The head of Kentucky's largest school district is sending a strong message and changes are coming to a bill after an outcry over government Transpower and see.

Our Laura Rogers has our midweek conversation with NPR's Ryland Barton.

Hello, Rylan, and good to see you, as always.

Good to see you, too, Laura.

And we'll begin with Dr. Marty, Polio, superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools, giving his state of the district address yesterday.

And of course, much of that speech focused on the highlights there at Jacobs.

Good things happening.

He says that the district is on the right path, but he also did use some of that time to talk about what he considers to be threats to the district and wanting to clear up what he calls misinformation, misperceptions about things going on.

And Jacobs, can you share some of your perspective on what he had to share in that address yesterday?

Yeah.

So.

JACOBS Louisville's public school district is the largest in the state.

That's why it really matters to all Kentuckians in one way or another.

But also this other part of it is that how much attention the state legislature gives to CPS every year.

So this year they're proposing a study and whether or not to split apart the district, which would be a pretty huge undertaking last fall.

There's a lot of problems with the rollout of a new bussing program, how students get from their homes in their neighborhoods to their schools.

And it led to the district, had to cancel classes for a few days.

And it was a big problem and it remains a big problem.

And this is something that reignited that interest.

And in trying to study whether or not to split apart the district saying that it might be too big for it to be able to handle all of its responsibilities.

This is something Republicans have really tried to do a lot in recent years, is something that happened a lot during former Governor Matt Bevin's administration as well, threatening to have state oversight of the district.

Also said there were a couple other things that the legislature is going after that they didn't want to do.

One.

Another part of this oversight level is doing a conducting an audit of the district, which is something that also state auditor Alison Ball has said she's interested.

It was a campaign plank for her and also he was worried about all of these d-ii bills that are moving to the state legislature, which have also been moving through for years in one way or another.

In the last year or a couple of years ago.

There's the so-called anti critical race theory bill.

And now lawmakers are looking to further undercut and make sure that there's no sort of diversity, equity and inclusion programing within the school districts, which he said that that would really undermine the district's ability to make diverse students feel comfortable, also attract a diverse employees to the district.

And this is something we've heard similar lines from university Presidents UK President Eli CAPELOUTO, who was worried about how policies working through the state legislature would undermine the University of Kentucky's ability to attract diverse talent and also promote diversity on campus.

So that's a big priority for the legislature right now, but it's kind of to be expected.

Some of the people who are in charge of these institutions right now are pretty upset with what these might do to them.

Something else that has gotten a lot of attention in the General Assembly, House Bill 509 that would have redefined how we look at public records, what we consider public records.

And that has gotten, again, a lot of attention, a lot of criticism.

Where are we with that legislation right now?

Yeah, So there were there was some talk in recent weeks that this bill is going to come up and then it was proposed and a lot of open government advocates got very upset by the provisions within this bill, which would have really changed a lot of a lot of public records that the public has access to right now would have changed.

So the sponsor of this legislative legislation, John Hutchinson Fischer Bill, said he's he's going to scale back a lot of the provisions of this after hearing from from stakeholders here.

He says that, you know, one part of this would have, you know, rendered anything that's on a personal cell phone as as know, even if it's a public business that's connected on a personal cell phone, it would have blocked access to that and also other provisions that would have, you know, a lot of a lot of reasons that open records often get blocked now is when they're considered a draft or the draft of legislation or draft of a policy, something that isn't finished yet.

And this would have expanded what would have counted as that, which really makes it harder for the public to know what's going on in in government and how their taxpayer dollars are being used.

So this is you know, it's it's still it's still yet to see where where this ultimately lands.

It seems like a bill like this comes up every legislative session.

And it's really important for folks who are interested in keeping and preserving kind of open records, powers to to kind of remind everybody what's included in these legislation and also all the vital work and accountability that goes in because of these laws.

I mean, we're talking about problems of the Republican legislators are worried about.

There's been a lot of reporting from education reporters around the state into what goes on in local school districts using the Open Records Act.

And this is something that, you know, benefits everybody.

And did we find and I ask this because you and I both work in journalism, did we find that a lot of news organizations, reporters and such, were especially concerned about their access to public records?

Certainly.

And this is something I can kind of unabashedly say as a journalist.

This is something that we we will stand up for.

And I think it's something that we're, you know, we think is vitally important to our democracy and for and for citizens to be able to be informed and know how their taxpayer money is being spent.

All right.

Well, Ryan, we sure appreciate it as always.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Laura.