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.
As protests and demonstrations continue across the country, similar protests are spreading to communities in the surrounding region. Just a week after the latest protest in Elizabethtown, two demonstrations– one in Leitchfield and one in Hodgenville– are expected for Wednesday afternoon in the respective cities.
“I’ve made contact with the organizer of the [Leitchfield] event,” stated Grayson County Sheriff Norman Chaffins, “and all indications are that it’s going to be a peaceful protest.”
“As a law enforcement agency, whether we agree or disagree with anyone who wants to protest, we have to allow them, and we’re certainly going to allow them to do that,” explained Chaffins. “We’re also going to protect any protestors there.”
The Hodgenville protest, which is slated to take place an hour before the Leitchfield one, will start at the courthouse and consolidate at the square.
“[The police] are going to meet-up with those folks at the courthouse at 2 o’clock, and we’re going to provide them with an escort down to the square,” Sergeant James Richardson said.
Richardson said that while there will be a police presence at the event, he does not believe that the demonstration will need law enforcement to intervene at any point.
“We are going to have some officer on standby and some other agencies to assist if need be, but we don’t expect that to be an issue.”