ON THE ISSUES
Sarah’s Priorities
Education
Sarah believes that a truly prosperous Kentucky is one where every child—regardless of their zip code, background, or identity—has the tools to succeed. Ensuring our schools are inclusive environments that reflect the diverse world we live in, we don't just teach facts; we cultivate the empathy, critical thinking, and global perspective necessary for a modern workforce. Investing in the entire educational journey is how we build a stronger economy for everyone.
1. The Foundation: Universal Pre-K
As a former early childhood educator, Sarah knows the first five years are the "foundational years" for brain architecture.
Closing the Gap: Quality Pre-K ensures children of all backgrounds start on equal footing, removing barriers for marginalized communities.
Smart Economics: Every $1 invested in early education yields up to $12 in societal returns by increasing lifetime earnings.
2. Strengthening Public K-12
Early gains only last if followed by a fully funded, inclusive public school system. Sarah is fighting to reverse decades of funding cuts by prioritizing:
Wrap-Around Services: Schools should be hubs for mental health, nutrition, and social support to help every student thrive.
Investing in Public Schools: Every student deserves to be invested in, from making sure we fully fund transportation to get kids to school to ensuring students are challenged and supported academically and not letting public funding get diverted to private schools or vouchers.
3. Protecting Our Educators
In Kentucky, teachers rely solely on their state salary and pension for stability. While base salaries may stay the same, the rising cost of living means many teachers are effectively taking a "pay cut" every year.
Salary Protections: With pay ranked 42nd nationally, Sarah supports mandated COLAs to match inflation and increasing SEEK funding to ensure rural districts can pay competitive wages.
Pension Security: Protecting the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) is a non-negotiable commitment to those who build our future.
4. Diverse Paths: The Power of Trade Schools
Education is not one-size-fits-all. To build an equitable economy, we must invest in vocational pathways.
Economic Equity: Trade schools offer an affordable, debt-free route to high-paying careers in healthcare, manufacturing, and tech.
Building the Future: By valuing vocational excellence, we give every Kentuckian a path to dignity and a living wage.
Healthcare
A strong healthcare system is the backbone of Kentucky’s well-being and economy. When care is affordable and easy to reach, families thrive; when it isn’t, medical debt and chronic illness hold our communities back.
In Kentucky, our healthcare sector is the second-largest employer, right after our public school districts. Medicaid is our most vital safety net, covering nearly 1.5 million people—about one in three Kentuckians. It funds 44% of all births in the state. True healthcare includes the right to make decisions about your own body. While abortion remains illegal in Kentucky following the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, Sarah passed legislation in 2024 that now recognizes becoming pregnant as a "qualifying life event." This ensures that even those who don't qualify for Medicaid can immediately sign up for health insurance to cover essential prenatal care.
However, recent federal changes from the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (OBBBA) passed in July 2025 are creating new hurdles for access to care. Here is a simple breakdown of how these changes affect Kentuckians:
1. New Hurdles for Medicaid
The bill introduces "red tape" designed to tighten eligibility, which experts worry will lead to thousands of Kentuckians losing coverage due to paperwork errors rather than a change in need.
Work Requirements: Starting in 2027, "able-bodied" adults must report 80 hours per month of work, volunteering, or school.
Frequent Checks: Eligibility is now re-verified every 6 months (instead of 12), increasing the risk of getting dropped from the program due to reporting delays.
New Costs: Some recipients may now face copays of up to $35 per service.
2. Rising Costs in the ACA Marketplace
For those who buy insurance through Kynect, costs are rising significantly as of January 2026.
Higher Premiums: Federal subsidies that kept plans affordable have expired, causing some monthly bills to double or even triple. Use this calculator to see how you may be affected.
No More Auto-Renewal: You must now manually re-verify your info every year to keep your plan.
Shorter Sign-up Window: Open Enrollment now ends earlier, on December 15.
3. Impact on Seniors and Rural Care
Medicare: The bill delays protections that were meant to cap out-of-pocket drug costs for low-income seniors.
Rural Hospitals: Despite a new $50 billion fund for rural health, massive federal cuts—estimated at $38 billion for Kentucky over the next decade—put 35 of our rural hospitals at risk of closure.
Housing
Kentucky is not alone in facing a housing crisis. That crisis in affordable and adequate housing leads to individuals being unhoused, which often spirals into a series of negative effects that follow.
In Louisville alone, we need over 30,000 units of affordable housing for those who work full-time at minimum wage, for making less than 30% of Area Median Income (AMI), or about $20,000 for a family of three. This lack of housing drives up rents, which makes adequate and safe housing unaffordable for people who are already sensitive to small changes in prices for necessities. This, in turn, drives up Louisville’s eviction rate, which has broken new records.
Sarah wants to address the housing crisis and its components on all fronts.
First, we must create more affordable housing options to support working families that are one bad day away from being unhoused.
Additionally, reducing evictions helps to reduce homelessness. Sarah works closely with organizations like the Coalition for the Homeless, a group focused on intervention, eviction court reform, and getting better information to people before they get an eviction on their records.
After only a year in office, Sarah was able to get commonsense bills passed in 2024 that will support unhoused Kentuckians. House Bill 100 provided free birth certificates and House Bill 8 provided free IDs to those unhoused. These two bills will now allow faster access to services, medical care, and employment, simply by ensuring that the cost of vital documents is no longer a barrier.
When people experience homelessness, it can lead to a domino effect of many other challenges. These challenges result in personal catastrophes and trauma for the individuals and families that experience them, but also for our community.
Human Rights
Americans' fundamental rights and freedoms are currently navigating a period of intense legal and legislative volatility. This tension is playing out through a "top-down" approach from federal executive actions and a "bottom-up" surge of restrictive laws in state legislatures, such as in Kentucky.
While federal blueprints like Project 2025 aim to restructure the executive branch to limit various protections, Kentucky has already moved to codify many of these restrictions into state law.
Reproductive Rights
Federal Level: Efforts are underway to revive the 19th-century Comstock Act to ban the mailing of abortion medications like mifepristone nationwide. There are also proposals to cut federal travel reimbursements for service members seeking abortions out of state.
In Kentucky: The state maintains a near-total ban on abortion. In 2024 and 2025, the General Assembly passed legislation (such as HB 90) intended to "clarify" exceptions to the ban, though medical providers argue it has created further legal confusion.
LGBTQ+ Rights
Federal Level: Recent executive orders have moved to rescind Biden-era protections under Title IX, specifically removing gender identity as a protected category in schools. The Pentagon has also seen a reversal of protections for transgender service members.
In Kentucky: The legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto to pass HB 495 (2025), which prohibits the use of Medicaid and other public funds for gender-affirming care. Previous laws, like SB 150, already restricted gender-affirming care for minors and mandated school policies regarding student pronouns.
Freedom of Speech & Assembly
Federal Level: Critics point to proposals that would increase the use of federal force against protesters and the targeting of journalists through expanded executive authority.
In Kentucky: The state enacted republican sponsored HB 399 (2025), which criminalizes protests on State Capitol grounds if they are deemed to interfere with the "legislative process," carrying potential felony charges.
Labor & Environmental Rights
Federal Level: The Department of Labor has moved to cut dozens of labor regulations, including minimum wage protections for care workers. Simultaneously, the "Chevron Deference" ruling by the Supreme Court has weakened the ability of agencies (like the EPA) to enforce environmental standards without explicit, granular Congressional approval.
In Kentucky: HB 398 (2025) was recently passed, which moves to roll back state-level workplace safety and health standards, deferring much of that authority to federal oversight, which is simultaneously being deregulated.
Foster Care
In 2015, Sarah and her family opened their doors as foster parents. They wanted to be a safe place for children to land during their families' darkest moments. But through that experience, Sarah saw firsthand that while love and a safe home are essential, they aren't enough to fix a system that has been in a "capacity crisis" for over a decade.
Kentucky’s foster care challenges are unique and deeply rooted. Since the opioid epidemic surged in the mid-2010s, the number of children in out-of-home care has remained at historic highs. Unlike other states, our crisis is driven by a complex "perfect storm": chronic poverty, rural isolation, and a shortage of specialized care. While the total number of children in the system has stabilized recently, the complexity of their needs has grown, leaving the Commonwealth with a severe shortage of homes and resources.
Sarah is an advocate for common-sense policies that support children, caregivers, and social workers. Below is an overview of the challenges facing Kentucky’s foster care system and the solutions Sarah is fighting for.
Key Focus Areas for Reform
Empowering Kinship Families: Kentucky has one of the highest rates of "kinship care" in the nation—about 6% of our children are raised by relatives or close family friends. Sarah believes these families are the unsung heroes of our system and advocates for the financial and legal support they need to keep kids out of traditional foster care and with people they love.
Supporting Reunification & Adoption: Currently, 57% of children in care have a goal of returning to their biological parents, while 24% are waiting for adoption. Sarah supports policies that provide families with the tools to heal while ensuring a clear, timely path to a "forever home" when reunification isn't possible.
Easing the Workforce Burden: Our social workers are overwhelmed by high caseloads and "administrative churn." Sarah is fighting for better pay, reduced paperwork, and mental health support for the workers who protect our children, ensuring they can focus on families rather than red tape.
Protecting Youth "Aging Out": Every year, nearly 600 young Kentuckians leave the foster care system without a permanent family. These young adults face staggering risks of homelessness and unemployment. Sarah already passed two bills to ensure that any person experiencing homelessness can get a free ID and birth certificate. She continues to file bills like HB 180 to protect housing stability for youth who aged out at 18 and want to return to care with the state up until age 21, so they don’t have to sit outside the system for 90 days.
Environment
Our Bluegrass, Our Rights
In 2026, the federal government is withdrawing its oversight of our air and water, leaving Kentucky’s natural resources vulnerable to shifting political winds and outside lobbyists. As rapid technological growth brings an influx of energy-hungry data centers to the Commonwealth, we face a new frontier of environmental challenges that demand immediate action.
The warning signs are already here. In 2025, Senate Bill 89 surrendered our "Waters of the Commonwealth" to weakened federal standards. This move left up to 85% of Kentucky’s wetlands, well water, and thousands of miles of headwater streams unprotected from industrial dumping. We cannot wait for distant federal agencies to save our land; we must act as a Commonwealth to protect our own.
The Solution: The Kentucky Legacy Amendment
Sarah believes the power to protect our environment belongs in the hands of the people, not bureaucrats. That is why she is leading a bipartisan charge to place a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot. This amendment empowers voters to decide if clean air, pure water, and healthy habitats should be recognized as fundamental rights in our State Constitution.
If passed, this amendment would place your environmental rights on the same legal footing as our most cherished liberties: Free Speech, Private Property, and Religious Freedom.
Why We Must Act Now:
Closing the "Regulatory Gap": With federal EPA budgets being slashed, Kentucky’s state agencies are losing the resources they need to monitor polluters. This amendment gives Kentucky citizens a direct tool to hold the state accountable, ensuring our laws are actually enforced even when federal funding disappears.
Defending Our Local Resources: Federal "Permitting Reforms" (like the SPEED Act) are designed to fast-track massive industrial projects by cutting "red tape." While growth is important, it should never come at the cost of our health. This amendment ensures that your right to a healthy habitat cannot be bypassed for the sake of speed.
A Trustee for Future Generations: This legislation recognizes a "Trustee Obligation," legally requiring the government to manage our natural resources with the same care as a fiduciary.
Whether you are a farmer, an outdoorsman, or a business owner, we all rely on the same soil and water. This is not a partisan issue—it is a matter of stewardship. It is time to secure our rights and protect the Bluegrass for generations to come.