Five.

I've been a part of the Ford family for years striking for aid workers in Louisville say it's not just about money.

When you have that kind of debt, you can't afford to come back.

You need a big income to pay back big student loans.

That's why many new Kentucky veterinarians are moving somewhere else.

What can be done about it?

If a student is under the influence, we're not going to get the best out of them that day.

How A Kentucky high school wants to stop students from vaping.

And we might be back to square one in the search for a speaker of the U.S. House.

What one Kentucky Republican is saying about a coalition with the Democrats 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 Thursday, October the 19th.

We're inching closer to the weekend.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Thank you for spending some of your Thursday night with us.

Eight days ago, workers at Ford's Kentucky truck plant in Louisville went on strike.

The 8700 workers joined other members of the United Auto Workers Union who also walked off the job September 15th while demanding higher pay from America's Big Three automakers.

What are Kentucky workers thinking?

After more than a week on the picket line, Kentucky Éditions June Leffler went to the local union hall and has this report.

Workers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the company that builds Chrysler models, began their strike over a month ago.

President of the UAW Local 862 says he was ready to join the fight when he got the notice last week.

If you ask in the room who's a part of the Ford family, somebody might go to Holden who feels like they're a part of the Ford family.

I don't see any hands and I hear it.

I've been a part of the Ford five.

I've been a part of the Ford family for years now.

34,000 autoworkers have joined the fight, including 8700 workers out of Ford's largest factory based in Louisville.

Dunn says workers want to take back what they once had but lost.

So, you know, for quite some time, the, you know, oh seven era, you know, when the auto companies were in trouble, some were, you know, kids would go bankrupt one day and we said, hey, look, we got to do something.

And we sacrificed.

We gave back.

To help our retirees.

We gave back to help the company.

And we were promised that that when we got back to nine concessionary times that we would try and the Ford Motor Company to try and help our members.

And that just didn't happen.

The union wants cost of living adjustments and pensions restored.

It's also asking for a 32 hour workweek and a nearly 40% raise.

Ford has offered an historic 23% raise, which Dunn says is promising.

I don't have the outcome right now that we want.

But at 29 years, it's the it's the best facilitated process I've ever seen.

Dunn has two sons that also work for Ford, and he says he's looking out for them.

You know, everybody's sees where we're at, but this is more about our future.

And one of the things that I've been trying to do is genuinely tell as a leader, look, our future is leaving it better.

And we found it for those employees that are younger in seniority and actually are younger and age for the most part.

Newer workers are under a tiered system that slows their earning potential.

While Ford says the average hourly pay at the Kentucky plant is $78,000.

The union says those just starting earn less than half of that.

They said, Hey, look, from here on out, from this day beyond, we're going to bring somebody in.

We're going to bring them in at this pay.

They're going to spend, you know, 22 weeks, and then we'll bring them up a little bit and then we'll bring them up a little bit.

In this case, it would take in the last agreement almost six years to get the full pay.

The UAW hopes to protect its youngest workers while including all workers building electric vehicles.

Ford is building two EV battery plants in Kentucky that could open in 2025.

The industry is going there, so we have to kind of get the cart before the horse and prepare now so we can have those jobs for techniques that when you go from an industrial combustion engine or they call it an ice to an EV engine, that you vehicle, you lose your engine component, your drive change transmission components.

So it cuts out a significant number of your workforce.

And unless we protect the end game of the ice and transition into electric vehicles, then we're going to leave those people behind.

The company and workers are feeling impacts of the strike wells Fargo expects Ford to lose $150 million a week from the Kentucky plant closure alone.

And because workers aren't making cars more than 400 workers at a parts plant in Michigan have been laid off.

Striking union workers have lost their usual pay, but are still making $500 a week.

That pay comes from the UAW strike fund, set up for such occasions.

Even outside the Ford plant, those on the picket line get some cheers.

James Cannon has worked at the Ford plant for ten years.

Well, long as we get what we deserve, I'm ready to go back to work.

But until then, I leave it in the hands of the UAW.

Picketers take weekly shifts.

If negotiations aren't resolved, Cannon will return to the picket line, not the assembly line, next Wednesday.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm June Leffler.

Thank you, June.

We reached out to Ford for an interview about the strike.

Ford declined, but they sent us this statement, quote, While the Kentucky truck plant generates outsized revenue and profit, it also helps support many less profitable plants and supports Ford being in a position to offer a full lineup of vehicles and maintain its position as the largest employer of UAW Auto workers, end quote.

Governor Andy Beshear and Attorney General Daniel Cameron were both asked about the continuing UAW strike during their Monday night debate at Northern Kentucky University, televised televised by WCCO.

They were both asked about how their administrations would balance workers rights, business interests and the economic impact of union strikes.

Well, I'm proud to be a governor endorsed by the UAW, and that has landed the biggest investment in the history of Ford Motor Company, a really proud company.

What we have to have here is a win win.

Are UAW families are fighting for better wages and better health care benefits, something we should want for every single one of our citizens?

We need them to come out of this being able to provide more opportunity for their kids, a better future here in Kentucky.

But we also need a strong Ford coming out of it.

They invested $5.8 billion in our commonwealth.

We're building the two biggest battery plants on planet Earth.

And I was the governor that struck the deal.

For them to rip up that Kentucky truck plant to make the new F-250 investing hundreds of millions of dollars and preserving all of those jobs.

This isn't an either or.

We need the UAW to come out in a strong place in Ford, to come out in a strong place, too.

And I think that we have to have a swift resolution of what is going on, not only the Ford plant here in Louisville, but also as we see this transpiring across the nation.

But I also want to say unequivocally that I support our workers.

And it's no question that we are in this mess because of the inflationary pressures that are coming from Washington, D.C., and wages need to be increased.

These workers know that, but they are having to deal with the challenge of more expensive groceries, more expensive gas and more expensive child care.

What I think is incredibly important is that you have a governor that eliminates the income tax to make sure that these folks have more money in their pocket to pay for those things that I just talked about and also, again, increase their wages at the plant.

I support the workers and will make sure that they have leadership in the governor's office that works for them.

Striking United Auto Workers had a visitor today.

Governor Beshear stopped by the picket line outside the Ford truck plant in Louisville, and he brought sandwiches for the first time.

Daniel Cameron is mentioning former President Donald Trump in a televised ad.

Mr. President, I hope you can tell that Kentucky is Trump country.

I'm the only candidate endorsed by President Trump.

The new ad shows video from then President Trump's appearance and Lexington the day before the 2019 election as he campaigned for Governor Matt Bevin.

Cameron was there as a candidate for Kentucky Attorney General.

And the new ad, Cameron also notes the many times he sued President Joe Biden.

You'll hear from both Governor Andy Beshear and Attorney General Daniel Cameron for a full hour on Katie next Monday night on Kentucky tonight.

The candidates will be here and taking your questions and mine on Kentucky tonight.

So we hope you'll join us at 837 Central right here on KCET.

We're in the final stretch of this year's election season, with November 7th quickly approaching.

All month long, KCET has provided in-depth conversations with candidates about why they're running and what they want to accomplish and the jobs Kentuckians will hire them to do.

Sunday afternoon on my Conversation series Connections, I talk with the candidates vying to be the state's top election official.

Republican incumbent Michael Adams and Democrat Charles Buddy Wheatley sat down with me and separate interviews recently.

Adams talks about the pushback he received from his own party and working with the Democratic governor on pandemic era voting.

And Wheatley discusses how Kentucky needs to widen voting access even more at a time to other states where making it harder to vote in the name of election integrity in other states.

We're dropping basic protocols for election integrity in favor of just letting everybody vote.

We took a middle path and the governor was a good partner in that.

We made sure that we locked down who was voting in our election.

We require people to prove who they were, but we also expanded voting days, expanded voting methods, implemented a portal to make it easier to apply for your ballot.

Very common sense things.

We did this in a very non-ideological way, and I think it was good to have a Democrat and a Republican to table together, not just because it meant that we had good policy.

We're both sides were hurt out, but we also offered a better look.

And we had an election that Republicans did very well in, but Democrats didn't think that it was stolen.

It's really important to have both sides together on this stuff.

Yeah, I've heard it described, though, that during the pandemic voting period, that some described it as more of a time lapse rather than a snapshot in voting.

And even Republicans took their jabs at you for that process and then the changes that you wanted to codify into law.

Are you beyond that sort of I've got a I've got a fake certificate in my office sort of issued to myself, recognizing Benedict Adams.

That was my nickname in the Capitol with Republicans in 2020.

They saw me working with a Democrat trying to protect voting rights, and they said, this guy's a traitor.

But I was proved right by history.

I was proof, right that we had an election that was smooth, smoother than any other state had conducted that didn't have vote fraud.

That came out just fine, where people didn't feel disenfranchized or cheated.

And they they learned that I was right.

And they actually ended up passing a lot of what I implemented on an emergency basis.

So, yeah, we're past all that.

I really am interested in voter turnout in the truest form of a representational democracy that Kentuckians can get.

And with that, for me, it is about highest voter turnout possible.

Kentucky is still considered one of the hardest places to vote in the country.

My opponent, the incumbent, says, you know, he has make it he has lifted up to the ability to vote something that hasn't been done for over 100 years.

There is a it was a very low bar to be raised to modernize our elections.

And Michael Adams was part of a piece of legislation that I was very involved in to ensure or to make sure that it was a bipartisan piece of legislation because it was moving the ball forward.

But we didn't move it very, very far forward.

We could have had more days of early voting.

I've promoted to four weeks of early voting that 20, 20, 21 piece of legislation include it to four weeks until late in the negotiations or discussions about the bill.

And I have to say Michael Adams caved on that and we could have had two weeks at that time.

We also could have had later registration, voter registration.

We still are one of the most restrictive states.

28 days before the election, you have to be registered by when many states have same day voter registration.

You'll hear much more from both of the candidates.

For Kentucky Secretary of State Sunday morning at 1130 Eastern, 1030 Central right here on Katie's connections.

The Boyle County School system has removed more than 100 books from school libraries in response to Senate Bill 150, the state's anti-trans bill that passed the Kentucky General Assembly earlier this year.

The Danville Advocate Messenger first reported the book removal.

Superintendent Mark Wade says the books were removed to comply with SB 150.

The new law.

Part of the bill says students should not, quote, receive any instruction or presentation that has a goal or purpose of students studying or exploring gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation.

In an interview with The Advocate, Messager Wade called Library books, quote, Instructional Resources.

The Kentucky Department of Education disagrees with the school system's interpretation of the law.

Spokesperson Tony Conte Statment told the newspaper that SB 150 does not require the removal of library materials.

The Boyle County School system removed 106 books from five libraries, including the high school, the middle school and three elementary schools.

The Courier-Journal says the books removed include a biography of Anne Frank, the youngest Holocaust victim, and four books from the Dune science fiction series.

There was no school and Nelson County today.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports.

It's because more than 200 staff suddenly took the day off.

In a letter to families, Superintendent Wesley Bradley said the district quote, would not be able to safely and effectively deliver academic and operational experiences for students, end quote.

The paper reports students walked out of school yesterday.

Today in Bardstown, we found people voicing opposition to a decision made during Tuesday night's Board of Education meeting in a 3 to 2 vote.

The board voted to continue exploring a possible merger of two high schools.

Many in the community are split on that issue.

Harlan County has four high schools and what, 16,000 students?

We have four high schools in Nelson County with Bardstown and Balcombe in our two schools, and we're looking at less than one 8000 students.

We can't we can't function like this.

As taxpayers, we got to say, you know, we're going to give up our money, but let's be smart when we spend it.

So my my proposal would be to merge the high schools back together.

I just hope that if a vote is coming tonight in the future to merge two high schools back together, putting 1500 kids under one roof that you can look these kids in the eyes.

So if you vote to merge these high schools back together, that you can go to Thomas Nelson High School and Nelson County High School and look these kids in the eyes and tell them that you did this because it's what was best for every single student.

We reached out to the Nelson County superintendent today, but he did not get back to us.

Kentucky is grappling with a veterinarian shortage, particularly struggling to find large animal vets for rural areas.

This morning, lawmakers in Frankfurt heard from experts working to address the shortage.

Two main focuses of the discussion overwhelming debt for vet school graduates and the possibility of opening a vet school in Kentucky.

The $480,000 debt that we hear a vet school graduating that think that that's your Auburn vet.

If you're going, say, Lincoln Memorial University, the Bahamas, wherever, and you're graduating one of these, your debt's probably going to be closer to 300,000, if not more.

We actually had one student who was half million dollars debt.

When you have that kind of debt, you can't afford to come back.

And these were rural farm kids who wanted to come back and be large animal veterinarians.

You can't afford to come back and be on the farm and do that one pull ups cap for 30 in the morning.

You have to go somewhere where you can spay neuter and run those things right across the assembly line and try to try to make the money.

We believe and through this study, it did show that Murray State's Hudson School of Agriculture is positioned well to address this growing need for rural veterinarians in Kentucky.

And let me say up front that this is not just a proposal for a veterinary school.

This is a proposal for a comprehensive approach to address this need.

It's not simply a brick and mortar proposal.

It's not simply a curriculum proposal.

It's a comprehensive model that addresses many of the things that have been mentioned here this morning.

So we're looking to establish ourselves in this proposal as the leading a large animal school of veterinary medicine.

And to do that, we have a recent endowment, a $4.2 million endowment that will be devoted entirely to the education of rural students that have the potential to return to their community to be food, animal and in rural environments are mixed animal practices.

It makes sense, but the mix has to include cows and horses.

And so we know that that that's a challenge.

And so this could very well help those students move through and be able to realize a much cheaper education.

Representative Matt Kuchar, you saw just a minute ago, is a central Kentucky horse farmer.

He raised concerns about the cost of building a vet school, and he also touted the state's current relationship with Auburn University's vet school in Alabama, which he said would be jeopardized by a Kentucky vet school.

It's extremely expensive for us to get our vet school, even if we had it up and running right now.

The bang for buck, the return of investment that we get on and I'll use Auburn because they're here today, is absolutely incredible.

I believe in our 2018 study they have over 500, $500 million invested in their facilities and their infrastructure and all that is going on.

Roughly half of the licensed veterinarians in the state of Kentucky right now are Auburn graduates and returning here.

So so that that is very much working.

So potential impact, we feel that this school could have, of course, of number one, to to address the shortage of veterinarians here within the Commonwealth.

We feel like and I believe that this is well founded, that the likelihood of a student who moves through a veterinary school in the Commonwealth is more likely to assume practice in the Commonwealth immediately after graduation.

Imagine this living near the Brant Spence Bridge in northern Kentucky without having to hear traffic noise.

The state will install transparent noise barriers and part of Covington.

It's a pilot project to see if the barriers really help to cut down on the noise and because the barriers are transparent.

They won't block anyone's view.

The barriers will go up along 1000 feet of the east side of Crescent Avenue, between fifth and ninth streets.

The pilot project will cost about $4 million with work starting this month.

The see through panel should go up after the first of the year.

Kentucky Transportation Secretary Jim Gray says if this is a success, more noise barriers could go up along Brant Spence Bridge and in other places around Kentucky and the National Political Front.

Members of the U.S. House seem unlike late to vote today on whether Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio should become speaker of the House.

Jordan failed to get the required 217 votes Tuesday or Wednesday.

This is video from yesterday's vote when 22 Republicans voted against him.

CNN reported today that it appeared he was continuing to lose support.

So today's planned vote didn't happen.

CNN also reports there's a movement in the House to give more power to the temporary speaker, Patrick McHenry of northern North Carolina, so that the House can start doing business again.

But it's not clear if that will succeed either.

Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky's fourth District says he will not join a coalition with the Democrats and will continue to vote for Jim Jordan.

Massie has been a vocal Jordan supporter.

He has a theory about why Jordan is having so much trouble winning the speakership.

Massie posted quote.

Why is it his election easy here?

Because his leadership represents a credible threat to the unchecked growth of our bloated federal government.

End quote.

Congressman Morgan McGarvie of the Third District, which includes Louisville, is the only Democrat in Kentucky's congressional delegation.

He also has some thoughts about the difficulty in picking a House speaker.

Earlier today, he posted this, quote, Our international allies need aid and our government is one month from a shutdown.

What's the Republican majority doing about it?

Jim Jordan just lost two speaker votes in two days.

Democrats are offering a bipartisan path forward.

We're ready to elect a speaker and get back to work and, quote, a Kentucky high school just installed six vape detectors in its bathrooms.

There are two goals here.

One, keep students healthy by stopping them from vaping and to keeping them out of the bathroom and in the classroom.

LaRue County High School was able to buy most of the equipment after the Hodgenville Police Department applied for and received a $7,000 grant.

We're really that ultimately kind of put us over the edge of having to do something drastic, like putting in vape detectors was the amount of kids that we were seeing have health issues after participating in and inhaling those things.

You know, we had we had numerous say, numerous probably two or three instances where students had to be transported to get medical attention by ambulance just due to their our school nurses having concerns over their bottles.

And in that after they had taken know taking hits from devices.

How it works is once that once those detectors sense that there is a disturbance in the air quality of a being smoked or hit, then it sends a text notification to the principal, the assistant principal and SRO of the school.

Once those once those adults have been notified, then they can, depending on what they're doing at the moment or their proximity to wherever the detector is, they can go down and intercept the student's coming out or go in and get them.

Or if they have to go back and review security camera footage of who went in and out of the bathrooms at those certain times and try to track them down.

If a student is under the influence, we're not going to get the best of them that day.

If a student is sitting in class thinking about how much he wishes he could hit a bee at that moment, then we're not getting their you know, we're not getting their best.

Allen said they hope to receive more money to put detectors in the county's middle school.

Finally tonight, Caitlin is getting a major makeover.

The Lexington Horse Track says it's planning to an expansion to improve viewing and safety for both horses and fans.

The $93 million project is already receiving preliminary approval for incentives totaling more than $23 million from the Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority.

The new facilities will include seated dining and a panorama rooftop view, and spectators will be able to view jockeys during a walk through before each race.

This will be Quinlan's largest capital project since its opening in 1936.

Construction will begin in January.

The projects are expected to be finished by the fall of 2025.

Can't wait.

Tomorrow, our usual Friday look inside Kentucky politics.

Hear from Bob Cabbage and Trey Grayson and also Daniel Cameron.

Get some help on the campaign trail as Senator Rand Paul makes his case for Cameron.

We'll catch up with him tomorrow on Kentucky edition, which will see you four hopefully at 630 Eastern, 530 Central, where we inform, Connect and Inspire.

Subscribe to our email newsletter and watch full episodes and clips at ket dot org and all the ways you see on your screen to stay in the loop.

Thanks again for watching.

I'm Renee Shaw.

Take good care and I'll see you right back here again tomorrow night.