Ahead of the 2026 legislative session, Gov. Andy Beshear is working to sell his proposal for expanding preschool access. The Democratic governor's "Pre-K for All" campaign came to Bowling Green Wednesday evening for a town hall at Western Kentucky University.
As part of his new "Pre-K for All" initiative announced on June 4, Beshear signed an executive order creating an advisory committee to study existing pre-K models across the country and to get feedback from Kentucky families and businesses.
Committee Chairman Jamie Link, Secretary of the Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet, told the Bowling Green audience that universal preschool results in higher test scores, better high school and college graduation rates, increased parent earnings, and better career opportunities.
"I think too often we talk in terms of cost. To me, pre-K is an investment and the return on that investment is going to be significant," Link said. I don't think we can afford not to invest in pre-K."
Gov. Beshear maintains universal pre-k is imperative to boost kindergarten readiness. State data from the 2024-2025 school year shows only 46% of Kentucky kindergartners were prepared when they showed up on the first day of school.
Tracey Young, director of Grants and Community Outreach for Warren County Public Schools, spoke of the "heavy burden" of writing grants for the district's youngest learners who don't qualify for the district's' preschool program and whose parents can't afford private preschool.
"It's why I can't sleep at night. If we don't win those grants, then those kids don't have the opportunity to have any kind of formalized learning," Young said Wednesday night. "It should not be a privilege. It should be something that's accessible to every single child."
Beshear says pre-k for every four-year-old in Kentucky will help solve the state's lack of affordable child care and make children entering kindergarten more academically prepared.
Kentucky's Republican supermajority has pushed back on the idea. House Speaker David Osborne has criticized Beshear for not holding direct talks with legislative leaders.
"What plan? We haven't heard from the Governor or his staff about his proposal - either the general idea or specific details - which frankly calls into question how committed he is to getting it passed," Osborne said in a statement to WKU Public Radio.
"They (lawmakers) very often want to say, 'If it's your plan, Gov. Beshear, we're not doing it,'" Beshear said a recent Team Kentucky briefing. "This isn't going to be my plan, it's gonna be the people's plan."
Speaker Osborne suggests parents need quality year-round child care instead of a universal preschool model. He fears Beshear's approach could decimate existing private and non-profit child care options and create even more child care deserts across the state.
While childcare can be both inaccessible and unaffordable, Beshear says "Pre-K for All" will help ease the financial strain on parents. Mark Pogue spoke at the Bowling Green town hall from a unique perspective as an auto dealer from Muhlenberg County.
"I'm going to talk about a blue-collar mama of one child. She's making about $41,200 a year. When I sit in front of a banker and try to get her financed, she's got a net income of about $1,800 a month," said Pogue. "She's paying $150 a week for child care. She's paying rent of $1,200, and I've hooked her up on a $600 car payment. She has nothing left. This is immoral, almost."
Even for some two-parent households, the cost of child care prohibits both parents from working. The Beshear administration argues universal pre-K could grow the workforce by as many as 70,000 Kentuckians who currently lack child care options.
Seventy-nine of the state's 120 counties are considered child care deserts, according to data from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services. One of those deserts is Barren County, where LaDonna Rogers is Vice President of Human Resources at TJ Regional Health in Glasgow.
"Pre-K would really make my life easier at the hospital. If I could get more parents with the ability to go to college, that would be amazing," Rogers said. "We will never have a surplus of nurses and I know some of those single-parents mothers could go to school if their children were able to go to pre-K."
GOP leadership in the General Assembly has expressed little optimism about universal pre-K being approved in 2026.
"Our focus continues to be on eliminating the unnecessary barriers regulated child care centers face and increasing support for child care assistance programs," House Speaker Osborne said.
Meanwhile, Beshear's plan has buy-in from the head of Kentucky's largest school district. Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Brian Yearwood said in an interview with WHAS-TV that he backs universal pre-K "100%."
Universal pre-K is currently offered in 18 other states, including neighboring West Virginia, which implemented the program in 2002.
More town halls are scheduled next month, including in Morehead on Aug. 5 and at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville on Aug. 20. Feedback from the town halls will be part of a final report for the governor and state legislature. That report is due Oct. 15, several months ahead of the 2026 legislative session when lawmakers will begin debating the next two-year state budget.
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