EMPORIA, Kan. (AP) — A former teacher at an Emporia State University campus day care has been charged with child endangerment and the former director of failing to report suspected abuse or neglect.
Keely Persinger -photo ESU
The charges were filed last month against former teacher Kimberly Schneider and former director Keely Persinger. They worked at the university’s Center for Early Childhood Education until May 2017. Their attorneys didn’t immediately return a phone message.
The affidavit is sealed, but they were named in a lawsuit filed in August in Lyon County. It alleged that four toddlers were abused at the daycare starting in 2016. The families claim the children were restrained with straps, had their arms “aggressively yanked and pulled,” and were yelled at in a “derogatory manner.” The university has declined to comment on the litigation.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Statehouse has a new mural commemorating the landmark Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ruling that struck down racial segregation in public schools.
— Governor Jeff Colyer (@GovJeffColyer) May 17, 2018
The mural was unveiled Thursday on the 64th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision.
U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson said the mural is a reminder of the people who struggled against school segregation and “inspires us to achieve the full promise” of the decision. Robinson is Kansas’ first black federal judge.
The 22-feet-wide mural has three sections depicting the controversy surrounding the 1954 decision and its legacy.
Linda Brown, the young Topeka girl at the center of the ruling, died in March. The NAACP sued after persuading her father and other black parents to try to enroll children in all-white schools.
LYON COUNTY — A Kansas woman was sentenced Wednesday to more than a year in prison and ordered to repay more than $12,000 to the Kansas Medicaid Program after pleading guilty to Medicaid fraud-related charges, according to Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
Flores- photo KDOC
Jennifer Flores, 40, pleaded guilty in January in Lyon County District Court to two felony counts of making a false claim to the Medicaid program.
Judge W. Lee Fowler sentenced Flores to 14 months in the Kansas Department of Corrections. Fowler also ordered Flores to repay $12,869.83 to the Kansas Medicaid Program and reimburse the attorney general’s office for the costs of the investigation. Convictions such as this one may also result in a period during which the defendant is prohibited from being paid wages through a government health care program.
An investigation by the attorney general’s Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Division revealed that Flores billed Medicaid for services provided as a personal care attendant for a Medicaid beneficiary, who was disabled and eligible for home-based services, while the beneficiary was hospitalized or while the defendant was incarcerated. There were approximately 935 hours that the defendant claimed she was providing these services. The crimes occurred between January 2013 and May 2016.
ACE 2018 grossed the second highest amount of financial donations in the history of Thomas More Prep Marian.
TMP-M
This year’s Auction for Christian Education (ACE) was the second largest gross in school history.
Over $750,000 was raised for Catholic education in Hays on Saturday, April 28, in Al Billinger Field House at Thomas More Prep-Marian Sr./Jr. school. The event was well attended with only a handful of tickets remaining for “An Evening in Graceland.”
To date $157,000 out of a possible $200,000 has been matched by the generosity of the Leo J. and Albina Dreiling Trust for the Learning Commons.
Estimated to be completed in the summer of 2019, the Learning Commons will be a welcomed technological and architectural display furthering the achievements of our students.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Historic Kemper Arena in Kansas City is getting a new name.
The arena is now called Hy-Vee Arena, under a deal announced Thursday by the building’s new owner.
Steve Foutch, CEO of Foutch Architecture and Development, said the Iowa-based grocery store chain has agreed to a 10-year naming rights deal for the arena, which is being renovated into a $39 million youth and adult sports facility.
Foutch did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.
The new arena is expected to attract sports and other events, and also will offer fitness gyms, golf simulators, stores and restaurants.
Foutch said the arena’s redevelopment is about 70 percent complete. The grand opening is scheduled for Oct. 5.
Ignatius J. “Ig” Schumacher, age 84, of Hays, Kansas, died Wednesday, May 16, 2018, at Via Christi Village Care Center in Hays, Kansas.
He was born July 19, 1933, in Munjor, Kansas, to Jacob and Margaret (Korbe) Schumacher.
He was a middle school teacher for over 30 years and taught a few years at St. Mary’s Catholic Grade School in Ellis. He then he spent the majority of his teaching career at the Victoria Grade School and retired in 1991. He was a seventh-grade basketball coach at Victoria for several years, in addition to coaching for the Senior Babe Ruth League and the Hays Recreation Commission. He worked the summer months in construction for Ralph Hunter Construction, Standard Construction, then Allied Inc for over 40 years.
Ig attended Munjor Grade School and was a 1952 graduate of Hays High School. He received his bachelor’s Degree from Fort Hays State College. He was a veteran of the U.S. Army. He was a member of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church and St. Joseph Knights of Columbus 3rd Degree. He enjoyed fishing, baseball and other sports, but his pride and joy were his grandkids.
Survivors include two sons, Marc Schumacher and his companion, Shawna Gannaway, Lawrence, KS; Brad Schumacher and wife, Sarah, Hays, KS; two daughters, Chris Markus and husband, Tim, Hays, KS; Michele Pfannenstiel and husband, Dan, Hays, KS; six grandchildren, Taylor Pfannenstiel and fiancé, Jonetta Reinert, Kylee Pfannenstiel, Hope Schumacher, Morgan Markus, Noah Schumacher, Isaac Schumacher, Marc’s companion children, Payton Gannaway and Megan Gannaway.
He was preceded in death by his parents; eight brothers, Felix, Julius, Adolph, Richard, Edwin, Hilarius, Nicholus and Paulinus Schumacher; four sisters, Agnes Leikam, Marcella Kuhn, Felicitus “Sally” Wood and Scholastica “Charlotte” Jensen.
Services will be at 10:00 A.M. Monday, May 21, 2018, at The Basilica of St. Fidelis, Victoria, Kansas. Burial will be in St. Joseph Cemetery, Hays, Kansas with military honors by the Hays V.F.W. Post No. 9076.
A Knights of Columbus rosary will be at 6:30 P.M. Sunday, followed by a vigil service at 7:00 P.M. Sunday, both at Cline’s-Keithley Mortuary of Hays, 1919 East 22nd Street, Hays, Kansas 67601.
Visitation will be from 5:00 to 8:00 P.M. Sunday, at Cline’s-Keithley Mortuary of Hays and from 9:00 to 10:00 A.M. Monday, at the Basilica of St. Fidelis, Victoria, Kansas. The family suggests memorials to the Hays Recreation Commission or Via Christi Village Care Center.
Condolences can be left by guestbook at www.keithleyfuneralchapels.com or can be sent via e-mail to [email protected]
RILEY COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect after an altercation with law enforcement.
Just before 8:30p.m. Wednesday, police arrested Jason Nigels, 34, of Manhattan in the 1000 block of Thurston Street in Manhattan on a two Riley County District Court warrants each for failure to appear, according to the Riley County Police Department Activity Report.
Nigels is being held on a bond of $19,000 for domestic battery, criminal damage to property, animal cruelty, battery of a law enforcement officer and interference with a law enforcement officer.
A domesticated animal was injured during Nigels encounter with law enforcement, according to RCPD spokesperson Hali Rowland. Police released no additional details.
Federal prosecutors in Kansas have agreed to address issues arising from the furor over their use of recordings of phone conversations between attorneys and clients at the pretrial facility in Leavenworth.
Leavenworth Detention Center -google image
Details remain to be worked out, but after a highly charged day-long hearing Tuesday in federal court, U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister said Wednesday that his office was prepared to work out an agreement with the Federal Public Defender’s Office and the special master appointed to look into the tapings.
“If that happens,” Cohen said, “the citizens of Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, are the big winners, as they will enjoy an increased quality of justice for the entire community.”
The disclosure nearly two years ago that attorney-client calls had been recorded triggered an uproar among defense attorneys, who said it struck at bedrock principles of due process and the right to counsel under the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment.
McAllister’s dramatic announcement came after the parties asked U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson to delay the resumption of Tuesday’s hearing and met informally in the courthouse for nearly two hours to see if they could reach some kind of accord.
In a highly unusual move, the Federal Public Defender had subpoenaed more than a dozen current and former employees of the U.S. Attorney’s Office to testify after Cohen reported that prosecutors had ceased cooperating with his investigation.
At Tuesday’s hearing, a current federal prosecutor, Scott Rask, declined to answer dozens of questions after the U.S. Attorney’s Office invoked a rule governing the extent to which federal agencies can release information.
“I’m not authorized to answer that question,” Rask repeatedly responded to questions by Cohen and attorneys with the Federal Public Defender.
The hearing also exposed the degree to which prosecutors, while initially claiming to cooperate with the special master’s inquiry, were directing their subordinates to withhold information from Cohen.
That may have prompted McAllister, who was confirmed as U.S. Attorney last year, after the tapings had been revealed, to reconsider his office’s position.
McAllister, through a spokesman, declined to comment.
Any agreement would have to address the volatile issue that led Robinson to appoint Cohen: the recording of attorney-client phone calls at the Leavenworth Detention Center and their use by prosecutors.
Criminal defense attorneys inadvertently learned of the recordings in mid-2016 in a criminal case accusing inmates and guards at Leavenworth of trafficking in drugs and other contraband. After a video recording surfaced of an inmate who had just met with his attorney, criminal defense attorneys discovered that their calls and meetings with clients may have been taped.
Evidence at a hearing in August 2016 revealed that the private contractor operating the facility, then known as Correction Corporations of America and since rebranded as CoreCivic Inc., had made recordings of confidential conversations between inmates and their attorneys and may have passed some of it on to government prosecutors in response to a grand jury subpoena.
As a result, Robinson appointed Cohen, a neutral third party, to investigate, later expanding the scope of his investigation to look into whether the government obtained and used such recordings. After initially cooperating, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in October said it would no longer provide Cohen with the information he was seeking, triggering the hearing that began on Tuesday.
A 24-page letter written by Steven D. Clymer, a federal prosecutor in New York who was appointed to act as the contact with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, asserted that there was no evidence suggesting any Sixth Amendment violations.
Moreover, Clymer wrote, “There is no evidence that the recording of attorney-inmate meetings or outgoing inmate telephone calls to attorneys was conducted at the direction of the OUSA (U.S. Attorney’s Office).”
Cohen, in the course of his investigation, found that 188 attorney-client phone calls had been recorded at Leavenworth and 700 meetings videotaped.
Any agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office would likely require that procedures be put in place to ensure that attorney-client phone calls and meetings at Leavenworth are not recorded.
Cohen told KCUR after the hearing that McAllister “deserves credit for seeing this as an opportunity and not a problem; in particular, an opportunity to reach across the aisle and work hand-in-hand with the Public Defender to find ways to improve and to increase mutual trust.”
“The willingness to say, ‘Let’s sit down and see if we can work things out’ is the first step toward rapprochement,” Cohen said.
An agreement probably would include retrospective relief as well. On Wednesday, McAllister agreed to dismiss the charges against one of the contraband defendants and to file a motion to dismiss the charges against another.
The contraband case, known as U.S.A. v. Black et al, was announced with great fanfare in early 2016, but has been overshadowed by the uproar over the tapings.
Last June, the U.S. Attorney’s Office belatedly disclosed that a prosecutor in the office, Erin S. Tomasic, who is no longer employed there, had listened to recorded calls between a defendant and his attorney.
Tomasic testified on Tuesday that she had filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Responsibility against her supervisors, including former acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall. The OPR is an office within the U.S. Department of Justice that examines attorney misconduct by prosecutors.
Tomasic, who was at the center of the tapings controversy, blamed her superiors for authorizing her after-hours entry into Robinson’s chambers in August 2016 to deliver evidence. She was later excoriated by Robinson, and said her supervisors failed to correct the record that she had not acted on her own.
SALINE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities and school district officials are investigating a Kansas teen for an alleged social media threat against the school.
On Wednesday, Southeast of Saline school officials were made aware of an alleged threat made by an individual student towards the school, according to USD 306.
“The alleged threat was made via social media using an app in which the message disappears after a short time (snapchat), according to the school district.
“As far as can be determined there is no copy or screen capture of the message,” the school district wrote. “While we beleive the alleged threat is not genuine, we assure you that we are taking it seriously.”
Deputies arrested the 17-year-old boy Thursday morning, according to Sheriff Roger Soldan. Law enforcement also provided additional security at the school Thursday, according to Soldan.
Phillipsburg resident Erma Howell passed away Monday, May 14, 2018 at the Phillips County Hospital in Phillipsburg, KS at the age of 90.
She was born April 11, 1928 in Minden, NE, the daughter of Elmer & Etta (Griffin) Smith. On Aug. 27, 1947 she married Jerry Howell in Kearney, NE. Her husband and an infant son, Patrick Wayne, preceded her in death.
Survivors include her sons, Michael of Hays, KS and Tim of Phillipsburg; her daughters, Linda Dougherty of Parsons, KS and Joyce Gregory of Lucas, KS; three brothers: David Smith of Gibbon, NE, Delbert Smith of Lake of the Ozarks, MO, and Clint Smith of Kearney, NE; one sister, Leota Kline of Ravenna, NE; 10 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.
Cremation was chosen. A memorial service will be held Friday, May 18, at 2:00 p.m. in the Olliff-Boeve Memorial Chapel, Phillipsburg, with Pastor Chris Davis officiating. Inurnment will follow in the Fairview Cemetery, Phillipsburg.
Friends may sign the book on Thursday, May 17, from 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the funeral home.
Memorial contributions may be given to the United Presbyterian Church.
