House Education Committee members also greenlit a number of bills, including one to improve Kentucky's youngest students math skills as soon as they enter kindergarten.

If students do not have those foundational skills of reading in math, literacy and numeracy, they are going to struggle all through school.

They're going to have difficulty getting in college and succeeding.

They're going to have difficulty filing, finding jobs that will support them in life.

Less than half of Kentucky's elementary students met state math standards in their last assessment.

Jefferson County students scored worse than the rest of the state, but Kentucky's students fare about as well as most states, signaling that math comprehension is a national issue.

House Bill 162 requires math intervention for kindergarten through third graders that are falling behind.

First, they would be given the universal screener to determine if they are truly at risk.

Then the diagnostic would be given to determine which specific skills would be honed in on in that intervention support.

And then local districts would have the choice.

There are options for that.

Those students could be pulled out during the course of the school day, and they have supports that could be given in before or after school, high intensity tutoring and vacation academy.

So there are different options for what that intervention could look like.

Committee members approved the bill unanimously, but say this will be no easy task.

It brings back just one more things that were one more thing we're asking our teachers to do, and they're not going to complain.

Not much anyway, because that's their nature.

They will do it.

But again, we're asking our teachers to do more and more, but yet we're not giving them more and more pay.

So that bothers me too.

I am so supportive of this initiative.

I'm I think, you know, as members of this committee, we have to see everything through the lens of the teacher shortage.

How many of our school districts do you think are equipped to implement this?

Within the elementary space, there is certainly not necessarily increased capacity, but in terms of certifications, they are broader.

So it would allow for more staffing at the elementary space.

Education advocates support this bill.

Math is a critically important input as we think about any of the future economic activity in our state.

If we just even think about health care pipelines, we are not going to secure the health care providers of the future in our state with Kentucky folks, if we don't improve our outcomes in mathematics.

And speaking of Kentucky's future doctors, the House Education Committee also greenlit Eastern Kentucky to create a school of osteopathic medicine.

With a requirements program.

We'll be to push those physicians out to those rural, underserved communities.

The committee also signed off on bills that would speed up investigations of teacher misconduct and cut red tape for school building projects for Kentucky.

Edition of June Lefler.