Last year, the Kentucky State Senate passed a bill requiring the education commissioner to receive Senate confirmation after being selected by the State Board of Education earlier this month.

Senators confirmed Robbie Fletcher, a superintendent from eastern Kentucky, with an almost unanimous stamp of approval.

And now he's talking about his education plan for Kentucky.

Our Clayton Dalton has that in tonight's Education Matters segment.

Kentucky's new education commissioner shared a recurring theme when discussing his approach to education.

I'm going to love all students.

And although he's preparing to assume the role of the state education chief, he says moving further away from the classroom is difficult.

Leaving the classroom was the toughest decision I ever made because you had that one on one day to day opportunity to make a difference in a child's life.

But each step that you take away from the classroom, you have an opportunity to make decisions that will impact all students.

If you become a principal, you really impact that building as you become a superintendent.

Of course, the district now as commissioner, our goal will be to make sure we make a positive impact on every child's life.

Fletcher takes the reins from Jason Glass, Kentucky's previous education commissioner.

Glass in the legislature sparred over LGBTQ issues and whether teachers should have to respect a student's preferred pronouns.

I do.

I respect that.

Whether I agree with it or not, that's irrelevant.

But I try to make sure the student feels comfortable in my classroom.

Now I'm going to love them regardless of what pronoun that they use.

So to me the pronoun is not nearly as important as am I showing that student respect and love.

And he says he's confident even when they disagree, that he can work with Republican supermajorities in both chambers.

We may disagree.

Ten, 15% of the time, but we're probably going to agree 80 to 90% of the time.

So having those open conversations, those open relationships, makes it a lot better to be able to have those conversations.

He says he's not afraid to ask for more resources and more money for Kentucky teachers and students.

You'll see me a lot of times in the next two or three or four years, maybe beyond advocating for resources.

But I want to make it very clear I'm very thankful for the investment that our legislators made already in our education system because it is an excellent education budget.

We hope that we can continue to do better.

And I look forward to that partnership.

So the partnership with the state legislature will be key in making sure all this happens.

As Fletcher transitions from a small school district in eastern Kentucky to managing education on a statewide level.

He'll have to work with Jefferson County Public Schools and address problems facing the state's largest school district, which educates almost 100,000 kids.

He says his job is to support, not control.

We are an organization that assists districts.

So my approach will be to work with sufficient pollio off the bat to say, okay, these are the things that are coming down the pike.

How can we assist you as an agency to make sure, one, that maybe you have the right support as far as data numbers?

And again, they have a lot of great, great things going on JCP also.

But as an organization, how can we help JCP to better make those decisions, but also to how do we make sure that we provide those same data to JCP that we do to the state legislature?

And then for our main role will be how do we assist to make things better for jobs, Not only jobs, but all students.

Fletcher also shared his feelings on universal pre-K, a priority for Democratic Governor Andy Beshear.

I think how you can tell if we're if someone's really invested in something is go back to look at what they did in their own district.

So now for about four years, give or take, we've had universal pre-K in Lawrence County, and that would be a priority as something to talk to the legislature about, also to.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Clayton Dalton.

Thank you, clayton.

Fletcher officially starts as education chief on July the first.