Fayette County Public Schools walked away from this year's Kentucky Continuous Improvement Summit with two Best Practice awards — one for the district itself and one for an elementary school — each accompanied by a $1,000 check for school improvement.
The Kentucky Department of Education presented 13 Best Practice awards total at the summit, held Sept. 21-22 at the Central Bank Center in Lexington. The district was recognized for a cross-department collaboration initiative in middle school, according to fcps.net.
The program titles reflect the focus of each initiative. The district-level award centers on getting middle school departments to work across traditional boundaries toward shared proficiency goals. The elementary school's recognition focuses on co-teaching strategies for multilingual learners.
KDE Associate Commissioner Kelly Foster handed each winning team a $1,000 check, designated for school improvement purposes, according to kentuckyteacher.org.
The 2026 Kentucky Continuous Improvement Summit brought together more than 1,200 educators and education leaders from across the Commonwealth to learn, collaborate and share ideas that can strengthen teaching, leadership and student outcomes.— Robbie Fletcher, Commissioner of Education
The summit is an annual event organized by KDE and Cognia. This year's gathering drew more than 1,200 educators and education leaders from across Kentucky over two days of sessions, including keynote insights from Mike Rutherford on high-performance teaching, leadership development and results-based improvement, according to kentuckyteacher.org.
The Best Practice awards are tied to a KDE program launched in 2013. The Best Practices and Sustainability website was designed as a clearinghouse for strategies that have demonstrated measurable results in student learning, achievement, and school and district processes. Any Kentucky teacher, school, district or regional cooperative can submit a practice for consideration, according to kentuckyteacher.org.
The next Kentucky Continuous Improvement Summit is already scheduled: Sept. 13-14, 2027, according to kentuckyteacher.org.
Why it matters — The two awards give FCPS and Russell Cave Elementary statewide validation for approaches — cross-department middle school collaboration and co-teaching for multilingual learners — that other Kentucky schools can now look up and replicate through KDE's Best Practices website.
⚠ Not yet confirmed
- Russell Cave Elementary name and specific award title
- District award title 'Breaking Silos, Building Proficiency: Cross-Department Collaboration in Middle School'
- Elementary award title 'Better Together: Maximizing Success for Multilingual Learners through Co-Teaching'
- FCPS posted news of the awards on Sept. 30, 2026
- Reference to 'classroom strategies' in dek (changed to initiatives)
Reported by fcps.net, kentucky.com, kentuckyteacher.org
Where this comes from
Written by Papalocal's AI from these outlets' reporting. It can miss or misread things; the outlets are the record.