Excerpts from The prepared text of the State of the Commonwealth address by Gov. Paul Patton

Having had less time to produce results than KERA, our efforts are nonetheless receiving similar national acclaim and have produced stunning results. Among them are: enrollment in our public colleges and universities is up 20%; 46% in our Community and Technical Colleges.

Bucks for Brains has increased our endowed faculty by 400 percent and has attracted some of the nation’s brightest minds.

Research is up 41 percent and our Virtual University is bringing education to 10,000 students in every part of the Commonwealth. Our Kentucky Virtual Library is providing access to library services statewide, at an average of 1,100 searches every hour of every day of the week.

Again, these results are the legacy of bipartisan cooperation between both chambers of the General Assembly and our administration.

As K-16 education began to flourish in the land of the Bluegrass, I and other leaders began to realize that we’d started in the middle and that there was important work that needed to be done on each end of the lifelong learning continuum.

And so in the 2000 session we addressed early childhood development and adult education, here again, making leading edge innovations that are already producing results. 155,000 women receiving help in pre- and postnatal child care, universal newborn hearing screenings, 17,000 more children immunized, universal eye examinations, better child care, scholarships for child care providers, 6,000 families receiving parenting assistance; just some of the accomplishments of our early childhood development program which is rated one of the best in the nation.

The same goes for adult education. Enrollment is up 69 percent and we’ve seen a 57 percent increase in the number of GEDs awarded; almost 21,000 Kentucky adults getting a high school credential. Family literacy enrollment doubled and is now available in all 120 counties.

And our Kentucky Virtual Adult Education web site is the first of its kind, allowing adults to learn any place, any time, at their convenience. Again, the product of bipartisan cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of government.

Yes, I’m proud of what we’ve done and I hope that you are too because it was truly a joint venture in which we all participated and we all caused it to happen.