WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams says a police officer fatally shot a man as he lunged at the officer with a knife.
Chief Norman Williams said Monday that the officer tried to use a stun gun on Icarus Randolph during the confrontation Friday but it had no effect and Randolph was shot when he got within 6 feet of the officer.
Williams says Randolph, a 26-year-old military veteran, was carrying a hunting or combat knife with a blade 4 to 5 inches long when he came out of his home toward the officers.
The two officers who responded to the scene are on administrative leave, which is standard procedure after a fatal shooting.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office are investigating the shooting.
At the beginning of Monday’s Board of Education meeting, James Leiker was appointed the new USD 489 board president and Marty Patterson was named vice president.
As is customary, the first school board meeting in July is the reorganization session. Both Leiker and Patterson will serve one-year terms.
Leiker was serving as the board’s vice president and is a Democratic candidate for the state Legislature, as well. He is running in the 111th District against incumbent Rep. Sue Boldra, R-Hays.
Marty Patterson
Leiker was not present as Monday’s meeting, so Patterson immediately took what he laughingly called the “hot seat” as acting president for the remainder of the meeting.
Patterson told Hays Post he knew Leiker was going to be appointed the president, but said it was a nice surprise to be elected vice president.
“I feel privileged to be a part of the USD 489. I know sometimes talk gets negative here, but I am very pleased to have the nomination and pleased to serve,” Patterson said.
Leiker replaces Greg Schwartz as president, and Patterson is taking Leiker’s former role as vice president.
Hays Victory Christian Academy and Pre-School will have an open house at 6 p.m. July 16 at Celebration Community Church.
“At our open house you will meet the teachers, learn about our individualized instruction, receive a tour of the facilities and find out our new affordable rates for preschool through third grade with a quality award-winning, Christ-centered curriculum,” said Hays V.C.A. teacher and spokeswoman Desty Cox.
Hays Victory Christian Academy and Pre-School is housed at Celebration Community Church, 5790 230th Ave., Hays. For more information, call (785) 639 6303 or visit haysvca.com.
After significant debate and two separate executive sessions, the Hays USD 489 Board of Education approved personnel transactions that included the rehiring of former supervisor of grounds and maintenance Francis Hammerschmidt as a maintenance technician. He will serve under Rusty Lindsay, who was recently hired in the newly created position of director of buildings and grounds.
Superintendent Dean Katt said Hammershmidt’s former position was cut to improve efficiency and provide “a more supervisory role” to oversee grounds, personnel issues and work-order systems.
Katt said Lindsay recently interviewed Hammerschmidt about a filling a maintenance technician position, one of three custodial positions cut earlier in the year.
The combined total of both Lindsay’s and Hammershmidt’s positions adds up to $119,000, a matter that concerned board members Greg Schwartz, Lance Bickle and Josh Waddell.
After the second executive session requested by Lindsay, all board members came out of the session in agreement to support Katt’s recommendation to hire Hammerschmidt as a maintenance technician.
“I think we are making a grave mistake financially, PR-wise with what we are doing. I think the perception with teachers and other staff is not going to set well and that is where my concern and objection with this lies,” Schwartz said.
“However, I have been consistent and we have started by making changes in taking the board off of hiring committees and taking us off negotiation committees and doing things like that, to putting it in the hands of the superintendent,” Schwartz said. “(Katt) is doing as he should and we think he is and we should support his decision and though I am oppossed to the position, I am in support of superintendent and am going to give my vote for that reason alone.”
Board member Lance Bickle agreed.
“The pay-grade is not where I thought it should be but … if Dean feels this the direction we need to go and, budgetary-wise, we will be all right, then we will support that as well,” Bickle said.
A full list of approved personnel transactions can be found HERE.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Strong winds that blew through central and northeast Kansas left trees down and created power outages but no serious injuries have been reported.
Winds reaching more than 60 mph, accompanied by rain and hail hit the state late Monday and early Tuesday.
Westar reported up to 25,000 customers without power after the storm but that number had been reduced to about 6,000 early Tuesday. Power outages were reported in Shawnee, Wyandotte, Leavenworth, Douglas, Riley and Geary counties.
The Kansas Department of Transportation closed a section of U.S. 24 in Riley County Monday night because of downed power lines. The department said the road was expected to reopen Tuesday morning but warned drivers to find alternate routes for the morning commute.
Isolated thunderstorms will be possible across southwest Kansas late this afternoon and evening. Although severe weather is not expected, any developing storm will be capable of producing small hail and gusty winds up to 50 mph. Cooler air will filter southward into western Kansas today in wake of a cold front pushing through early this morning. Expect highs only up into the 80s this afternoon.
Today Mostly sunny, with a high near 86. North wind 9 to 15 mph. Tonight Mostly clear, with a low around 61. North northeast wind 5 to 10 mph becoming east southeast after midnight. Wednesday Partly sunny, with a high near 89. Light south wind becoming south southeast 10 to 15 mph in the morning. Wednesday Night A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 11pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 67. South southeast wind 13 to 15 mph. Thursday A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly before 8am. Mostly sunny, with a high near 95. South wind 14 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph. Thursday Night Partly cloudy, with a low around 73. Breezy. Friday Mostly sunny, with a high near 97.
WAKEFIELD, Kan. (AP) — A northern Kansas man’s troubles may go beyond a burned-out mobile home after firefighters reported finding an apparent marijuana-growing operation inside the structure.
KMAN-AM reports the fire broke out around 1 a.m. Saturday in the Clay County town of Wakefield.
Clay County Sheriff Chuck Dunn says firefighters doused the flames and notified his office after coming across what appeared to be a marijuana operation.
Dunn says officers found more than 50 marijuana plants, along with grow lights, an automatic watering system and a ventilation system.
A 54-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of growing and possessing marijuana and other offenses.
The sheriff said the fire rekindled Saturday night and destroyed the rest of the mobile home. The cause both times has not been determined.
Kearny County Hospital CEO Benjamin Anderson has been to Zomba, Zimbabwe five times in the past four years doing medical mission work. He is pictured here with one of the children from the village.- Photo by Tim Walter
By Mike Shields
KHI News Service
LAKIN — Though 25 percent of Americans still live in rural areas, only 10 percent of doctors do, according to the National Rural Health Association, and finding physicians and other medical professionals willing to work in the hinterlands remains a serious, growing problem in Kansas and other parts of the United States.
But in Kearny County, on the High Plains near the Kansas-Colorado boundary where there are only about five residents per square mile, one small hospital has adopted a distinctive approach to recruitment that in a relatively short time has produced a staff that includes five doctors, five physician assistants and a growing volume of patients.
A sixth doctor and a sixth physician assistant are scheduled to start work at the hospital next year.
“We have more candidates interested in coming here than we have room to hire,” said Benjamin Anderson, chief executive at Kearny County Hospital. “It’s not rocket science, but to do it requires a hospital to be mission-focused and it requires the right kind of mission-focused governance and leadership, and I think not every organization has that.
“But any hospital has the ability to do this,” he said, “and we would hand the blueprint to anyone who wants it for free.”
Four types of doctor
Earlier in his career, Anderson worked as a physician recruiter and saw four general types of doctors willing to work in rural areas:
• A person born and raised in the area who chose to return home.
• Foreign doctors who gained U.S. resident status by agreeing to work (usually temporarily) in an underserved area.
• “Challenged doctors,” those with addictions or other problems that “don’t do well with accountability issues.”
“And the fourth kind is the missionary,” Anderson said, “the one driven by mission or purpose” to treat those in need. “And we have intentionally chosen that fourth category.”
Those that Kearny County Hospital recruits, he said, “aren’t that interested in country clubs, not that interested in ego and money and prestige and elite social clubs. What they are there for is to serve. That doesn’t mean our community is Third World and it doesn’t mean it is inferior. There is need everywhere.”
The hospital serves patients from nine counties, including many who have come to the area to work at the Tyson Foods slaughterhouse in nearby Holcomb.
Among the beef packing plant’s 3,300 employees are immigrants from 30 or 40 countries.
Anderson said part of the pitch the hospital makes to “missionary” doctors is that “they get to serve anywhere in the world by serving in Lakin, Kansas.”
“It’s a big draw for the people we are recruiting because our employees spend their vacation time serving in the places those people are from,” he said.
Among the perks the hospital offers the doctors are eight weeks off each year to accommodate their interests in overseas mission work.
“We recognize the tie between international and domestic service,” Anderson said.
The doctors, who are employees of the hospital, also have four-day work weeks and limited emergency room calls.
“We have very, very reasonable ER calls to protect their quality of life in that way,” Anderson said.
The Zomba-Lakin connection
Three of the hospital’s doctors have been through Via Christi’s International Family Medicine Fellowship, a one-year post-residency program that focuses on teaching family practice physicians the clinical skills needed to go “where others won’t” and to deal with the variety of conditions and difficult working circumstances one might expect to find in the world’s poorest and most remote corners.
Dr. John Birky, for example, is a fellowship-trained physician at Kearny County Hospital who can pull teeth, a skill he put to use earlier this month on a mission trip to Zomba, Zimbabwe, a village in southern Africa.
He traveled there with Anderson, fellow Kearny County physician Dr. Arlo Reimer and 14 others.
Anderson said it was his fifth trip to Zomba in four years. On this latest journey, the hospital group delivered 115 gift boxes put together by hospital employees and Lakin residents for the village children.
Zomba, Anderson said, “is becoming a sister community of Lakin.”
Pioneer Baby
Back home, Kearny County Hospital has used its doctors to launch a program called Pioneer Baby, which among other things is attempting to improve prenatal care and reduce the area’s relatively high rate of gestational diabetes and cesarean deliveries.
It developed from the hospital’s growing obstetrics services.
“OB-GYN is a risky endeavor,” Anderson said. “If we’re going to do it, we need to be good at it. And to really be good, we need to do a lot of it.
“These mission-minded doctors are very popular,” he said. “Women will drive two hours to have them deliver their babies. Our hospital delivered 195 babies last year (up from 112 in 2009) and 82 percent were from outside our county, and that’s really because of the care they receive from these doctors.”
The initiative has been helped along by a grant of more than $200,000 from the Children’s Miracle Network, according to Lisette Jacobson, a faculty member at the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita.
Jacobson helped write the hospital’s grant application and is putting together a team from the medical school to evaluate the Pioneer Baby program and find ways to reduce gestational diabetes and related health conditions, which Jacobson said occur disproportionately among Hispanic, Asian and American Indian women.
The grant money has been used to buy equipment for the hospital’s birthing program, which has become a collaborative effort that includes the hospital, KU and the United Methodist Mexican-American Ministries, which operates health clinics in Garden City, Dodge City, Liberal and Ulysses.
Jacobson said though there are ways to help prevent gestational diabetes or minimize its likelihood, little is known about effectively treating it once it is a problem. It is usually detected about the time a woman is in the 22nd week of pregnancy.
“The literature is just very vague on evidence-based intervention,” she said.
A potential benefit of the Pioneer Baby initiative is that it could produce successful treatments or responses.
“This is a very unique project,” Jacobson said. “If we find something that works, that could elevate it to other rural areas not limited to the state of Kansas. We’re hoping this project will lead to the kind of model project that other states could model their interventions after.”
There are other care initiatives under way or in the works at the hospital, Anderson said, including a telemedicine project aimed at dealing with wound care, using a remote specialist.
“Wound care is a challenge out here,” Anderson said.
The hospital also is looking at telemedicine for follow-ups with patients after surgery.
Housing shortage
Despite the hospital’s success recruiting doctors, serious needs remain in the region, particularly for certain specialists.
We have our share of problems,” Anderson said. “We have no endocrinologist in our region. Our family practice doctors are managing all the diabetes.”
There is only one dermatologist in that part of the state, and “she’s booked out for six weeks.”
And Anderson said there are no psychiatrists living west of Hays.
“It’s really a problem, and on top of that mental health is poorly funded,” he said.
It is on the hospital’s “radar” to recruit psychiatrists using the same mission-driven approach it has used to attract other doctors, he said. “But we need the infrastructure in place first to do it.”
Decent, affordable housing is so scarce in Lakin that when Anderson sees a good rental property come open, the hospital leases it so that it will be available to rent to new staff moving to town.
“Housing is a major problem and at the rate our organization is growing, there’s not enough,” he said.
Financially, the hospital continues to run “on a thin margin” as it waits for the “upfront investment for future growth” to pay off, he said.
“We made a lot of investments in physicians and equipment and infrastructure that will probably take a year to mature,” Anderson said. “It’s a gamble we’re taking. We think it is a pretty good gamble, but it is still a gamble to hire that many doctors and support staff that quickly.”
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas State Board of Education members face a decision about how much data to release from statewide math and reading tests after public schools faced problems administering the exams.
The board’s discussion Tuesday was a response to cyberattacks and glitches in the computerized testing system earlier this year.
The Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation at the University of Kansas told the board last month that it should not release data for individual schools and districts. The biggest problems occurred with testing from March 10 to April 10.
The center designed pilot tests aligned with multistate academic standards approved by the board in 2010. The computerized tests moved away from multiple-choice questions and toward open-ended problems.
The state Department of Education typically releases data from testing each fall.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The latest government crop update shows the Kansas wheat harvest is making slow progress.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service reported Monday that 70 percent of the wheat has now been harvested, compared with an early-July average of 88 percent. The agency says that some cutting was delayed by the application of herbicides to control weeds.
The condition of Kansas wheat still in the field was rated as 61 percent poor to very poor, 27 percent fair, 11 percent good and 1 percent excellent.
Cooler temperatures and rain in the past week are helping spring-planted crops.
Corn condition is rated as 8 percent poor to very poor. About 34 percent of the corn is rated fair, 47 percent good and 11 percent excellent.
