Education

Several regional universities have made the list as a “2013 Military Friendly School.” The magazine G. I. Jobs puts Murray State University, West Kentucky Community and Technical College, and Austin Peay State University among the top 15 percent of schools doing the most to help veterans get an education.

September is College Savings Month in the Commonwealth, and the Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority is observing the occasion by starting eight children on the road to college savings by opening accounts for them with initial $1,000 deposits.  

Kentucky lawmakers say new legislation that created an oversight agency aimed at protecting students of for-profit colleges doesn't apply to many of the schools.  State Representatives Dennis Keene and Carl Rollins say they thought the law would apply to at least some programs at all for-profit colleges. They say they want to bring the legislation up again at the next General Assembly.  Keene says they worked with college representatives on the legislation and they think the issue was mistakenly overlooked.

Webster County Schools plans to begin construction soon on a new junior high school. Superintendent James Kemp says the board of education approved $4.5 million in bonds to fund the project. Kemp says the school will sit next to the county’s high school in Dixon. The plan is to renovate and expand part of the old high school building that was vacant. The school will house around 160 seventh and eighth graders. Currently those grades are spread out between the county’s four elementary schools.

A team of experts examining ways to improve teacher quality in Kentucky is using its second meeting to discuss recruitment and preparation.  The Prichard Committee Team on Teacher Effectiveness meets today in Frankfort.  Team members will hear from experts and discuss the state's existing programs for teacher recruitment and alternative certification.   The panel was formed by the nonprofit Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, an education advocacy group based in Lexington. Its goal is to make recommendations for the 2014 legislative session.

Todd Hatton speaks with Berry Craig, author of True Tales of Old Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon, and Burgoo and other works of Kentucky history, about his upcoming keynote presentation at this year's Murray State Department of History Dr. James W. Hammack, Junior Memorial Scholarship Banquet.  Information about reservations to attend can be found here.