LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A Lawrence teenager has been sentenced to six months of probation for bringing a loaded handgun to Free State High School last spring.

The student, who was 17 at the time, was charged as a juvenile. He was sentenced Friday after he pleaded no contest in September to criminal use of a weapon, a misdemeanor.

The  teenager could shorten the probation process by completing two of four options — a fatherhood course, a mentoring course, attending therapy or writing an apology letter to Free State High School.

On April 9, a school resource officer and a Lawrence police officer found a pistol in the boy’s backpack after receiving a tip from another student.

As part of his probation, he must stay employed or return to school.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Wichita police are searching for a hit-and-run driver after two patrol officers found a woman’s body on a city street.

Police say the officers were on routine patrol Friday evening on Harry Street in the south part of the city when they crossed the I-135 bridge and spotted the woman’s body lying in the westbound lanes. Officials say she had been hit by a vehicle.

First responders pronounced that woman dead at the scene. Her name had not been released by midday Saturday.

Police are asking anyone with any information on the hit-and-run to call Crime Stoppers.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democratic Gov.-elect Laura Kelly learned Friday that she stands a better chance of fulfilling a campaign promise to boost spending on Kansas’ public schools without raising taxes with a new, more optimistic fiscal forecast showing it’s possible in the short-term.

The state’s official revenue-estimating group increased by $291 million the projection for tax collections expected during the current fiscal year, which began in July. That’s 4.2 percent higher than the previous fiscal forecast made in April and brings the prediction for tax collections to $7.2 billion.

The forecasters also predicted tax collections will grow by 2.7 percent during the fiscal year that begins in July 2019, to $7.4 billion. The picture isn’t completely rosy: The forecast assumes economic growth flags in 2021 and tax collections grow then by 1.6 percent, to roughly $7.5 billion.

But the Legislature’s nonpartisan research staff released a budget profile showing Kansas can increase its annual spending on schools in each of the next two fiscal years after covering anticipated higher social services costs.

Kelly said during her campaign that she wanted to increase public school funding, and the Kansas Department of Education estimates another $90 million a year is necessary to comply with state Supreme Court mandates in an ongoing education funding lawsuit. Kelly also wants to expand the state’s Medicaid health coverage as encouraged by the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act.

“This is good news for our families and the state of Kansas,” Kelly said in a statement. “I will continue to work with leaders of both parties to keep our state on the road to recovery so we can invest in our schools, expand Medicaid and balance the budget without new taxes.”

Kansas experienced persistent budget shortfalls after an experiment in cutting state income taxes in 2012-13 engineered by then-GOP Gov. Sam Brownback. Kansas became a national example of how not to do trickle-down economics, and bipartisan legislative majorities reversed most of Brownback’s tax cuts in 2017. Tax collections have exceeded expectations ever since.

In the governor’s race, Republican nominee Kris Kobach promised to slash taxes and shrink government spending at the same time to keep the budget balanced.

Departing Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer — who narrowly lost to Kobach in the August primary — said of the new forecast: “This also puts us in a better position to give back to Kansans by lowering taxes, funding education, and making other critical investments in our state.”

Kelly said during a news conference Thursday that increasing school funding is her top priority, but during her campaign, she had a list of other neglected areas of the budget, including higher education, social services and mental health services.

Top GOP lawmakers, frustrated by what they see as unrealistic promises, said the Republican-controlled Legislature will hold her to her promise not to raise taxes.

But Kelly may have some leeway with voters to raise new revenues.

A majority of Kansas voters were at least somewhat supportive of increasing taxes to provide additional funds for public schools, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of about 139,000 voters and nonvoters. The survey, conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago, included 3,963 voters and 780 nonvoters in Kansas.

Fifty-eight percent of voters said they strongly supported or somewhat supported raising taxes to boost education funding, and a majority of them backed Kelly. Forty-one percent strongly or somewhat opposed a tax increase, and roughly two-thirds of them backed Kobach.

“That surprises me, but I don’t think a tax increase to fund schools is going to be necessary,” said Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, adding that with the new forecast, Kelly has “a lot of flexibility.”

State officials had expected a more optimistic forecast because the state’s tax collections have exceeded expectations for 17 consecutive months, the longest streak since at least February 1966, according to data compiled by The Associated Press. The forecasting group is made up of legislative researchers, Department of Revenue officials and state university economists.

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By MADELINE FOX

A University of Kansas study linked tighter welfare rules to a growing foster care load.

The state agency overseeing those programs backed those same new rules. Now, it’s hired a research team to question the findings of the KU study.

A team headed by University of Maryland professor Douglas Besharov — who once worked for a conservative think tank and who head’s the school’s welfare reform program — has been reviewing KU’s research.

But he said his goal is to see if the KU researchers’ conclusions hold up to scrutiny, and that he’s in the mainstream of data-driven opinions on welfare.

“I share the consensus view that some form of work-related activity is very good for welfare programs and welfare recipients,” he said.

Besharov is working with Neil Gilbert, a professor at the University of California Berkeley, to review KU’s findings. The two have written on welfare’s impact on marriage together for R Street, a conservative and libertarian think tank. They’ve also written for the Weekly Standard, a conservative opinion magazine.

Department for Children and Families spokeswoman Taylor Forrest said Besharov was suggested to the agency as a leading expert in child welfare and welfare programs.

She said the department approached Besharov to review the KU researchers’ work and, by extension, DCF’s policies. Forrest said DCF isn’t required to post an open call to researchers for consulting purposes.

Under then-Gov. Sam Brownback, Kansas added a requirement that able-bodied cash welfare recipients work 20 hours per week or take job training. Cash assistance benefits were also capped at 24 months over a recipient’s lifetime.

Annie McKay, head of the child advocacy group Kansas Action for Children, said the hiring of academics to challenge an ongoing study looks like an effort to shop for research backing up its policies rather than testing them.

“(DCF) wants to go poking holes in something rather than buckling down and owning the crisis at hand,” she said. “We have an administration that wants to continue to protect an ideology that is costing Kansas kids.”

Since DCF hired Besharov and his team to review KU’s findings, he and the KU researchers have clashed over sharing data.

Besharov emailed KU economist Donna Ginther and Ohio State social work professor Michelle Johnson-Motoyama on Oct. 5 to let the two know he was asked to evaluate their work. He asked about some of their methods and asked the researchers to share their state-level data.

Johnson-Motoyama replied a week later saying that their research is still a draft, not yet ready to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

“We view the peer review process as the most objective and independent approach to refereeing original research,” she said in the email. Johnson-Motoyama added that they’d be happy to share the study with Besharov once it’s published.

But Besharov pushed back. He emailed back on Oct. 18 saying he and Gilbert were “surprised” and hoped Ginther and Johnson-Motoyama would reconsider their decision to not share more information.

“The problem is that whether or not they have official findings, they’ve testified at official hearings,” Besharov told the Kansas News Service. “You can’t do it halfway. You can’t put it out there and say ‘it’s not done, so you can’t review it.’”

Johnson-Motoyama presented KU’s preliminary findings to members of the House Children and Seniors Committee and to a task force examining the state’s child welfare policies during the last legislative session.

The KU study is still ongoing, but researchers said preliminary results last year showed Kansas’ spike in foster kids — a 42 percent increase over the number of kids in 2012 — correlated with the new welfare policies.

Ginther said they’ve presented their preliminary findings to policymakers to alert them to potential harm to children.

“We’re talking about children’s lives,” Ginther said. “We have evidence that (Kansas’ welfare) policy is putting children at risk … so you inform the policymakers who are in a position to make a decision.”

Ginther and Johnson-Motoyama also presented their preliminary results linking Kansas’ changes in welfare policy to more kids in foster care at a conference in December. Ginther says they’ve continued to follow a standard protocol since then — talking with subject matter experts, adding data, and working on a draft to submit for peer review.

She said she was “stunned” by the request to see her data and programs.

“You don’t share your data and programs before your paper’s finished — it’s just not done,” she said.

Ginther said she also couldn’t share the data they used on child abuse and neglect because it’s restricted. She said she got that information from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect, through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families.

The agency’s website says “Restricted use files of (child abuse and neglect) data are archived at the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and  Neglect (NDACAN) at Cornell University and available to researchers who are interested in using these data for statistical analyses.” Officials from the Administration for Children and Families did not return calls for this story.

After Besharov’s second email, Ginther said she was contacted by KU’s department of public affairs passing on a request from Gov. Jeff Colyer’s office asking why KU couldn’t share the study data and programs.

Kara Zeyer, a spokeswoman for Colyer, confirmed that the governor’s office reached out to KU at Besharov’s request.

Zeyer said the governor’s office got involved because if the KU study showed Kansas’ welfare policy was harmful, “we would be happy to have that information so we could make improvements.” Zeyer said it’s a matter of transparency — if KU has the information, it should be able to share that data with Besharov and his team.

Besharov said he was initially given an Oct. 31 deadline to complete his review. He said he let DCF know he wouldn’t be able to make the deadline, and didn’t receive any pushback about his review not being complete before the November elections.

Ginther said she’s shocked by Besharov’s pushing to get her data and the governor’s response of reaching out to KU.

“I’m just flabbergasted by the steps they’ve taken,” she said.

Madeline Fox  is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @maddycfox.