Quicksie 98.3
One area school district is taking steps to address educational shortfalls and barriers for students. Elizabethtown Independent Schools announced the district’s new ‘Equity Plan’ in a social media post yesterday. According to superintendent Jon Ballard, the plan was conceived in the spring of 2019, when, as he described, the district took a “hard look in the mirror.”
“We had some areas that we needed to address, and that started… when we looked at our achievement gap,” he said.
Ballard says the contents of the plan, which includes community building and and helping to raise awareness were conceived out of several focus groups comprised of community leaders, teachers, parents, and students.
“They’ll keep it real for you,” Ballard said. “They don’t mind opening up; it was telling in a lot of those [meeting].”
Ballard says the district’s plan is to ultimately make sure that students are welcomed into a “nurturing” learning environment.
New census information for the state of Kentucky shows that one Hardin County community has expanded. Data from the 2010 Census, as well as recent census data, shows that the city of Vine Grove is the state’s fastest growing city.
The previous census reported that the community was home to 4,520 residents in 2010, and had jumped nearly 27% to an estimated 6,340 residents in 2019. Vine Grove mayor Pam Ogden attributes the growth of the community to many things, including the safety of the community, as well as a large base of military residents, among other things.
“We have a lot of retired military that decided that stay, so that we have a lot of people that were born and raised in Vine Grove that decided to stay, myself included,” Ogden explained. “So I think that when people are thinking about where they want to retire or where they want to raise their kids, I think Vine Grove is one that they chose rather quickly.”
Vine Grove was also voted Kentucky’s safest city earlier this year.