Takeaways State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick’s office is auditing the Independence School District.  No one requested the audit. Instead, it’s part of Fitzpatrick’s plan to conduct more routine audits of school districts, even when they aren’t accused of wrongdoing.  The district’s move to a four-day school week is a reason it was selected, along with its size and location.   Independence School District Superintendent Dale Herl feels targeted by the state for moving to a four-day school week.  On Wednesday, Missouri Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick announced a plan to audi ..read more

Takeaways: Kansas City has the highest rate of unsheltered people experiencing long-term homelessness in the country, with 96% living on the streets. Last year, the City Council awarded Hope Faith Homeless Assistance Campus $7.1 million in federal funds for a low-barrier shelter. It rescinded the grant later in response to neighborhood objections.  A low-barrier shelter is seen as key to meeting the Zero KC goal of essentially ending homelessness by 2030. Ken Simard mainly slept under the Blue Parkway bridge near the railroad tracks along the Blue River for the seven years he was hom ..read more

Takeaways: The aftermath of the pandemic, the proliferation of smartphones and social media have contributed to a growing demand for youth mental health services. Shortages of psychiatric hospital beds and providers make it harder to get them help. A program in some area school districts tries to reach kids early and teach emotional skills that can carry them into adulthood. Melvin White sits with his generation at a demographic Ground Zero for mental stress. The Schlagle High School junior survived COVID isolation during middle school. He’s never known a world without smartphones. And he ..read more

Takeaways:  Missouri Republicans’ plan to raise the threshold for passing initiative petitions failed amid intraparty discord and a Democratic filibuster.  The bill aimed to make passing initiative petitions harder ahead of a potential November vote on allowing access to abortion.  Republicans couldn’t agree on an approach to passing the bill, effectively killing it in the final hours of the legislative session.  After years of effort, Missouri Republicans were poised to take a step toward making it harder for initiative petitions to pass.  For the majority of the ..read more

A sparkly new development coming to Kansas City’s riverfront? Like we haven’t heard that line before. Seemingly every decade like clockwork, somebody pushes an idea that would finally put Kansas City’s 55-acre blemish along the Missouri River to good use. And, inevitably, the proposal ends up elsewhere — and the riverfront remains empty. It’s not for lack of trying. In the seven decades since the city took over this land, public officials and profit-sniffing developers have made pitches for turning the riverfront into a premier spot for a baseball stadium, an aquarium, government offices, a m ..read more

The line of children filing down the hallway of George Melcher Elementary School in Kansas City seemed endless.  “This is one first grade class,” Principal LaKeisha Paul said.  “How many kids do you have?” she called to the teacher. The answer was 32.  It’s hard to keep track. New students have continued to pour into Melcher throughout the school year.  The kindergarten-through-sixth grade school went from 298 students in early September to 413 in mid-April, a nearly 39% increase. Growth didn’t stop there. On May 7, Paul said the school had seen 95 new students since April ..read more

Whether Missouri legalizes abortion and sports betting, allows a casino at the Lake of the Ozarks or raises the minimum wage hinges on whether state and local officials judge that most of 1.25 million signatures on four petitions are legitimate.  The secretary of state’s office has three more weeks to process the petitions and ship them to county clerks to verify the signatures. Those clerks need to return their reports to Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office no later than July 30 to prepare for the November vote.  It’s a time-consuming process that requires expertise. And the c ..read more

School districts in Jackson County saw home property assessments leap by nearly a third — and add more heft to their tax bases. They set their property tax rates lower to reflect the beefier assessments — amid a furor from homeowners and politicians contending the numbers inflated the real value of properties in the county. That tossed Jackson County into the center of a court challenge from the state that could test who can challenge assessments and how. Meanwhile, those schools? And other entities that get tax money such as police, fire departments, libraries, mental health services?  ..read more

In some ways, a number changed how we viewed the pandemic. Early in the spread of COVID-19, the federal government made hospitals report how many of their beds were filled with patients suffering from the virus. News accounts — and often hospitals themselves — began sharing that tally with the public.  The COVID count became a grim daily thermometer of how quickly the virus was coursing through a community. Health experts say it became an important reality check. “We thought that telling people the truth about how many patients we had would be the best way for the public to know how seri ..read more

Takeaways:  Kansas City and Missouri have recorded a rise in missing persons cases.  The Kansas City Police Department has faced criticism police don’t take cases of missing Black people seriously enough and that filing a report is too hard. Distrust between Black communities and law enforcement discourages families from coming forward about missing family members. T’Montez Hurt had just started working at a Price Chopper in Grain Valley to save money after a semester away from Missouri Western State University. Then in the early hours of Feb. 1, the 19-year-old placed an anxiou ..read more