Kentucky governor under fire for teacher comments

FRANKFORT, Kentucky (WAVE) – In a rare off-the-cuff interview with reporters in Frankfort on Friday evening, Gov. Matt Bevin (R-Kentucky) said teachers who called in sick to protest put children’s lives in danger.

“I’m offended by the idea that people so cavalierly, and so flippantly, disregarded what’s truly best for children,” Bevin said.

“You know how many hundreds of thousands of children today were left home alone?” Bevin asked. “I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them.”

He added that children who were out of school “were harmed — some physically, some sexually — some were introduced to drugs for the first time because they were vulnerable and left alone.”

Now, politicians from both sides of the aisle have spoken out about Bevin’s comments, and the Kentucky House officially gave him a condemnation.

Sunday afternoon, Bevin posted a video on his Facebook page explaining the comments.

“One of the other things that’s clear about unintended consequences is sometimes the words that people say, the way in which they say it, or just the misunderstanding that comes from that also can have unintended consequences,” Bevin said.

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