Education

Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday says his comments this week in a Courier-Journal article referring to JCPS’ lowest performing schools as “academic genocide” were “purposeful to get the community involved.”

The Kentucky House Education Committee has approved a bill that would require students to stay in school until they’re 18 years old.

Kentucky’s current law that allows students to drop out at age 16 with their parents’ permission. 

"As Gov. Beshear noted in his State of the Commonwealth speech, the dropout age was set in 1920.  That’s almost been 100 years.  Now in 1920, education wasn’t as highly regarded as it is today," said Democratic Rep. Jeff Greer, the bill's sponsor. 

Jefferson County Public Schools officials say there’s more to the report released last week showing a majority of the district’s lowest performing schools have not made adequate progress.

JCPS officials acknowledged at Monday’s board meeting more needs to be done to turn around the status of its lowest performing schools, but they say there have been some gains in student test scores.

A panel of Jefferson County leaders including Third District Congressman John Yarmuth and Jefferson County Public Schools superintendent Donna Hargens will convene this month to discuss ways the community can reduce gun violence.

St. Matthew's Episcopal Church recently passed a resolution urging an end to the sale of semi-automatic weapons and urging support of adequate funding for mental health.

“We don’t intend this to be political, though obviously it’s a political issue but our intent is this is a moral issue,” says Bob Nesmith, the church’s event coordinator.