内容摘要：questions about his age and mental acuity to the forefront, ultimately leading Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. He was replaced on the ticket by Kamala Harris, who

questions about his age and mental acuity to the forefront, ultimately leading Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. He was replaced on the ticket by Kamala Harris, who

“Kentucky will never reach its potential if our children’s zip code determines their place in the world by the first day of kindergarten,” said Democratic Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, a former public school teacher and administrator. “The time for pre-K is now.”The benefits of his pre-K proposal would be much broader and would include increasing the state’s workforce by enabling more parents to go back to work, Beshear said. And it would help ease the financial strain on parents with young children, he said.

“American families right now are struggling, struggling to pay the bills, and child care is a big part of that,” Beshear said. “Pre-K for all could ease the financial burden facing our hardworking families and make paying those bills not just a little but a lot easier.”Beshear on Wednesday did not delve into how much state-funded preschool would cost, but he pointed to a study indicating every $1 invested in pre-K generates $10 cycling through the state economy.Leading up to the 2024 legislative session, Beshear’s

included $172 million each year of the following two-year budget cycle to provide preschool for 4-year-olds. Beshear has said the expense is “more than affordable,” amounting to a fraction of the massive surplus in the state’s budget reserve trust fund. That preschool proposal and others like it have made no headway with GOP lawmakers.Kentucky House Speaker David Osborne, a Republican, said later Wednesday that there have been no discussions with Beshear or anyone in his administration about legislative initiatives.

“If he is genuinely interested in passing a legislative priority, he should talk to legislators,” the speaker said in a statement.

Republican state Sen. Stephen West said Kentucky lawmakers increased funding in recent years for full-day kindergarten, early literacy and numeracy initiatives and other efforts to “help students succeed from the start.” West, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said in a statement that many details about the governor’s early childhood education initiative remain unclear.There were suggestions that opposition lawmakers might extend the debate for days or even longer through filibuster-style speeches, but with the outcome already certain and no one’s mind changed, all lawmakers agreed that the debate should end.

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — A judge on Wednesday barred a major U.S. private prison operator from housing immigrants facing possible deportation in a shuttered Kansas City area detention center unless it can get a permit from frustrated city officials.Leavenworth County Judge John Bryant agreed after a packed hearing to grant the city of Leavenworth’s request for a temporary restraining order against CoreCivic, one of the nation’s largest private prison operators.

CoreCivic had claimed in legal filings that halting the opening of the 1,033-bed facility on the northwest outskirts of the Kansas City area would cost it $4.2 million in revenue each month. City officials said they anticipated the arrival of detainees apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was imminent under a Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigration.Leavenworth isn’t the first city where controversy has surrounded the reopening of a private prison as an ICE detention facility. In Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka