go to college?

It's only in this country where if you work hard enough and go to school one day, you get to follow your dream.

Serve as a state rep, serve as commissioner of Agriculture, and who knows what's next?

I'm proud of our country.

I'm proud of our Commonwealth of Kentucky.

I want to say a special thank you from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity to serve you in public office.

The prize ham auctioned off at this year's event brought in a whopping total of $10 million from Kelly and Joe Kraft and Central Bank.

Proceeds from the auction will go to various charities.

Safe Haven baby boxes offer a safe option for parents to safely and anonymously surrender their infants.

They have over 150 active boxes in the U.S. and have had over 30 safe surrenders.

To date, though, there are 19 boxes in Kentucky, none of them are in central Kentucky.

One fire station in Nicholas ville just launched a fundraiser to change that fundraiser for a safe Haven baby box.

We partnered with them to get a box placed in this station for a place where parents who safely surrender their children rather than doing it in person.

We know some people definitely don't want to do things like that.

You know, face to face.

So it's completely anonymous and gives them an opportunity just to drop it in the baby's taken care of.

When a parent walks up to the box and opens it, it sends a silent alarm just saying, Hey, the box is now open.

And then there is a hospital bags and they are inside the child with it will be placed in their bags and then it's put back in the box.

There's a laser beam that breaks that point, which sends out another alarm saying, hey, there's something in the box.

And at that point, the parent shuts the door on the box.

It locks in, can't be opened except from the inside when we make entry.

As of right now, there's nowhere in central Kentucky that has these kind of boxes.

The closest place to us right now is Simpsonville.

So, you know, I just use this whole central Kentucky area safe alternative to do the work.

It's unfortunate that in the past there has been babies that's been left and, you know, dumpsters and just horrible places like it.

And then just don't want that to ever happen again as a $16,000 experience to start the mission.

So we're just looking to help get the process going and get it in the same as we can.

You know, I've wanted to do this for about two years now.

Just haven't had the means.

And now I'm in a position now where I could I was able to make it happen and it really hits home with me, me and my wife.

We're foster parents who have been for about six years now and hope that anything happening to my kids, I can imagine, you know, or any hearing, you know, just hurts my heart or anything to happen to the child.

It's definitely a big experience, but it definitely beats the alternative of in and out somewhere.

It doesn't need to be.

Monday marks the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington.

The March on August 28th, 1963 was in support of civil and economic rights for African-Americans.

The highlight to many is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

Three little civilians who took part in that march talked about it as part of the panel in Louisville today.

Rall Cunningham, who is head of the Louisville ACP, says the march helped inspire state and federal laws in support of civil rights and voting rights.

But he says even though those laws have been on the books almost 60 years, they can't be taken for granted.

Voting rights is still a major issue.

When you have had state delegations or state legislatures passing legislation to hinder voting in Kentucky.

It's estimated between 200,000 and 300,000 people marched 60 years ago.

Time now to go inside Kentucky politics to review some major political news or how the gubernatorial campaign is going with our good friend Al Cross, who is now the director emeritus of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky.

But you'll still be helping out in some capacity with the blog.

I've got a year of transition.

Yes.

So it's good to have you here.

No transitioning here, sir.

Let's talk about we've got 74 days.

I think if I did my math right until November the seventh.

How do you assess how the campaigns are going and the governor's race?

Anything stand out to you as atypical or peculiar at this particular point?

Well, despite a barrage of millions of dollars worth of TV ads, Andy Beshear seems to be holding on to his lead.

And we just have to go back to the beginning of the Beshear administration and remember how he was in everybody's home for months responding to the pandemic.

And no governor of Kentucky has ever had that kind of opportunity to make that kind of an impression on people.

And that's a pretty hard thing to shake.

But the Republicans seem to think that they have some issues that will eventually crack that wall and they're putting everything they can into it.

But you have to still make Bashir the favorite.

The X factor, of course, is Donald Trump.

We don't really know how he stands in the state at this point, but the national polls show that with every indictment, he's going up.

Right.

But here in Kentucky, we have the sitting attorney general being endorsed by Trump and endorsing Trump, which is just a little strange.

You know, I think people want to stop and think about the attorney general being, you know, hooked up with a guy who shows no respect for the justice system of the United States as the chief law enforcement officer of the state, as he currently now is.

Going back to that issue of how the governor handled the COVID 19 pandemic, we constantly hear we did at the Lincoln Day dinner the other night and at the ham breakfast, the shut down governor.

Right.

So they're trying to turn that argument on its head.

The Republican, well, they're looking for buyer's remorse.

They are trying to make the argument that the fear was too strict in his restrictions.

And, of course, the the big cards they play from time to time is Easter Sunday checks of a few churches, which I don't think persuades that many people.

I think the people who are upset about that were upset about it long ago.

And they're never going to be an Andy Beshear his corner.

And people have moved on from the pandemic and all that.

I just don't think that dog hunts very far.

Right.

Aren't the voters where they are by now?

Well, you would think, but because Trump is such an unusual personality and unpredictable factor, how Cameron and his advisers, including Mitch McConnell, decide Donald Trump could be used in this campaign.

And whatever decision Trump makes about that is the big, unpredictable factor here.

You know, we saw in the sixth District congressional race in 2018, Amy McGrath had a pretty good chance of beating Andy Barr.

And then Trump came for a rally and woke up his voters, and that was all she wrote.

Right.

But since that time, he's been indicted four times and facing, what is it, 91 charges, a little bit different than where we were in 2018.

And I said his numbers have gone up, but that's among Republicans.

And here this is a general election.

And Daniel Cameron needs the votes of people who are skeptical of who are opposed to Donald Trump.

And you don't hear him talking about Donald Trump very much.

Yes, he is talking a lot about public education, though.

He and the governor both, of course, trying to posit themselves.

And who is the most champion for public education.

And Cameron seems to be downplaying his support for school choice options.

That's smart.

Well, it's smart because taxpayer funding of private schools is not popular in the state.

In rural areas, they look at that and think, what's in it for us?

And the Kia, Kentucky Education Association has about as many Republicans in it as it does Democrats.

But that's not always know, right?

Yeah, they've they've still, I think, got to be in their bonnet about Matt Bevin.

And Beshear has tried to capitalize on that.

And unusually, we saw Cameron effectively apologizing for what the previous Republican governor did or said about teachers.

Yeah.

Education is always a big issue for people.

It's the biggest part of the state budget.

It should be a big issue.

People care about their kids education and it has gone down in the pandemic.

And if there is a point where Cameron might get some traction, it is that there was too much of a shut down and too big of an effect on children and their learning.

Yeah, and he's got that part of his education on point.

The learning loss and the tutoring and all of that.

But is that persuadable for public educators?

Do they look at that as something that persuadable for the teachers but for the voters?

It could.

Could be.

It could be.

And I am going to ask you about when we look at where Andy Beshear now is in terms of his favorables and comparing that to other maybe national figures like a Donald Trump.

When we look at down ballot, is it only is Andy Beshear only able to elect himself in this election because he avoids the Democratic identity?

You know, Donald Trump didn't avoid the Republican identity as the Republican nominee.

But here really is because this is now a plurality Republican state and registration and probably a majority Republican state in voter performance.

So it's not smart for Beshear to identify himself as a Democrat.

And the lack of doing that cuts off any coattails he might have for down ballot candidates.

And the fact that when we were in Fancy Farm, you saw those big signs.

It just said, Andy.

Yeah.

What other governor has been known by his first name since Happy Chandler?

Good point.

Well, thank you.

Al Cross, as always, good to have you.

We appreciate you.

Glad to be here.

Renee.

Corn dogs, animal shows and midway rides might be the things that come to mind when you think about the Kentucky State Fair.

But our Kelsey Starks tells us you might find something more important there.

Well, cancer isn't exactly what comes to mind when you think of the Kentucky State Fair.

But Pam Temple with the Kentucky Cancer Program is here and says maybe it should be.

In fact, a lot of people come to the fair and that's their annual screening.

It is.

We have many people that they say the whole reason they came to the fair was to have a skin cancer screening.

Or men come for prostate cancer screening.

I have them texting me, asking, when are you doing the screenings?

So they come.

Yeah, well, it's the place to be.

Okay, so you all offer a lot of different kinds of screenings.

What all is available we do on this coming Saturday?

We're doing prostate cancer screenings from 1030 to 530.

And the mobile mammography unit is there every day except Sunday from 10 to 5.

Doing mammograms or doing skin cancer screenings every day, either 2 to 3 shifts a day.

We're doing colon cancer education, lung cancer screening, education, and trying to help individuals connect to services.

So one of the things you might notice, if you go to the fair, you're going to see a giant colon.

People walk through there.

Why is it important to have those types of visuals?

And really, like you said, the biggest population is educating?

It is, yes.

That Colon brings people in.

We also have a toilet paper tower that people want to know why we have.

It starts the conversation.

Right.

And once we get them in, we take them on a tour through the colon and we let them know when they're having that colonoscopy, what they're looking for, that difference between the polyps and early stage of colon cancer versus the late stage of colon cancer and why it's important to have that screening and those individuals who are just heels dug in that they don't want a colonoscopy.

Then we talk to them about other screenings, like a color guard who does qualify for these screenings and do they have to register in advance or how can they get screened?

We want them just to come out and sign up there.

There's no pre-registration, no appointments.

It's usually pretty quick.

You fill out a little bit of paperwork and then we get you in to either draw a little bit of blood for the PSA, for the prostate, or to get in with the provider.

And it's quick.

Anybody for prostate, any men over 50, if they have a family history or African-American, we start about 45.

Colon cancer, it starts at 45.

Now, skin cancer, it can be anybody.

And if they're under 18, will they have to have a parent with them?

But anybody who's out the sun a lot.

That's what we want to see for those skin cancer screenings is screenings are so important.

Where can people find you there at the fair and then beyond?

We're in the south wing right before I call it the little flea market area.

So we're in the Health Horizons area and close to the south wing lobby.

B, it's it's a big area.

We've got lots going on there.

After that, they would have to contact the Kentucky Cancer program and we can get them connected to services.

It's wonderful.

All right.

Thank you so much.

And the Kentucky State Fair runs through August 27th at the fairgrounds in Louisville.

Thank you, Kelsey.

The Kentucky Cancer Program estimates they reach about 20,000 fairgoers every year and about a thousand get screened for cancer.

Hopefully, we'll have some cooler weather this weekend, letting you enjoy the many events happening around the commonwealth.

Here is our Toby Gibbs with more.

The 2023 Cosmo superhero run kicks off tomorrow morning in beer sales, along with one K and five K races.

There will be a festival with food, inflatables, face painting and more.

There's also a superhero costume contest, so make sure to dress as your favorite hero.

This super event is for a good cause.

Proceeds benefit CASA of Lexington, which provides advocates for abused and neglected children in central Kentucky.

The Family Enrichment Center is also raising money with a unique race tomorrow.

The mud happens.

One bad mud run starts at 8 a.m. at Fillmore Park in Alberton.

This three mile course will have you climbing, crawling and clambering over unique obstacles.

Getting down in the mud this weekend is a great way to have fun, cool off and raise money for a great nonprofit.

Make your way to Madisonville for the Star Party tomorrow night at Maa Park Arboretum.

Bring your own telescope or use the ones provided and check out some summer celestial bodies.

There'll be a guided sky presentation where you'll be viewing the moon, Saturn and other deep sky objects.

Also happening tomorrow, the Chickasaw Nation dancers will be at Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site for an educational program.

Learn about Chickasaw culture through demonstrations of stickball games, flute and drum music, regalia, storytelling and more.

The song and dance performances will be at 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. but the other demonstrations are offered all day starting on Thursday and running through next weekend.

Is the Manchester Music Fest.

Mosey on down to Manchester to hear some amazing music from artists like Sunday Best and Red Clay Strays.

There will also be food and drink from some of the most popular food trucks in the state.

So this is one event you won't want to miss.

Tomorrow is Katie's Super Saturday.

Come on down to our Lexington office for this free, fun family event.

We'll have activity booths, inflatables at great performances with some PBS favorites.

Super Saturday is from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.. We'd love to see you there.

And that's what's happening around the Commonwealth.

I'm Toby Gibbs.

Thank you, Toby Gibbs.

Our Monday's on main feature takes us to Scottsville, and it's really allowed me to dive headfirst into helping with the revitalization efforts just by being a tenant here on the square.

Meet a couple of young professionals who are lending their creative talents to the downtown area, encouraging its growth as the heart of the community.

That and this week in Kentucky history and more.

That's Monday on Kentucky edition, which we hope you'll join us for Monday at 630 Eastern, 530 Central, where we inform, Connect and Inspire.

There is all kinds of ways to keep in touch with us there on your screen.

You can follow us on Facebook.

X, formerly known as Twitter and Instagram to stay in the loop and send us a story idea, if you will.

But I do hope that you have a great weekend to come and I will see you right back here again Monday night.