music >> You know, these are our friends.

They're our neighbors, and they're losing their jobs.

So we're here to help.

>> How the city of Lexington is stepping up to support laid off workers.

[MUSIC] >> So saw cutting Jackhammering removal of those concrete structures should be wrapping up by the beginning of next week.

>> Demolition on a Louisville stretch of I-65 paves the way for rebuilding.

But is the work on schedule?

[MUSIC] >> Literacy matters.

>> And how a conference is empowering teachers in the classroom.

[MUSIC] >> Production of Kentucky edition is made possible in part by the KET Millennium Fund.

[MUSIC] >> Good evening and welcome to Kentucky Edition for this Wednesday, June the 10th.

I'm Renee Shaw, and we thank you for winding down your Wednesday with us.

What does the future hold for Demetrius Liggins, the superintendent of Fayette County Public Schools?

Well, yesterday there were media reports that Liggins turned in his resignation, but he denies it.

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Fayette County Board of Education announced last night that it received a resignation notice from Liggins.

But then Liggins put out a statement saying he was still superintendent, and he only asked for the board to engage in discussions about potential separation agreement.

Liggins has been the target of criticism over the school system's budget.

The district faces a budget deficit, prompting a proposal last year to raise the occupational tax.

But that plan was scrapped after widespread criticism.

The district laid off some employees and eliminated positions this year to deal with the money shortfall.

A special Board of Education meeting is set for tonight at 730 eastern time, and the agenda includes a closed session to discuss the resignation notice.

We'll have more on Kentucky Edition tomorrow night.

Fayette County Public Schools is eliminating 120 district level positions as it continues to work through almost two decades of financial mismanagement.

The cuts take effect on July 1st, but the city of Lexington is stepping in and hosting a virtual job fair to help FCPs employees who are losing their jobs.

>> When we first heard about the layoffs in Fayette County Public Schools, I said to several members of my team, I said, we need to do something.

And one of the things we're very good at is our job workforce center work, Lexington.

And that's how all this got started, is we looked for how the city can help these folks.

You know, these are our friends, they're our neighbors and they're losing their jobs.

So we're here to help our work.

Lex folks decided Kentucky Career Center would be a perfect partner because we do this on a regular basis.

So as mayor, what this means for me is these folks who want to work and can work will be able to find jobs through the job.

>> Fair work.

Lexington is an initiative of the city of Lexington.

Our goal is to help individuals find employment.

We've partnered with the Kentucky Career Center Bluegrass on multiple different events and projects and that sort of thing.

And so it was just a natural partnership to reach out to them when this happened.

And so we started with a rapid response with them, which is where you go in and you share with multiple partners about all the different services that are available to the folks that are getting laid off.

And through conversations.

We just decided that it would be a good idea with this amount of people that were being laid off to have just an individual job fair just for them.

>> This one in particular is a virtual job fairs through Premier Virtual.

So it's a virtual job fair platform that we utilize and that we offer to businesses.

And essentially the job seeker is creating a profile and then the companies are doing the same.

They're building their booth, and what happens is the job seeker can get in there and visit those different booths of employers that are part of the, that are part of the virtual job fair.

And then the job, the employers can also access the resumes and things like that.

And so what they do is they talk to each other through messages.

Or if things intensifies, they're able to do a video to video call and talk to each other.

>> We thought with it being virtual, it would give the opportunity from employers outside of Lexington as well as in Lexington.

And then it would also give the opportunity for individuals to be able to attend.

Maybe that wouldn't be able to attend otherwise.

And then it just makes it easier all the way around for individuals to be able to attend employers as well.

>> The job fair started out specifically for the Fayette County Public School employees that were being affected by the layoffs, but it is also opened up to any general public who wants to participate in the job fair.

Well, currently we have about a about 20 employers that are participating as of today, employers can register up to the day of the day of the event, so it ranges anywhere between education to manufacturing, health care.

So there's there's a variety of different positions that they can apply for.

So there is a pretty good amount of employers that will be participating in this event.

>> I think it's imperative for us when we see a need, that one of our partners in the community has, that we try to help them.

You know, we don't have all the perfect answers for everything that comes up there, but we can do this part.

>> The virtual job fair is next Wednesday, June the 17th from 10 a.m.

to 2 p.m.

job seekers can register on the Kentucky Career Center website.

The fair is open to the general public now.

More news concerning Lexington.

The city is the latest in Kentucky to hit pause on data centers.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports.

The Urban County Council voted unanimously last night to put a moratorium on reviewing or approving plans related to data center projects.

The moratorium is short term.

It runs through October.

Lexington Mayor Linda Gordon supports the move and a statement.

She said data centers, quote, do not produce many jobs and have the potential to increase utility costs on local residents, as well as other concerns.

I support very tight controls, end quote.

The move comes just days after the community learned that a Texas based data center company bought two buildings on Lexmark's property.

Mayor Gordon says the project will not receive public incentives from the city.

A bill to regulate data centers was introduced during the Kentucky General Assembly session that just ended in April, but it failed to make it out of committee.

It's day ten of the two month I-65 construction project in Louisville.

If you've driven there, you know about it.

So far, all is on schedule.

Despite heavy rain this week, the highway is being cut open and three supporting bridges are almost completely torn down.

Transportation officials say demolition is in full steam, and actual rebuilding is planned for next week.

>> So so far, we've made tremendous progress on removal of structure on the three bridges.

Of course, today we're here at the Kentucky Brook location.

So saw cutting Jackhammering removal of those concrete structures should be wrapping up by the beginning of next week.

Then it should be more called traditional construction methods.

You're going to have trucks bringing in rock, concrete trucks, cranes, moving setting and beams and so forth.

But otherwise the large equipment to make all the noise should be waning at that point.

>> Yay!

Ramps at one exit should be totally rebuilt and ready for traffic by July 1st.

That's the halfway point of this construction project that has closed five miles of the interstate highway.

One headache for the city is the so-called can opener.

That's a train overpass where freight trucks that cannot clear the bridge are getting stuck and badly damaged.

Louisville can.

Opener.live reports this has happened more than a dozen times since construction began.

However, this does happen less frequently year round in Louisville.

The state transportation cabinet has placed dozens of signs to warn truckers of what's ahead of them, and state Transportation engineer Matt Bullock said, quote, the information is out there.

I don't know what more we can do.

Yesterday, the U.S.

House narrowly passed a $70 billion bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or Ice, for the remainder of President Donald Trump's term.

The House vote was 214 to 12, with all Democrats and the House's one independent voting no.

The U.S.

Senate has already passed the bill.

All of Kentucky's Republican House members voted yes.

Congressman Andy Barr of the sixth Congressional District, the Republican nominee for the U.S.

Senate, praised the bill and denounced Democrats for opposing it.

And Ice as a whole.

He said, quote, for six months out of the last year, congressional Democrats kept DHS shut down.

They want to abolish Ice and border security and open the border, just like they did under Joe Biden's failed presidency.

I will not let that happen.

I'm proud to stand with CBP and all of our Patriots serving at the DHS to secure our border and keep America safe, end quote.

Before yesterday's House vote, Kentucky's third district congressman, Democrat Lauren Morgan McGarvey of Louisville, said that the $70 billion was an outrageous amount of money that could be better spent on other things.

>> Mr.

speaker, we got to stop saying this is about $70 billion for Ice.

This is about $240 billion for Ice.

Republicans gave Ice $170 billion last July.

And in less than one year they want to give them $70 billion more.

That's more for Ice this year than Russia is spending on its military.

And they're currently at war $240 billion for honest to God stormtroopers masked armed agents kidnaping people off the street, murdering U.S.

citizens, separating families and detaining children.

We shouldn't give them another dollar.

We cannot give them another $70 billion.

But if you're so willing to spend it, imagine the good we could do with that kind of money.

We could make people's lives better.

A free school breakfast and lunch for every kid in America, free child care for every American family.

With a kid under five, we could bring back the health care tax credits that Republicans killed because they were too expensive for three more years.

But since feeding kids and fixing health care apparently aren't your thing, maybe we can agree on veterans.

You guys say you care about our veterans.

Then let's do something about it for $70 billion.

We could end veteran homelessness forever probably seven times over.

In fact I offered an amendment to this bill that does just that.

And actually it was $70 billion.

We could end homelessness in America.

>> President Trump signed the $70 billion spending bill this morning.

>> I'm Laura Rogers with Don Wilkins executive editor of the Owensboro Messenger Enquirer.

And Dawn, like so many communities across the Commonwealth, the data center discussion is happening there in Owensboro, Davis County.

Tell us more about that.

>> So back in early May, one of our reporters was at a it was a budget meeting with the city.

And the mayor just throws out about this proposed data center.

It was the first mention of a data center.

And of course, you know, that caught our reporters attention.

And when we started asking questions about it, you know, the mayor said that they were the city was just exploring it.

And then when we put that story out there, there was tons of backlash from the community.

And then, of course, the city started to kind of backtrack a little bit.

And there was some differences between what our city manager was saying and the mayor was saying.

And then to come to find out, you are our public utility here has its land option to accompany a part of his portfolio, which that didn't come out until after after we pushed out 1 or 2 stories about this.

So there was some transparency issues going on because nobody volunteered that information until it came out later as well.

Of course, they say that that's not a data center, that that land is option for.

It's more for a power plant.

And as well, what is that power plant going to power?

Nobody wants to answer that question.

Or they'll say, I don't know what that is.

It's about 100 acres you're talking about there.

And then also there's some private adjoining land that's actually owned by a state senator, Gary Boswell.

And so he's actually signed a non-disclosure agreement with that land.

So there's a lot of still unanswered questions about that, that nobody seems to want to talk about it.

And they've all sort of run for the hills, I guess, whenever because we they had large crowds showing up at their city board meetings.

And, and there's a lot of, you know, public concern here now about just the mention of a data center.

>> So still a lot of questions.

It sounds like there.

Are you all anticipating any upcoming meetings with your city Council with further discussion on the project.

>> The Davis County Fiscal Court, they actually passed a moratorium against data centers.

Now, that's not to say the city couldn't come back and override that they could, but that is a kind of a block there that where the city would have to come in and put in their own ordinance and say, we're going to allow this.

If a company got serious, you know, who knows?

But the mayor has gone on record to say now that while he's in office, there will be no data centers here in Davis County, or at least within the city limits.

>> Let's get into local politics there, because we're still just a few weeks out from the May primary.

But what's interesting is you say the Democratic Party is fielding some candidates and some of your local races there were in the past, the Republicans have run unopposed.

>> Yeah.

In the past election cycles, our Republican candidates, all their incumbents have gone unopposed.

But this time around, the judge executive race in particular, Charlie Castle and the incumbent, the Republican incumbent will be facing Rod Kegel, the Democrat.

He is a local retired farmer here.

Rod is well known in the community as a farmer, longtime tobacco farmer.

The Republican primary was pretty contentious between the two Republican candidates, but the Democrats for a while have not yielded any candidates.

But this year they have.

We also have Democratic candidates in the state Senate race.

Vicky Quesenberry, the Democratic challenger who has challenged Gary Boswell, the Republican in the.

The House.

We have challenger Randall and Randolph, the Democrats.

She was president of the local NAACP chapter for a long time, and she's facing DJ Johnson, the Republican incumbent.

And then you have Lori Campbell, who is challenging Suzanne Miles, who has been the state representative here in the seventh district since 2014.

And I can't remember the last time she's been challenged.

So those are the three really biggest races.

You know, that we have our four biggest races that we have that are actually being challenged, you know, here in Davis County anyway.

>> So we will see how that all shakes out in November.

About five months to go.

County campaign.

>> Used to be a Democratic stronghold, but in recent years it has gone over to the Republicans.

And so they have the numbers right now, but it's pretty still neck and neck.

But there was a time there whenever you would have never have thought that that that would have ever happened.

But but here in recent years that that has changed as far as voter registry here in Davis County.

>> And let's talk about affordable housing.

We know this is another issue.

And a lot of our communities, people have a hard time finding an affordable place to live.

And there's a big project that's breaking ground there in Owensboro, Davis County, to help get some stable housing for some families.

>> Groups called the Greater Owensboro Housing Collaborative.

You have the city involved health, our hospital system, a lot of other local agencies collaborating together on this because we have a lot of affordable housing issue.

And Jeremy Stephens, who's with Audubon Area, he was the former director of habitat here.

And so he is very familiar with affordable housing.

And so Audubon Area is another partner in this.

And he's part of that discussion as well.

And so habitat for humanity is part of the building of this.

And so that's going to be saving money and building these houses a lot cheaper than what you would otherwise.

The hospital, Owensboro Health has donated $835,000 in land, essentially for this project.

They're going to be building them kind of over time, but they'll go up, you know, pretty fast, you know, because they get a lot of volunteers habitat does.

And of course, the homeowners themselves pitch in.

>> And then let's talk bluegrass music.

The Romp Music Festival is coming up here toward the end of June.

And we know you all are the heart of bluegrass there in Owensboro and Western Kentucky.

Are you anticipating some really big crowds for this festival?

>> Yeah.

I mean, you're talking usually upwards of 20,000 people or more.

You know, this is June 24th through the 27th.

And it, you know, you'll start seeing people from other states start pouring in here Tuesday or Wednesday of that week.

The main festival starts on on Thursday and runs through Saturday.

You got some heavy hitters here on the lineup.

You've got Marty Stuart, Ricky Skaggs, Dan Tyminski band.

Another band called I'm With her is a headliner, Punch Brothers.

So a lot of heavy hitters.

The Smithsonian gave grants as part of the 250th anniversary of America.

And so that has allowed them to bring in even more bands.

>> So we know that's going to be a great time in Owensboro here the last weekend of June.

It's great to see you.

Don Wilkins, executive editor of the Owensboro Messenger Enquirer.

Thank you so much for your time.

>> Thank you Laura.

>> And Matt Festival is going to be fantastic.

Now, speaking of people coming in from across the state and across the nation and other parts of the world that flock to Kentucky just last year, and they spent some serious cash.

Governor Andy Beshear and state tourism leaders visited the Ashbrook Hotel in Frankfort this afternoon, and while he was there, the governor made this announcement.

>> I'm excited to announce that 2025 is officially our best year ever for Kentucky tourism.

Congratulations.

[APPLAUSE] That now means we have broken our record for tourism four straight years in a row.

That's right.

Four years ago.

Yeah.

[APPLAUSE] Four straight years ago, we were making this announcement thinking, how can we top it?

And then we did.

And then we did again.

And then we are here again today.

That means all these tourism professionals have put in effort, have gone above and beyond, have continued to be creative and added on to experiences.

You all are amazing.

Let me tell you one more time.

Thank you and congratulations.

>> So here are the numbers to brag about.

Governor Beshear says tourism generated $14.6 billion in economic activity last year.

He says that means 97,000 jobs.

More than 81 million people traveled to Kentucky in 2025.

That's up more than million from 2024.

And they spent $10.4 billion at hotels, restaurants, gas stations, stores and other businesses.

[MUSIC] Shortly after Kentucky schools closed for summer break, teachers began preparing for the next school year.

The Read to Succeed conference drew about 1600 educators from across the state.

The event, hosted by the Kentucky Department of Education, is focused on improving student literacy and empowering teachers.

More about this in tonight's Education Matters segment.

[MUSIC] >> Literacy matters.

You know, we know that the more and the better that a student can read, the better outcomes that they are going to have in life.

The it's really an economic issue, right?

The sooner that they can enter the workforce, the more that they can contribute as productive citizens.

The Race to Succeed Summer conference.

>> Really come about with the funding from Read to Succeed Bill that was passed in 2022.

And the purpose of that is to really build educators and administrators knowledge around the science of reading literacy best practices, how to implement high quality instructional resources, and all things evidence based literacy.

What it boils down to is that there is a process in which kids need to learn to read.

It doesn't happen from listening.

You know, for a long time, I think people thought that learning to read was very much like learning to talk, and we learned to talk.

Research tells us by listening to others talk, that's not how our brain works when it comes to learning to read.

We have to be able to decode words and sound them out in order to understand them.

So a complicated process, but there is a way, and there's a right way to teach kids to read.

And Kentucky educators and administrators are really leaning into that and learning that process.

And we're seeing results from that.

One of my favorite sessions that we do are called voices from the field, and that is where district administrators, leaders, principals, teachers come in and they talk about their experience in a variety of things.

Maybe that is implementing a new high quality instructional resource.

Maybe that is developing systems and structures that allow for educators to implement resources and best practices in literacy.

But they really talk about their journeys as a district.

And other districts love to hear from each other.

And, you know, they face the same challenges.

They walk the same walk.

So getting that firsthand perspective from other districts, I think really helps.

>> As a post-secondary person at Murray State, it gives me the opportunity to plug in to what the schools are doing.

So I teach literacy courses at Murray State.

So to be able to hear what's going on in the field, to ask teachers what what are the questions that that you have about what we're doing to prepare?

How can we do better?

How can we help facilitate literacy across Kentucky?

I think everybody working on the same page is the way that we can really move the needle on literacy in our state.

>> We offer a ton of resources, a ton of practical strategies, and just overall knowledge about this whole science of reading movement that's happening that they can go back and, and put into implement into their classroom immediately.

And that is what I'm hearing teachers come out and say, I thought that's the way that that was supposed to be.

And, and they're just kind of backed up in that information and recharged.

It's summertime for teachers.

And we still have 1600 here, you know, wanting to learn.

>> I really love that there's so many teachers here.

It makes you feel just so excited for the future of our state.

And it just reminds us how passionate teachers are and how they want to do what's best for their students.

>> I want them to feel energized.

I want them to feel optimistic, and I want them to feel the hope that we can continue to make a difference.

And we continue to as we continue to address the learning challenges that may exist for students.

>> According to the 2026 Education Scorecard, Kentucky ranks fifth in the nation for recovery in reading scores.

[MUSIC] Tomorrow, we'll take you on a trip to Northern Kentucky, where high school upperclassmen are taking advantage of a free opportunity to learn about the trades.

So tune in for that tomorrow night.

And so many other stories will come your way at 630 eastern, 530 central on Kentucky edition, where we inform, connect and inspire.

We hope that you'll connect with us all the ways you see on your screen.

Stream our content online on demand@ket.org.

Download the PBS app where you can take us anywhere and look at us anytime, and send us a story idea by email to public affairs@ket.org.

And of course, we're on the socials, Facebook and Instagram where you can stay in the loop.

I'm Renee Shaw, thank you for watching.

Have a great evening and I will see you right back here again tomorrow night.

[MUSIC] Take good care.