The Jefferson County Board of Education has unanimously voted to implement a district-wide smoking ban for all employees on campus or at school events beginning July 2013.

The board considered the policy change at Monday night’s meeting, hearing from JCPS staff, students and a health policy professor from Bellarmine University.

The board originally considered a proposal to implement the ban in the 2014-2015 school year, but in Monday’s meeting it was changed to begin next year.

“We don’t need to delay this another year,” said board member Linda Duncan

A grand bargain, a compromise to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, could all come down to one word: revenue. It's now widely agreed that steering away from the cliff — the combination of spending cuts and tax increases set to hit at the start of the year — will require some combination of revenue increases and spending cuts. The central sticking point could well be whether President Obama and Congress can agree on the definition of revenue.

At the moment, the casual observer could easily get the sense that the president and Republicans in Congress are talking past each other.

Louisville's 55K Degrees Initiative -- which aims to increase the number of college-degree holders in Louisville -- is releasing today its second annual progress report. Read the report here:

A row of restaurants in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C., looks tantalizing — there's Vietnamese, Italian, New American.

But if you walk around to the alley at the back of this row you might gag.
Dumpsters packed with trash are lined up, and they get emptied only twice a week. Which means a lot of food sits here, filling the block with a deep, rank odor.

The scheme, prosecutors allege, worked like this:

A parent would sign up a child for the subsidy program meant to help low-income families cover childcare costs while parents worked or went to school. The parent would sign an attendance sheets for several days in advance. The child would never show up. The daycare would submit the paperwork to the program's administrator and be paid as if the child attended.

Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed, leaders of many Kentucky non-profit organizations hope people will take part in the national "Giving Tuesday" campaign promoting charitable activities.

Among the many groups soliciting online gifts is the Bluegrass Community Foundation.

Kentucky’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Task Force will apparently steer clear of any major controversies with its recommendations.

Task force member Senator Jimmy Higdon says the panel wanted to have consensus on all proposed changes. He says the group stayed away from controversial alcohol laws like closing bars during elections, and preventing alcohol sales in groceries while allowing them in drug stores.