Congrats, everyone, we are officially more than 10% of the way through Kentucky’s 2026 legislative session!
We’re starting to pick up the pace in Frankfort. Some of the Senate’s priority bills around limiting the governor’s pardon abilities and moving away from the regional drivers licensing center model cleared their first hurdles Wednesday, as more and more bills are getting filed. (I think we’re closing in on 500 bills between the House and Senate combined at this point.)
Meanwhile, I’ve spent the last 24 hours reporting on what I can only best describe as “The Youths.” Not just education policy proposals, but what lawmakers are trying to do to allegedly protect minors (both good and … heavily questionable), how JCPS is proposing to solve its budget woes, and how some Kentucky students are now published authors.
A highlight reel of school-focused legislation
Education is always “a priority” in Kentucky’s legislative sessions, so we’ve already got way more school/teacher/student-focused legislation filed than I could ever adequately cover.
Here are a few bills that caught my eye thus far:
- Senate Bill 101 from Sen. Matt Nunn (R-Sadieville) would require students who intentionally injure educators to be expelled for 12 months, along with a few other things meant to better protect teachers from student violence.
- Senate Bill 59 from Sen. Steve Rawlings (R-Burlington) would make it a crime to use public dollars to advocate for/against ballot measures, and specifically notes this absolutely applies to school districts and educational coops (all this comes after drama over 2024’s Amendment 2)
- House Bill 88 from Rep. TJ Roberts (R-Burlington) would let Kentucky participate in a federal scholarship tax credit system and give the auditor — rather than the governor — final say over participation.
- House Bill 52 from Rep. Shane Baker (R-Somerset) would require students to be taught that in order to be successful in life, you need to graduate high school, get a full-time job, and wait until marriage to have kids.
Ah, yes, the threat of drag queens
I could’ve perhaps taken a deeper look at more education legislation, or maybe even the proposed JCPS budget cuts (yikes), but my quiet Tuesday evening of combing through bills was interrupted by the realization that some in the GOP still believe drag queens are a threat to minors.
House Bill 360 from Rep. Scott Sharp (R-Ashland) is similar to previous failed attempts to restrict and criminalize drag and drag performers, by labeling “male and female impersonators” performing in ways that appeal to a “prurient interest in sexual conduct” that is “patently offensive,” as an “adult performance” on the same level as, like, masturbating in public.
You could only get in trouble if you’re performing in public or another spot where a minor could maybe see it. The first two offenses would be hit with misdemeanors, but it would be felonies after that.
Now, we had bills like this in 2023 and 2024, but when nothing got filed in 2025, I thought maybe we were moving past this. But I guess not. Sharp, who is running unopposed for reelection aka he has basically already gotten another two-year term, also filed the bill with an emergency clause, saying “the protection of children is of paramount importance to the citizens of this Commonwealth” so the bill should go immediately into effect if passed.
A big ongoing concern: What exactly is a “prurient interest” and who determines it? Who gets to decide what the line between OK for public consumption and “patently offensive” is? After years of debate, I’m not sure if we ever got a clear answer. And getting a clear answer is so important when several in support of such legislation tend to believe in a strict gender binary and are quick to label drag performers of any kind as “groomers.”
But dealing with actual groomers?! There’s a bill for that
After a late night of breaking news and googling “prurient,” I got two hours of sleep and headed to Frankfort for a press conference on House Bill 4, which would make it a crime to groom a minor.
Rep. Marianne Proctor (R-Union) is sponsoring the bill, and it racked up two dozen co-sponsors within a day of being filed.
The bill is super early in its legislative journey, and the legislature has been historically hesitant to really go after educator misconduct. And of course “grooming” can happen outside of the classroom. But supporters and survivors seemed very optimistic, with one noting even just having the legislation filed and the discussion started to be a major win.
Grooming can be so tricky: tricky to figure out if you or a child is being groomed, tricky to come to terms with what happened, tricky to prove intent, trickier to hold someone accountable for it. (And as a reporter who has spent years covering teacher misconduct, it can also be incredibly tricky to report on it.)
Kentucky has a lot of work to do to better protect students from educator and coach misconduct. And it has for a hot sec. Bills from Rep. James Tipton (R-Taylorsville) trying to tackle the problem have repeatedly failed.
More than four years ago, I wrote an outline for a series of investigative stories on teacher misconduct and grooming in Kentucky, and I could probably still write that same series of stories right now because very little, if anything, has changed since then. And I think a lot about how this bill could’ve been a thing, more students protected, years sooner if I had just been allowed to write that damn investigation.
But having the combo of HB 4 and a fresh attempt from Tipton re: teacher misconduct in House Bill 102 gives this education-turned-politics reporter some renewed hope. This has been a long time coming, and I think this might finally be the year some change is made.
During Wednesday’s press conference, Proctor said she hadn’t heard of anyone not being in favor of the measure — but I’m interested in how some representing education groups will react given what they’ve historically been accused of and/or defended and/or turned a blind eye to.
I mean, what do you do when your actions started a chain reaction that ultimately, in part, led to a priority piece of legislation designed to protect children from being groomed by adults? How do you navigate that in conversations with lawmakers?
A bit of light
I lasted roughly a combined 57 minutes in Frankfort before driving back to Louisville to lock in for a big announcement from the Kentucky Student Voice Team: A year after suing the state for failing to provide the adequate and equitable public education they’re owed under the state Constitution, the students wrote a book about the whole thing.
In a nearly hour-long Q&A with the students, their advocates and me tagging along, the students explained basically the book is them writing out their lived experiences behind their legal complaint, putting that complaint into more conversational language (the complaint, mind you, was lowkey a book itself), and discussing more of their work around the topic and also how students and teachers in their lives reacted to the lawsuit.
The book is called Why Kentucky Students Are Suing the State: Classrooms, Courts and the Constitution and you can find a link to buy here.
As for the lawsuit, one of their lawyers told me on the call that the state had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit last year, they argued about it in the spring, and they still haven’t gotten a ruling on that. So, stay tuned on that — any rulings and subsequent legal arguments could have major implications on how Kentucky funds schools, and it is a budget year.
Oh, right, the JCPS budget situation
I love that my brand is so strong that multiple people contacted me last night, in hopes that — despite being off the education beat for 3.5 years — I would maybe have a leaked copy of JCPS’ proposed budget cuts.
I fear I actually had no clue those were coming out. I apologize.
The district released the draft budget earlier today, and all I can say is yikes. Jess Clark at KyCIR has a solid breakdown of the proposed cuts and how they were rolled/leaked out here.
Bookmark these links
For the 2026 legislative session…
- All of the links to bills, resolutions, votes, and more are here.
- This is the committee schedule.
- This is the session calendar.
- This is each day’s lineup of meetings, agendas and start times.
- Legislative action will be livestreamed on KET and the LRC’s YouTube page.
How to follow my work this session
- Subscribe to The Gallery Pass and read it religiously.
- Follow my social media accounts for more real-time updates:
- Read Queer Kentucky — the home to my full-length reporting this session.
How to support me
- Subscribe to The Gallery Pass as a paid sub. I have monthly and annual options, and the annual one is still 26% off to celebrate #KYGA26!
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