NEW YORK (AP) — Four more states are reporting illnesses in a food poisoning outbreak linked to romaine lettuce.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its numbers on the outbreak Wednesday, revealing that 149 people in 29 states had gotten sick.
E. coli- Center for Disease Control image
It’s unclear if new illness are still occurring. There’s a lag in reporting, and the most recent illness began two weeks ago.
Florida, Minnesota, North Dakota and Texas have joined the list of states reporting at least one E. coli illness linked to the outbreak.
At least 64 people have been hospitalized, including 17 with kidney failure. One death, previously reported, occurred in California.
Health officials have tied the outbreak to romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona, which provides most of the romaine sold in the U.S. during the winter.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The Latest on the death of a 2-year-old Wichita boy at a time the Kansas Department of Children and Families is under fire for the deaths of young children whose abuse had previously been reported to the agency. (all times local):
5p.m.
Lucas Diel photo Sedgwick Co.
The mother of a 2-year-old Wichita boy who died from suspected abuse and the woman’s boyfriend have been charged with murder in the first degree. It is the latest case in the Wichita area in which young children died after law enforcement and state welfare officials received reports they were being abused.
Elizabeth Woolheater and Lucas Diel made their first court appearances Wednesday via video feed from jail. They are charged in the death of Anthony Bunn. They have not yet been assigned public defenders.
Elizabeth Woolheater photo Sedgwick Co.
The head of Kansas Department of Children and Families announced more changes Tuesday at the embattled agency. Secretary Gina Meier-Hummel said in a news release that the agency will be “implementing corrective action plans” in child welfare programs and will be making personnel changes.
ST. CHARLES, Mo. – Fort Hays State women’s golfer Hannah Perkins wrapped up her junior campaign at the 2018 NCAA Division II Super Region 3 Championship this week. Perkins finished the tournament in a tie for 30th individually. The junior fired a final round 8-over (80) on Wednesday (May 9) to finish at 14-over (230) for the week.
“I wasn’t hitting the ball good and wasn’t able to get up and down from off the green,” said Perkins.
Perkins finished the season with a 78.5 scoring average over the course of 22 rounds played. The Wichita, Kan. native posted her lowest score of the season in the first round of the Central Regional (May 7) when she fired an even-par (72) round. Perkins picked up 38 pars and three birdies throughout the week.
“We didn’t hit as many greens in regulation today,” said Rich Guffey. “We need to work on reading greens better and making putts.”
Augustana took home the team title with an aggregate score of 890. Lindenwood claimed a runner-up finish with a 900, while Arkansas Tech (902) finished third. Kali Trautman of Augustana captured the individual title with a 1-under par (215) finish for the week.
“I just plan on practicing more and hope to play good enough next season to get back [to Regionals],” said Perkins.
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A Catholic priest in Johnson County is charged with stealing more than $40,000 from a parish where he was pastor.
Rev. Cramer-photo Johnson Co.
Rev. Joseph Cramer is charged with felony theft and two counts of felony computer crime. Prosecutors say he stole the money from Divine Mercy Parish in Gardner between November 2015 and May 2016.
The 68-year-old Cramer was released on $5,000 bond Tuesday.
Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas officials said they contacted prosecutors last September. Cramer was placed on administrative leave and has resigned as pastor.
Court documents don’t say how the alleged crimes occurred or how the money was spent. But as a condition of his bond, Cramer was ordered to stay away from casinos.
I love the month of May. It ushers in so many joyful celebrations of our faculty, staff and student achievements. My past two weeks have been filled with many opportunities to congratulate and thank people.
Dr. Tisa Mason
I particularly love the FHSU tradition of surprising faculty award recipients during their classes. Interim Provost Jeff Briggs, Deron O’Connor, community president of Commerce Bank, (Commerce provides a cash award), colleagues, students, friends and I, accompanied by our photographer Mitch Weber, interrupt a class in session to surprise each of three faculty members with this high distinction.
Each semester we present three awards. This year, Angela Walters, Department of Informatics, received the teaching award; Dr. Mohammad Riazi-Kermani, Department of Mathematics, received the award for research and scholarly activity; and Ken Windholz, Department of Psychology, received the service award.
The joy and appreciation of those moments were deep, and these wonderful events got me thinking about the power of encouragement and celebration.
One of my favorite stories is about a man named Don Bennett—the first amputee to reach the summit of Mount Rainier. That’s 14,410 feet on one leg and two crutches! While most of his story has to do with his own courage and vision, an important part involves his daughter, who fueled that courage and vision when the journey was getting tough.
During his climb, Bennett reached one particularly difficult stretch—an ice field that took him four hours to cross. His daughter stayed by his side the entire time he was hopping across the ice. With each hop she shouted: “You can do it, Dad!” “You’re the best Dad in the world!” This spontaneous verbal encouragement kept Bennett going, strengthening his commitment and his dream to make it to the top.
To this day, Don Bennett says there was no way he could have quit with his daughter giving him such words of encouragement.
I think about this story a lot—the difference that encouragement and celebration can make in our lives. I recall being surprised one day by a letter from a student athlete who was responding to a quick note I had sent her. This particular student had just earned recognition in her individual sport. In my note I congratulated her achievement and ended with the words, “I am proud of you.”
In her letter she thanked me for acknowledging her accomplishments, and then she wrote that no one had ever told her they were proud of her. I was astonished—how could that be? She was quite an accomplished young lady.
The memory of her words, “no one has ever told me they were proud of me,” stays in my heart as a constant reminder of the power of recognition and of my responsibility to encourage the hearts of others as authentically and frequently as possible.
Good job. Well done. I am proud of you. When these power words are combined with a supportive academic community, loving families and friends, and hometown communities who share the pride of “one of their own”—well, that is life changing. And being a part of those moments in life reminds me again of why Fort Hays State University focuses on creating a campus environment that our students, faculty, staff and alumni call home.
The music department at Thomas More Prep Marian Jr./Sr. High School was very busy this school year. Below are the highlights of our year as well as the accolades of the music program. A blessed thank you to all the kids, their parents and the TMP music boosters for their support once again this year.
Music Highlights of 2017-2018
KMEA Junior High Honor Band – 11 Students, 4 Alternates
KMEA Junior High Honor Choir – 13 Students
KMEA Junior High All State Choir – 1 Student
KMEA High School Honor Band – 10 Students, 1 Alternate
KMEA High School Honor Choir – 15 Students
KMEA High School Honor Jazz Band – 1 Student
KMEA All-State High School Band – 1 Student
KMEA All-State High School Choir – 3 Students, 1 Alternate
MCEL Music Festival at Norton in February – 42 Entries with 2 APs, 20 I Ratings and 20 II Ratings
JH Band – I, I, II
JH Choir – I, I, I
Regional Music Festival – 21 Entries
State Music Festival – 8 entries with 7 receiving a I Rating
High School State Band – I, I, I for the 15th consecutive year
GALENA, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say two bicyclists from Germany were struck and killed in southeast Kansas.
Authorities closed K66 Highway between Galena and Riverton for 8 hours while emergency personnel worked the fatal crash-photo Cherokee Co. Sheriff
The Kansas Highway Patrol says a minivan traveling in the same direction struck the two cyclists from behind Tuesday morning. It happened on Kansas 66, about 1½ miles (2.5 kilometers) west of the town of Galena, just north of the Oklahoma state line.
The cyclists died at the scene.
Spokesman Rick Wingate says the identities of the two cyclists could not be released yet because relatives in Germany must be notified. He says the German consulate has been notified.
The patrol’s report says the crash was not a hit-and-run. Wingate says he wasn’t aware why the two were in Kansas.
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CHEROKEE COUNTY — The Kansas Highway Patrol is investigating
a fatal accident involving two bicycle riders.
The KHP reported a vehicle and two bicycle riders were westbound on Kansas 66 a mile and a half west of Galena just after 11 a.m. Tuesday. The vehicle rear-ended a bicycle.
Authorities have not released names of the victim or additional details.
KANSAS CITY (AP) – Fire officials say an improperly discarded cigarette caused a three-alarm fire that seriously damaged an office building in North Kansas City.
Tuesday fire in north Kansas City -image courtesy KCTV
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Wednesday the fire was accidental and no criminal investigation will be conducted.
Fire officials say dry conditions and wind helped fuel the fire.
The building where the fire broke out Tuesday afternoon housed 13 businesses. No one was injured and a damage estimate was not available.
Ham says the ATF was able to quickly determine the cause because there were many witnesses and video of the fire.
The Kansas City Star reports the building’s owner, N.T. Reality, is working to help the displaced businesses relocate to other company-owned properties.
HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) — Kansas State Fair officials are warning about websites selling fraudulent tickets for this year’s fair.
Several customers learned after buying tickets that the websites they used weren’t authorized to sell tickets.
Marketing Director Joy Whitman said in a statement that the sites use the words Kansas State Fair in their web addresses. Customers receive email confirmations that are incomplete or contain the wrong customer information.
The fair is working to have the fraudulent sites removed from Google’s search engine.
The only legitimate online ticket seller for the Kansas State Fair is Etix, which can be accessed at kansasstatefair.com, under the “tickets” button. Tickets can also be purchased by calling the Kansas State Fair or at the box office in the Fair’s administration building.
HAYS, Kan. – Fort Hays State head baseball coach Steve Johnson announced his resignation Tuesday effective at the conclusion of his current contract this summer.
After concluding his eighth year as the skipper at FHSU last week, Johnson now ranks fifth in coaching victories all-time at FHSU (162-228). The Salisbury, Mo. native led the team to three MIAA Tournament appearances, including a trip to the championship game in 2012.
Steve Johnson discusses his resignation as FHSU baseball coach
Curtis Hammeke discusses the FHSU baseball program and search for a new head coach
Johnson coached 37 All-MIAA performers in his first seven seasons in Hays, including 10 All-Region selections and one All-America honoree. Heading into this season, 105 student-athletes had been listed on the MIAA Academic Honor Roll under his tutelage.
Johnson came to FHSU from Butler (Kan.) Community College, where he was head coach for seven years. While at Butler, Johnson compiled a record of 235-155. He led the program to at least 30 wins in his last six seasons and an NJCAA World Series appearance in 2006. The Grizzlies were co-champions of the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference Western Division three times in Johnson’s tenure. He was twice named the Jayhawk Western Division Coach of the Year (2005 and 2007) and was the NJCAA Central District and ABCA Regional Coach of the Year in 2006.
In seven years at Butler, Johnson coached five all-region selections and 34 all-conference selections. Four of his players were selected in the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft. Six former players went on to play professional baseball. He also had six players earn NJCAA Academic All-American honors.
Prior to becoming the head coach at Butler Community College, Johnson spent eight years as an assistant with three different successful programs. His last two years (2002 and 2003) as an assistant were at the University of Louisiana-Monroe, where he was the pitching coach and chief recruiter. He helped the Indians to the 2002 Southland Conference Championship. He was assistant coach at Barton (Kan.) Community College for four years (1998-2001), helping the Cougars average 30 wins per season in his time with the program. Johnson started his collegiate coaching career as an assistant at Fort Hays State for two years (1996 and 1997). He helped the Tigers to the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championship and finish runner-up in the school’s first ever NCAA Division II West Regional appearance. In his eight years as an assistant, he coached 10 pitchers that went on to play professional baseball, with two making it to the Major League level. Combining the three institutions together, Johnson had a record of 262-190 as an assistant coach.
Johnson played collegiate baseball for three years. He played two years at Barton (Kan.) Community College from 1989 to 1990, earning All-KJCCC and All-Region 6 honors. He went on to play one year at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where he was named MVP of the Sun Belt Conference Tournament. That year, UAB made their first of two NCAA regional appearances in school history. In 1992, Johnson signed with the St. Louis Cardinals organization and played five seasons in professional baseball.
In 2000, Johnson was inducted into the El Dorado (Kan.) Baseball Hall of Fame for his performance with the El Dorado Broncos summer collegiate team during the 1990 and 1991 campaigns.
A nationwide search for the 15th head baseball coach in program history will begin immediately.
FROM LEFT: Ron Ferris of Nabholz Construction, Amber Beverlin of DLR architect, and Stephanie Meyer, DLR education funding specialist, speak to the Hays school board April 30.
By CRISTINA JANNEY Hays Post
The Hays school board asked the administration last week to work on a voter survey that would further explore why a school bond election in November failed.
Members of the Vision Team, the district’s architect DLR and its construction manager Nabholz Construction were at the meeting April 30 to further analyze why the last bond election failed and discuss what might be needed to have a successful bond in the future.
The board has spent the last several months talking about facilities needs, but no new bond or bond committee has arisen from those discussions.
Valerie Wente, member of the Vision Team, said she thought there was a push to put forth a bond that was larger both in dollar amount and time than what the voters in a previous survey had said they would be willing to pay.
The $78.5 million bond would have been paid for over 30 years and would have increased taxes on a home worth $150,000 by $16.43 per month.
“The fact of breaking that down into smaller bonds and asking for smaller amounts over three or four or five bonds in the future is a very scary thing,” Wente said. “We have tried to explain this in many different ways. This community is different than your Johnson County, Shawnee County, other places who have passed bonds year after year for large amounts of money without a thought. You can look at that as they value their education extremely high in their communities or those that go to polls vote for education as a part of their basis. I don’t know what that dynamic means. But this animal in Hays is different.”
Wente said she did not know if it is a division in the community, a financial concern or the fact that Hays does not receive state money for bond projects as many other districts do. Doing multiple bonds in the future may be the way to go, but Wente said she did not think at the time of the 2017 bond proposal, the district was going to be able to get another bond to pass five years down the road.
That would have left two-thirds of the district’s needs unmet.
Vision Team member Chris Dinkel, who is now a Hays city commissioner, said the bond faced multiple obstacles: a tax increase, an unstable economy, a deep distrust of education both at the state and local levels, lack of participation from the community, a tough political climate in Hays and a lack of buy-in from both the community and the board.
“The first time it felt like it was the board’s plan, and you said, ‘Here it is. Run with it.’ This time it felt like the board said, ‘This is all you. I got nothing to do with it.’ We need to meet in the middle on that,” Dinkel said. “Yes, the community is going to come together and present a plan to the board of education, but this is also the board of education’s plan. There needs to be buy-in on both sides. I think that is definitely an area where we need to do better and where we fell down last time.”
Board president Lance Bickle said he agreed with Dinkel about the board’s involvement.
Tom Wasinger was also on the Vision Team and he did not support the final proposal the team sent to the board. He said the Vision Team and the board did not listen to the people.
“You guys did a poll through DLR and it said three main points,” Wasinger said. “They want smaller, more frequent bonds. They wanted no larger than $10 per month increase per household. When you added up the numbers, it was 58 percent for each one of these, and they wanted to focus on elementary schools.
“When we started out this process, we were pretty much on this wave length, and then all of a sudden it just kind of blew up.”
Wasinger continued, “The idea that this community won’t support a bond I think is fallacious. It simply has to be a bond they think is worth fighting for.”
Wasinger said he thought the Vision Team was very unbalanced, yet he thought it will be difficult to get people who have differing views to come and sit through hours of meetings on a bond issue. He said he would like several plans, possibly from several groups to be presented to the board and then the board pick the best plan or combination of plans for the next bond.
Board member Greg Schwartz has advocated for the board to be heavily involved in the process of developing the next bond, noting the school board meetings are public and televised.
“Politically, I think you are wrong about this,” Wasinger said. “I don’t think people care about coming to these meetings. I don’t think people care about what you say at these meetings. At the end of the day, they just want to know you listened to them. If you had just listened to this poll, you would have passed a bond.”
DLR’s statistics indicated few vested voters, including parents and teachers, voted in the election. There are about 3,800 vested voters in the district; 48 percent or almost 1,900 of those people are registered to vote, but only 937 of those people (about 24 percent) voted.
Stephanie Meyer, education funding specialist for DLR, said the group likes to see parent participation closer to 70 percent and 50 percent is average. She said 24 percent was one of the lowest participation rates she’s seen in a bond election.
“There is a disconnect between what is happening here and whatever is happening with the parents that is making them apathetic about it, which is a huge issue. If you had increased to 50 percent, that would have been an extra 1,000 votes. …
“What is causing this apathy? I think it is worth it to take time to talk to the voters and other community members and really drill down on that.”
Changing election type has helped other districts, which might mean a mail ballot for the district’s next bond vote, she said.
Nabholz’s Ron Ferris said he thought the process for the 2017 bond was good. He noted the cost of resolving the district’s facility issues is only going to increase as inflation pushes up construction costs.
Amber Beverlin of DLR said she would still recommend addressing the district’s elementary schools first as they are the district’s oldest buildings. The district could also increase efficiency by having one or more four-section elementary schools as opposed to two- or three-section schools. The cost of a new four-section elementary school was estimated at $21 million.
TOPEKA, Kan. – The Kansas State High School Activities Association has released brackets for next week’s regional baseball tournaments.
Class 4A Division I Hays Regional
The Hays High Indians (11-7 ) are the No. 3 seed in their own regional and open with No. 2 Buhler (13-7) at 3:30pm Wednesday, May 16 at the Hays High Field. McPherson (14-6) is the No. 1 seed and opens with Ulysses (5-15) at 2 pm. The two winners play in the finals at 5 pm.
Class 4A Division II Hoisington Regional
Russell/Victoria (9-7) is the No. 2 seed and will open with Lindsborg-Smoky Valley (6-12) at 3:30pm on Tuesday, May 15 at Legion Field. Nickerson (19-1) is the top seed and plays Hoisington/Central Plains (6-14) in the first semifinal at 2 pm.
Class 3A Lakin Regional
Thomas More Prep-Marian (17-1) is the No. 1 seed and receives a first round bye. They will play the winner Monday’s game between Goodland (10-9) and Scott City (6-7) at 2 pm on Wednesday, May 16. Lakin (15-3) is the No. 2 seed and Colby (12-6) is the No. 3 seed.
Class 2-1A Salina-Sacred Heart Regional
Ellis (11-5) is the No. 2 seed and receives a first round bye. The Railers will play the winner of Monday’s game between Brookville-Ell Saline (13-7) and Ellinwood (1-17) at 3:30 pm on Wednesday, May 16 at Matson Field. Little River (17-3) is the No. 1 seed.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas City, Kansas, police officer has been charged with inappropriately touching a non-uniformed female co-worker while he was on duty.
District Attorney Mark Dupree announced the charges Tuesday-photo courtesy Wyandotte County
Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree announced Tuesday that Steven Rios faces one misdemeanor count of sexual battery. The incident is alleged to have occurred in March.
Rios has worked for the department for more than a decade and was on the police detail that protected former Mayor Mark Holland.
If convicted, Rios faces up to six months in the county jail and up to a $1,000 fine. He doesn’t have a listed number. Police and prosecutors didn’t immediately respond to emails asking whether he had an attorney.
