Governor Bashir is back law enforcement during times when we needed it most.

They carry badges.

Well, they carry any weight with voters.

We're looking at taking the curriculum from being like a mile wide to looking at taking the curriculum and making it a mouthpiece.

Something new is on the way for students in Jefferson County.

And as soon as you come across that green bridge, the first thing you see is the marquee for the Mac Plus community theater troupe is leading the way on restoring an essential county landmark.

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, June the seventh.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Thank you for winding down your Wednesday with us.

Both candidates for governor are talking about crime and lining up support from the men and women who work to keep us safe.

Yesterday and Frankfort Governor Andy Beshear accepted the endorsement of a new group called Law Enforcement for Beshear, with backing from more than 35 law enforcement officials from across Kentucky, Beshear said he was proud to have the support from sheriffs as far as East as Pike County and as far as West as Fulton County.

Governor Beshear is back law enforcement during times when we needed him most.

And believe me, there have been times when that needed this man the most.

And he was there for me when I experienced the darkest day in my law enforcement career.

35 years.

Something that I would have never imagined had three officers gunned down in an ambush, killed along with a canine dog.

This man behind me was behind me that day, too.

In just no time, he was on the phone telling me that he had written offering their love, their support, and more importantly, their prayers for those involved, their families and our communities.

The work our law enforcement does is difficult, stressful, and takes its toll on their families and their loved ones.

And it matters what they do each and every day helps to keep our communities and our families safe.

We've gone through a lot in Kentucky, a pandemic historic tornadoes, record flooding, mass shootings.

And through it all, law enforcement has shown up on day one of those challenges to keep us safe.

As a retired Kentucky State Police post commander, I was proud to see him give the largest and much needed pay raise in the history of the Kentucky State Police.

This will help them recruit and retain quality personnel.

These are just a few examples, but I will say my nearly four decades in law enforcement.

I've never seen a governor care for and support law enforcement like Andy Beshear.

Yesterday, we showed you Republican Daniel Cameron's recent campaign appearance in Bowling Green, where he said he will be the law and order governor.

Public radio journalist Ryland Barton talks to us about this and other political developments of the week in just a few minutes.

There's a move to make Kentucky's mammoth Cave National Park even bigger.

U.S.

Senator Mitch McConnell and Kentucky Congressman Brett Guthrie have introduced a bill to expand the park in order to protect more wildlife and promote more tourism.

Guthrie serves the Second District, which includes Mammoth Cave.

If the bill passes, the park would add several cave passages lighter than usual rain.

This spring means two popular Kentucky Lakes will start the summer with lower than normal water levels, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The Army Corps of Engineers says as a result, Lake Cumberland and Dell Hollow Lake will have less surface area than usual.

But there should still be plenty of room for recreation.

Smoke from more than 400 wildfires burning in Canada has drifted into parts of Kentucky, making skies hazy and diminishing our air quality.

Our Christy Dutton spoke with Kentucky emergency management meteorologist Joe Sullivan about the impact it's having on our state and when we can expect the skies to clear.

We've had an interesting situation over the last couple of weeks.

We've actually received some smoke both from Western Canada fires and from eastern Canada fires.

And it's primarily because the flow in the upper atmosphere and there's been a large high pressure system over the central U.S.

So we're getting air flow going up through western Canada and then down through eastern Canada and coming down our way.

It's primarily been a visibility issue for most people, unless you have some health concerns.

So visibility across a good chunk of Kentucky over the last couple of days has been hindered.

You can sort of see it with the brownish skies.

Obviously, the smoke is brown as opposed to clouds.

Visibility is actually been reduced.

Covington at the Cincinnati airport down to two miles yesterday.

And in other places, it's typically been more like six miles.

But northern Kentucky has received it a little thicker than most areas.

With the rain that we're getting across parts of the state today, that does help a little bit in that it sort of washes out the air.

But after that comes through today, then we go back into a few more days of of dry weather.

And then over the weekend, we start to get more chances for some heavy rain.

And that's when things should start to clear out the most.

That smoke has prompted air quality alerts in parts of Kentucky, including Louisville.

The Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District says that smoke can affect your health.

The air quality is forecast to be unhealthy for sensitive groups when we reach that level.

Arming always to is to get the message out to those sensitive groups.

Of course, anyone else should be mindful of any symptoms that might pop up.

The symptoms that could be caused by this pollution are things like coughing, shortness of breath, palpitations, fatigue, things like that.

So if you're a person who isn't in one of those sensitive groups, it still may be smart to limit any intense outdoor activity that you might be planning on doing, but you are not as likely to be affected by these if the pollution stays at that unhealthy for sensitive groups level.

Now we do monitor the air in real time.

And so I believe with these smoke impacts, everyone should know what the air quality index is, which is the tool we use to communicate air quality.

And they should know where to access air quality conditions in real time.

We have a tool called Louisville Air Watch at the Air Pollution Control District, and the EPA has a tool called Air.

Now, should the air be above that, unhealthy for sensitive groups level and get into unhealthy or very unhealthy or hazardous, which does not generally happen here, then there are more steps that people should take, and especially those who are not in those sensitive groups would start to be affected.

But the forecast and the air quality alert is that we expect the air to be unhealthy for sensitive groups.

Matt Mudd says there are steps people can take to help during an air quality alert like using their car less, working from home if possible, and not using gas powered lawn equipment.

And Agnew's accreditor could foreclose on Appharvest 60 acre farm in Richmond.

The Richmond Register says Appharvest owes that creditor $66 million.

Appharvest runs a series of high tech indoor farms, growing tomatoes in Richmond and Morehead salad greens and Berea and strawberries and cucumbers and Somerset, Kentucky.

Addition did a story on the Moorhead operation.

You're seeing some of that video right now.

The company has 20 days to respond to the payment demand.

A spokesperson says it has complied with the terms of its loan.

You know, this week, almost 3000 Jefferson County teachers were trained on a new K through eight language arts curriculum.

The ESL curriculum is tier one, meaning that all elementary and middle schoolers in Jefferson County will be learning the same core curriculum, first in Jefferson County for many years.

Moore And tonight's Education Matters segment.

JCP teachers are taking part in a K through eight ELA training districtwide to ensure that we are ready for literacy going into next year and that we have a Tier one our common curriculum as we approach 2324.

ELA is English language arts and that is most commonly people would refer to that as your phonics, phonemic awareness, your comprehend and your reading vocabulary and fluency.

We're looking at taking the curriculum from being like a mile wide to looking at taking the curriculum and making it about the so that all students have access to authentic curriculum that students struggle with, which is what we want them to do.

They call it grappling in L. We've always called it the productive struggle, but I think as they do that, it's really going to help students to deepen their understanding of things where they're not just at a surface level, but now they're evaluating them.

Before we had over 150 different curricula or different programs that were being used, we never had a common language or consistent expectations across all grade levels.

So for the first time, we're able to speak a common language, have a common focus on literacy, address some of those foundational skill gaps that we've seen for so many years, but never had the chance to build momentum to address.

And you'll find teachers here for the first time get to collaborate across schools, not just in their school teams, which is really exciting.

When we look at the council, great city Schools, which were a part of, we also noticed that most of them were using a Tier one or core curriculum.

So we are now much more on pace with other districts our size to address those Tier one supports, which means all students are getting a Common Core curriculum at ELA.

We are such a huge district and we're very transient too.

So students go from one school to another, so a child might go from high school to Joshua School and soon it might get lost.

But now with this new curriculum, if a student goes from my school or the Joshua School or any school in the district, students are going to have that common language and they're going to be able to understand what they're doing.

And that is just monumental for our district.

So we've also encouraged subs to get trained.

We're going to have another sub day for them to ensure that they're able to meet the needs of our kids.

We're also going to have additional virtual training for any new teachers that are hired.

So the goal is everyone will have access to high quality instructional resources to support literacy.

I felt like I was tiptoeing when I came in, but today I kind of feel like I put the whole beat in the water and we're ready to go for day one.

Jefferson County teachers went through a two day intensive training to learn the curriculum this week, but many schools will be doing additional training leading up to the start of school in the fall.

For our midweek check in of some major news developments this week so far with our good friend Ryland Barton, who's managing editor of Kentucky Public Radio.

Good to see you, Rylan.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

So let's start with some campaign trail news and developments in the governor's race on the 30th birthday or what would have been the 30th birthday of Breonna Taylor.

There is a group connected to her that is coming out against Daniel Cameron and they say they're going to be really active.

The front line speaker of this group was Tamika Palmer, Breonna Taylor's mother, who said that Daniel Cameron decided that we didn't matter in making his decision to not charge any officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor in 2020 with any with any charges.

Of course, one officer was charged with wanton endangerment, but that was four bullets that ended up in a neighbor's apartment.

So there's this big push to to campaign of this group to campaign against Daniel Cameron in this effort.

It is also campaigning for Andy Beshear.

But the message here was really against Daniel Cameron.

They said they're going to set up phone banks and in Louisville and in Lexington, there's going to be campaign efforts all the way up until the general election.

And this is just also just adding, you know, a lot of the energy that's going on right now for this governor's election, which is the races just started so much earlier than a normal than a normal election year.

Yeah, I mean, five months until the general election and we've already had campaign stops in several different cities and ads are already up.

And that's a question for you, Raelyn.

I mean, could this actually work to Daniel Cameron's benefit, though, in some way?

I mean, it's there's kind of two sides of the political coin here, right?

Are you trying to are you trying to go and convince people against voting for Daniel Cameron or are you trying to convince people to come out and vote for Andy Beshear?

And I mean, I think that there there is a lot of work to be done for Democrats if they're if they're hoping to reelect Andy Beshear, too, to really run up the board in places like Lexington and Louisville.

And I think that this goes to that effort.

And also, you know, harkening back to 2020, this era in which so many people became involved in politics and especially local politics, all of a sudden, people becoming familiar with their governor, attorney general, their local police chiefs.

This is a continuation of that of trying to get those people who are involved politically back then to get involved again in this in this race in an odd year election when a lot of people don't normally show up to vote.

Yeah, and for Daniel Cameron, who says and claims to be the law and order, the candidate and the law enforcement candidate to it could work for him.

And that leads us to our next topic about what law enforcement, perhaps Cameron doesn't have a complete lockdown on because Andy Beshear has been able to tout that he's gotten more than 35 law enforcement officials to endorse him this week.

And there is an effort formally announced law enforcement for Beshear that was announced this this week.

Yes, that's right.

So there's 35 officials from across the state.

Beshear announced have come out and endorsed him.

Granted, Daniel Cameron's already announced.

I don't I don't want to put a number to it, but a whole lot of law enforcement endorsements during his primary election as well.

I imagine we'll be hearing more later in the campaign season.

The state Fraternal Order of Police, the police, state police union has not formally endorsed anybody yet.

They say they'll do that after a vote in August.

But, you know, this is going to be this this is really going to be one of the central arguments here going into the into the November election is who has the kind of public safety vote here?

You know, Democrats have been quick to point out that Daniel Cameron is the state's chief law enforcement officer right now.

And he's been really arguing that, you know, under Andy Beshear as governor, the state's crime rates have risen, which they have ever so slightly.

But Kentucky's really actually it's crime rates are far lower than surrounding states and in the nation right now.

So where this argument is going to be sussed out a lot more as the campaign goes on and the development in the Daniel Cameron campaign, a very high ranking official within the U.S. Senate minority leaders office, Mitch McConnell, someone who's been around for a very long time, the chief of staff to McConnell, is now going to be working in the Daniel Cameron campaign.

So tell us about this.

That's right.

Terry Carmack, who's been a long time staffer for Mitch McConnell and also his chief of staff right now, is taking a break from Washington and will be managing his campaign.

Cameron's campaign Republicans have said this is an this is an all hands on deck moment.

You know, this is an election that they really they want to win.

They think they can win.

Kentucky is an increasingly Republican state.

Terry Carmack, somebody who knows Kentucky very well and has worked on campaigns previously.

So they're hoping to get some of that institutional knowledge and and lend a hand to Cameron's campaign as he tries to unseat Beshear.

Yeah.

I mean, is that peculiar in any way that someone with Washington connections who works for a current federal official would step down to work in this capacity?

Or does that show the importance of the race or the necessity of Cameron to have someone like this helping him directly?

I think it does show the importance of it, you know, and again, it's just that this you know, I think we all know that.

BESHEAR everybody seen the approval ratings this year, high approval ratings.

And Cameron, I think Republicans will even admit this is going to be a tough and tight election.

I mean, they've been releasing polls celebrating that they are tied with Beshear in this race and in a place that has just become so overwhelmingly Republican.

So, yes, this is another signal there that this is very competitive.

And I think that, you know, they're hoping it could help.

But also, I think what it also does is it solidifies a little bit of of Cameron within McConnell world.

There has been a little bit of a distancing from some of the candidates from Mitch McConnell, Republicans from Mitch McConnell lately.

And this really he's in the he's now becomes one of the few candidates across the country who is both reaching into McConnell world and reaching into the Trump world and celebrating that that endorsement from Donald Trump from last year.

So, yeah, Cameron's in a pretty unique place as a Republican right now.

Yeah.

Well, Ryland Barton's always good to talk to you and get your perspective.

We appreciate it.

Take good care.

Good to see you, Renee.

PBS World's Greatest Cemeteries has named Louisville's Cave Hill Cemetery as one of the best on the planet.

Our Chip Polston sat down with the program's host and producer to find out how the location received the honor.

Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville is the final resting place of notable Kentuckians from Muhammad Ali to Colonel Sanders.

The host of World's Greatest cemeteries, Roberto Mighty, gave Cave Hill this designation as one of the world's greatest and is in town tonight for a screening of the episode he shot at the facility.

Roberto, thanks for being with us.

Thank you, Chip.

Great to be here.

How did Cave Hill land on your radar?

Why Cave Hill Cemetery?

First of all, Chip, the show gets fan mail from all over the United States and, in fact, from other countries.

And when people write in to say how much they like X episode, they pretty much always say, oh, and by the way, have you checked out such and such?

And a number of people from around the country have mentioned Cave Hill for the past two years.

And so that was really your first introduction?

That was my first introduction.

I had not known about Cave Hill, really.

And we took off from there, started doing some research.

We do quite a lot of research for each place and cave feel turns out to be to have this national historic landmark designation.

It's physically beautiful.

It's extremely well cared for.

And look at all the history folks have done here in Louisville.

So it held up to your expectations.

It sure did.

Wow.

So you've been to cemeteries, literally, Roberto.

All across the globe.

How did Cave Hill stack up?

How does it compare to some of the other places you've been?

Some of the things we look for, Chip, include number one, being physically beautiful, being in fact, above gorgeous.

And Cave Hill is gorgeous with its horticulture, with its arboreal culture.

You know, the types of trees that are here and with its general general landscape and the fact that it's also a place for migratory birds.

So all these things make it beautiful.

Plus the statuary and monuments.

So all those things, that's number one.

Number two, of course, is the history.

I have a degree in history.

I'm a history lover and I want to communicate that fun and passion of history to our whole audience.

And Capsule has got a lot of history.

Well, we were really proud to air the episode on on Katie, and it looked really great as I was doing some homework on you.

I read a quote from you that I thought was fascinating, and it was that for every grave there's a story.

Is that really the tent pole of your program, Chip?

That is.

You nailed it.

That is, if you point me to any grave anywhere in the world of any age, and there's going to be a story of that person.

But frankly, some people are more noteworthy than others.

And here at Cave Hills, you've got some incredibly noteworthy folks.

So from your time at Cave Hill, if you're over in Europe working on something and somebody says, Hey, I saw you in Cave Hill, what's the story you tell them about that cemetery?

What was the thing that you walked away with that was really your big impression there?

I'm going to say it wasn't some big historical thing.

My biggest impression was that people in Louisville are very, very friendly.

I mentioned to you off camera that we worked with the wonderful people at Cave Hill and they run a very, very tight ship, and that's a good thing.

And the staff was just incredibly welcoming and friendly from my hotel to the guy that drove me from the airport and was got a nice smile on their face.

It makes a big difference in how we feel as documentary filmmakers when we walk into a town.

That's one thing.

The next thing was just the physical rolling landscape.

That's a beautiful thing to look for.

It delights the human eye.

And finally, of course, where the people are dedicated to the history of this region, of the country, it's wonderful.

So we'll be airing the last episode of season two here on on TV very shortly.

The big question, is there going to be a season three that folks will be able to watch on and off?

So what are some of the places that are on your radar?

I'm happy to say here for the first time on TV, that world's greatest cemetery, season three is going to happen.

And some of the places include in many ways, the father of all of these ornate cemeteries from the 19th century that is parallel share cemetery in Paris, France, which is where as you know, Jim Morris.

That's right.

Is interred among many other notable world class figures.

Also a place in Scotland called Glasnevin Cemetery, probably in Dublin, Glasnevin.

And then we have other cemeteries in other parts of the world.

Well, you're a remarkable filmmaker.

You did a fantastic job on the Cave Hill story.

It is so proud to be able to show the world's greatest cemeteries.

And we'll look forward to season three.

Thank you so much.

Thank you again, Roberto Mighty, host and producer of World's Greatest Cemeteries.

Renay, back to you.

Oh, great interview, Chip.

You can catch the final season two episode of World's Greatest Cemeteries tomorrow on K2.

And you can watch both seasons of the show any time via the PBS passport streaming service.

When it first opened in 1939, the Mac Theater was a beloved Earvin destination for young and old alike.

Since closing its doors in 1993, the building had fallen into a state of disrepair.

But a local theater troupe known as the River City Players, is working to bring the beloved theater back to life.

More on our weekly arts and culture segment, Tapestry.

The Mac Theater is one of those iconic structures that we have in our community.

Irvin is known for its green bridge across the Kentucky River that lights out right here on Main Street in downtown.

And as soon as you come across that green bridge, the first thing you see is the marquee for the Mac.

We introduce ourselves to to the public in July of 2013.

And as I time envisioning purchasing and repairing and renovating the Mac for a live performance primarily for us, for for theater.

And but also we realize that music is such a huge part of our community and actually the surrounding area.

We definitely wanted to look at bringing live music performance here to the community economically.

We very much want to see the Mac become a grounding for our Main Street corridor and of course, tourism.

We basically put our heads together, came up with the initial plan and here we are these years later.

I like to say that phase one was make it clean and phase two is make it safe.

So right now we're in the make it safe.

Next will be make it functional and after that, make it pretty.

We have to celebrate how amazing the local folks in and around this county have been to see this project to where we are now.

They have given and given and given some more, even until it hurts, whether that be straight up donations or spending money on a hot dog fundraiser or what have you, they have they have stepped up to the plate time and time again to make it happen.

We're doing this because it's home and we want home to be the very best that it can be.

We don't want people in our community to have to drive to Richmond.

We don't want them to have to drive to Lexington.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But we want them to be able to be home, to have entertainment, to support each other, to have a place for their children, to be home and involved with, with with culture.

And and and we have a rich history here in this county that we can share through different areas and performance here within it, within the theater.

It's just part of who we are.

So to be able to be part of the effort to restore something that we all know and we love so much and even see it become more than it was, that the way we remember is just it's important.

Well, the Mac is about to be back.

The River City players hope to have renovations on the lobby of the Mac completed this fall, where it will be used as a community center.

The Kentucky Maisonette is expanding, officially cutting the ribbon on a new station.

The maisonette helps people like the Weather Service forecast the weather better issue, better warnings.

It's better for the schools and education.

Better for the farmer agriculture.

We'll take you to the farm that provided land for the new side and explain how to benefit the Lake Cumberland region.

That's tomorrow night on Kentucky edition, which you know is at 630 Eastern, 530 Central, where we inform, connect and Inspire.

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

And tomorrow night, I will see you at the same time, same station.

Take good care.