This article was produced with ProPublica as part of its Local Reporting Network initiative. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. This story is available in plain language. One weekday morning in July, Kerstie Bramlet was at her workstation inside the Warren County Sheltered Workshop near […]
Posted inEducation
More Kansas City schoolkids are asking for help with their mental health. A few are finding it
Takeaways: 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’s finishing high school amid the FOMO energy of a social media world in its own adolescence. All of those factors, […]
Posted inState Government
Republican infighting kills effort to make it harder for voters to change Missouri law
Takeaways: 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 spring, Republicans seemed on the same page about a plan they would send to voters on the August ballot. Then the little, fragile unity that remained among Republicans […]
Posted inLocal Government
FAQ: How Berkley Riverfront is going from a dumping ground to an entertainment district
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.
But this time, it looks to be finally happening. Like, really, truly happening.
Posted inEducation
KCPS talked about shutting these schools down. Now, they’re growing
Adding about 970 K-12 students — a 7% increase — between September and mid-April has upended the conversation in the district from talk of school closures to discussions of class sizes.
Posted inState Government
Minimum wage, abortion, sports betting, an Ozarks casino: What will land on Missouri ballots?
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 […]
Posted inLocal Government
Schools say a lawsuit targeting Jackson County property assessments would be ‘catastrophic’
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.
School districts in the county claimed in court this week that a win for the homeowners would prove “catastrophic,” costing school districts nearly $1,500 per student.
Posted inHealth Care
Hospitals can stop reporting COVID numbers. That worries some public health officials
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 […]
Posted inCivic Engagement
Kansas City police jump-started a missing persons unit. Now they need to build trust with Black families
Takeaways: 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 anxious phone call to his grandmother, Tecona Donald-Sullivan, saying he thought he’d been drugged. The day before […]
Posted inState Government
The Missouri legislature is cutting local governments’ power to pass their own laws
Takeaways: If Kansas City had its way, the local minimum wage would run $17 per hour, grocery stores would only use paper bags and you’d need to pass a background check to buy a gun in town. But politicians and businesses that see these policy ideas as threats to their authority or their bottom lines, […]
Posted inEducation
Why Kansas City students are joining nationwide protests supporting Palestine
Protests, kindled by livestreamed images from Palestine and set ablaze by university crackdowns on demonstrators, rage at colleges and universities across the country. Students have pitched encampments and occupied campus buildings while calling for an end to violence in Gaza — and demanding their institutions divest of companies they believe support the war there. “We […]