Kentucky's Department of Education named the 2025 Teacher of the Year today.

And that is Jennifer Montgomery, an English teacher at Eminence Independent Middle School.

When I think back to the three room house that I grew up in, in Trumbull County, with no running water and no telephone, it helps me just reflect on why I became a teacher in the first place, because I am a product of of public education.

So this is what I aspire to do in my own classroom to help my students see their worth as individuals and to help them believe in themselves.

Their lives are as significant and important, not just in the future for what they will do with their lives, but also they're important right now for who they are.

And so I'm proud today to represent over 40,000 other Kentucky educators who are doing these same things in their classroom classrooms, changing one child's life at a time by just helping them simply realize that their stories are important because they are important.

Cady recognized eight other teachers, including Kentucky's high School and Elementary School Teachers of the Year.

These educators were chosen from 500 applicants.

There are more than 40,000 teachers in the state.

The current teacher of the year was also there.

He told Ted he opposes the school choice amendment that Kentuckians will vote on this November.

And in my community, public schools need all the funding they can get.

And so I am, like, vehemently opposed to Amendment two.

And I hope that anyone who values public education, democracy and freedom would vote that way because public schools are the foundation and the core of our free democracy.

It truly does bring everyone to a level playing field, and if we remove funds from that, we are doing an immense disservice to the people like me growing up who had to have a public school to succeed.

Amendment two, if it passes, would allow the Kentucky General Assembly to authorize public money for private schools.