Moving to the education front to Kentucky's K-through-12 education system has a serious problem, some say student behavior.
We've heard a lot this legislative session about teacher and staff shortages, and many believe that student misconduct is a driving reason that teachers are leaving the classroom.
That's the contention of the Senate Education chairman, Stephen West.
He says school districts, urban and rural are plagued by the problem.
The teacher shortage issue.
You're seeing that older teachers, if they're eligible for retirement, are leaving early because they can't deal with these issues in the classroom.
We see that younger teachers coming into the profession may bail out early and not be able to continue in the profession because of these horrendous discipline issues that we're having.
Senator West Senate Bill 202 gives more options to superintendents and school districts when it comes to student expulsions for dealing with behavioral issues like adding alternative programing or virtual instruction that still keep those kids engaged in school.
No one registered a vote against the measure, but there was some floor commentary raising concerns.
The concern that I have is that this is subject to discretion and judgment.
And of course, circumstances are different from school to school.
Circumstances are different from teacher to teacher, and circumstances are different from situation to situation.
So this is not something where it's easy to put a standard.
This necessary to deal with it.
And whether there's a range of actions that are taken by a student that could be judged as disruptive in the class are not are could be managed in the circumstance or maybe something.
This clearly needs to be managed and it should be some intersession.
What we've seen historically is that these kinds of discretions and judgments tend to disproportionately affect black students more than white students.
That when you look at the students that are being removed from the class or being suspended or being expelled, they are disproportionately black as compared to white.
Now, I will give Bay County Public Schools credit.
In the last two years, we've seen that their disproportionate measure come down significantly but is still there.
And I think with the son of Jefferson, 33, is concerned about and I'm concerned about, too, is the fact that we don't want these decisions again, to have a disproportionate impact on black students because they are there to learn to.
Senate Education Chairman Stephen West, a student discipline major advance from the Senate 36 to 0 and now goes across the Capitol to the House.