BUCKLEY’S CREEK, Ky. — Governor Steve Beshear kicked off a series of town hall meetings to introduce his new education initiative with a forum and press conference at Pike Central High School Tuesday.

The initiative is called Transforming Education in Kentucky (TEK). The goal is to create a unified vision of what schools in the Commonwealth need to offer in order to better serve students today and tomorrow.

“Twenty years ago, the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) came in, and we made strides,” Beshear said. “We went from 43rd to 34th in the country in some of the information I have read.”

But, the governor said Kentucky needs to make sure students are still moving forward.

“The world hasn’t stood still since then,” he said. “Other states and other countries have made progress, too. We need to re-energize. We have to build on that progress to go to the next level so we can compete in a world economy.”

Beshear appointed the TEK Task Force to help develop new strategies while reinvigorating public and business support for K-12 education in the Common-wealth. The members of the task force include education advocates, teachers, superintendents, legislators, business leaders.

Rod Varney, principal at Belfry High School, said  he felt having a diversified group working on the initiative was important.

“I am impressed that the governor has people from different areas of education,” Varney said. “It is good that there are a lot of different people gathering information for him to use in formulating a final plan.”

The group will examine efforts currently underway in the state, such as the Common Core Standards Initiative, Graduate Ken-tucky, the Gates Found-ation/SREB college and career readiness initiative, the Race to the Top competition and the Governor’s Task Force on Early Childhood Development and Education.

Helen Mountjoy, secretary of Education and Workforce Development Cabinet and Kentucky De-partment of Education Commissioner Terry Holliday spoke at the meeting.