LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — The percentage of Kansas high school graduates who attend state universities has fallen in recent years, and the schools are considering how to stop that decline and make up lost revenue.
In 2010, 55% of Kansas high school graduates enrolled at a state higher education institution, but by 2017 — the most recent year for which data is available — that figure had dropped to 50.3%, according to a May report by the Kansas Board of Regents.
“It’s certainly a concern,” Dennis Mullin, chair of the Regents, told The Lawrence Journal-World . “We better figure out ways to bring people into higher education.”
A healthy economy could be behind the fall. Economic growth leads to more jobs available for people with only a high school diploma, according to Elaine Frisbie, the Regents’ vice president for finance and administration.
Mullin suggested the cost of attending university also acts as a deterrent.
“The stronger economy has really taken away people who were in higher education,” he said. “They say, ‘Hey, I spend $25,000 on education or I can get a job for $45,000 a year.’ And they couldn’t do that a couple years ago.”
Shifting demographics could also play a part. The Hispanic population has grown significantly in southwestern Kansas, but Mullin said higher education is not always popular in that community due to cost, a need to support the family, and the desire to maintain a traditional family unit in one place.
The University of Kansas has taken steps to balance the loss of revenue from homegrown students by targeting out-of-state enrollment. Those students pay higher tuition and their numbers help keep the university enrollment level steady.
“KU took the strategic tack to make the university known nationally, recruit academically successful students and help them succeed to graduation once they are here,” university spokeswoman Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said.
Regents took it a step further, suggesting the higher tuition paid by out-of-state students could allow schools to decrease costs for students from Kansas pursuing higher education in their home state, thus boosting homegrown enrollment.
“We have to reach out beyond our borders,” Mullin said. “We’re going to have to draw people into the state in hopes that they are going to stay. … They are helping subsidize Kansas students.”
DAVIESS COUNTY, Mo. —The Daviess County prosecuting attorney has charged 38-year-old James Aaron Griffin in Friday’s shooting of a NW Missouri police officer with Assault First Degree; Armed Criminal Action and Unlawful Use Of A Weapon, according to Daviess County Emergency Management and the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
As of 3 p.m. Saturday, Daviess County Emergency Management reported the Trenton Police Officer was still in critical but stable condition.
————–
By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A female Trenton police officer has been shot and gravely wounded while transporting a prisoner to St. Joseph for a mental evaluation.
The prisoner was also wounded.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol is declining to identify the officer, but reports she is in critical condition after being shot in the stomach.
The patrol says the Trenton officer was taking 38-year-old Jamey Griffin to St. Joseph Friday afternoon on U.S. Highway 69 for a mental evaluation at Mosaic Life Care. A struggle occurred in route inside the vehicle. The officer suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Griffin was shot in the hand. He was restrained.
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — The Trump administration is facing growing complaints from migrants about severe overcrowding, meager food and other hardships at border holding centers, with some people at an encampment in El Paso being forced to sleep on the bare ground during dust storms.
Border Patrol continues to apprehend large groups of 100 or more migrants arriving at the U.S. Mexican border. This photos show USBP and BORSTAR agents processing individuals in March at El Paso, TX – image courtesy Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Border Patrol
The Border Network for Human Rights issued a report Friday based on dozens of testimonials of immigrants over the past month and a half, providing a snapshot of cramped conditions and prolonged stays in detention amid a record surge of migrant families coming into the U.S. from Central America.
The report comes a day after an advocate described finding a teenage mother cradling a premature baby inside a Border Patrol processing center in Texas. The advocate said the baby should have been in a hospital, not a facility where adults are kept in large fenced-in sections that critics describe as cages.
“The state of human rights in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands is grave and is only getting worse,” the immigrant rights group said in its report. “People are dying because of what is happening.”
Five immigrant children have died since late last year after being detained by the Border Patrol, including a flu-stricken teenager who was found dead in a facility migrants refer to as the “icebox” because of the temperatures inside.
Customs and Border Protection responded to the complaints by saying: “Allegations are not facts. If there is an issue it is best to contact CBP directly. In many cases the matter can be resolved immediately.”
The agency also cited its response to a critical inspector general’s report last month, in which it said the government is devoted to treating migrants in its custody “with the utmost dignity and respect.”
The Trump administration has blamed the worsening crisis on inaction by Congress.
Many of the complaints center on El Paso, where the inspector general found severe overcrowding inside a processing center. A cell designed for a dozen people was crammed with 76, and migrants had to stand on the toilets.
With indoor facilities overcrowded, the Border Patrol has kept some immigrants outside and in tents near a bridge in El Paso with nothing but a Mylar foil blanket. Others have been kept in an empty parking lot, where migrants huddled underneath tarps and foil blankets repurposed as shade covers against the sweltering heat.
A professor who visited two weeks ago said it resembled a “human dog pound.” The Border Patrol responded by adding additional shade structures, but migrants are still kept outside in temperatures approaching 100 degrees.
Migrants in El Paso and elsewhere also complained of inadequate food such as a single burrito and a cup of water per day. Women said they were denied feminine hygiene products.
Another complaint is that migrants are kept in detention beyond the 72-hour limit set by Customs and Border Protection. Some reported being held for 30 days or more, and one told The Associated Press she had been in detention for around 45 days.
The teenage mother with the premature baby, for example, spent nine days in Border Patrol custody after crossing the Rio Grande with her newborn, according to a legal advocate who visited the girl in a McAllen, Texas, processing center.
An exodus of people fleeing poverty, drought and violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador has led to a record number of migrant families being apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months. Agents made 132,887 apprehensions in May, including a record 84,542 adults and children traveling together. Those apprehended also included 11,507 children traveling alone.
President Donald Trump’s $4.5 billion border request for things such as an expansion of detention, medical care, food and shelter has languished on Capitol Hill since he sent it over six weeks ago, with House Democrats at odds with the White House. Congress is set to go on a break in two weeks.
Lawmakers are becoming increasingly agitated.
“In the first five months of this year, the number of apprehensions at the border has already exceeded the population of Atlanta, Georgia,” said Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas.
The 24th annual Kicker Country Stampede will be held from June 20-22 at Heartland Motorsports Park in Topeka. It typically is held at Manhattan’s Tuttle Creek State Park, but water levels have been high this spring.
Plans for one Topeka area road project and one highway project have been revised to ensure they don’t conflict with the expected rush of visitors. The event typically draws more than 170,000 people.
Meanwhile, Shawnee County Sheriff’s Sgt. Todd Stallbaumer says the sheriff’s office is working with event staff on personnel needed for staffing the event. This year’s performers include Old Dominion, Jason Aldean and Jake Owen.
COWLEY COUNTY — One person was injured in a grain elevator accident Friday in Cowley County.
Valley Co-op Google image
Just before 3:30p.m. Winfield Fire/EMS, Cowley County Sheriff’s Department, and the Kansas Highway Patrol were dispatched to for an industrial accident at the Valley Coop Kellogg Branch located at 16101 23rd Road, Winfield, according to Winfield Fire Chief Chad Mayberry.
Once on scene, rescue crews found an employee of the facility inside a metal grain bin with one lower leg entrapped in an auger. Emergency crews began working to free the victim’s leg from the auger while initiating patient care.
The patient was responsive and in stable condition. Due to the severity of the entanglement, crews contacted Wesley Medical Center to request a trauma surgeon to respond to the scene for consultation.
The surgeon was transported to the scene by Eagle Med via helicopter.
Just before 5p.m., rescue crews were able to remove the victim from the grain bin. EagleMed arrived on scene with the surgeon and the patient was transferred to their care and transported to Wesley Medical.
Authorities released no additional details on the incident early Saturday.
TOPEKA – The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS) is submitting a request to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to extend its current Intellectual/Developmental Disability (I/DD) waiver, set to renew July 1, 2019, in order to allow additional time for discussions with stakeholders.
It is anticipated the Frail Elderly (FE) and Physical Disability (PD) waivers, scheduled to renew January 1, 2020, will require further engagement with stakeholders to address concerns and a similar request to extend these programs will submitted to CMS.
Requesting an extension from CMS will allow the waivers to stand as written and approved today while the agency works with stakeholders to ensure the waiver renewal submissions support choice and community inclusion.
“KDADS’s decision will provide an opportunity to re-engage stakeholders, consumers and families as concerns continue to be raised,” said Amy Penrod, Commissioner of the Aging & Disability Community Services & Programs. “We want to continue the initial conversations we’ve had and take the time to thoroughly evaluate every opportunity to incorporate changes that are best for Kansas.”
Kansas has always been at the forefront of home and community-based services and supports. Since taking over leadership of the agency less than six months ago, Secretary Laura Howard has laid out a strategic vision that includes enhanced collaboration to ensure the state continues to be innovative in the way it addresses the health care needs of Kansans.
“Requesting additional time to collaborate with partners and incorporate the wisdom and contributions others bring to the table will ensure Kansas uses these waiver renewals to continue its long-standing leadership in home and community-based services,” said Secretary Howard. “Taking a step back provides an opportunity to approach these waivers with a new perspective of putting people first, incorporating innovations and supporting self-determination and community inclusion.”
Rocky Nichols, Executive Director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, and Mike Burgess, Director of Policy & Outreach, said in a joint statement, “We very much appreciate the decision by KDADS to delay implementation of these waivers and instead reengage with stakeholders to make positive changes. Kansas self-advocates with disabilities, families and service providers expressed concerns about the current versions of the waivers and KDADS listened. They are to be commended for their prudent action to slow this process down to get this right and we look forward to working to improve these waiver submissions.”
These actions do not impact the Brain Injury (BI) waiver, which is set to include the expanded populations of adult and youth with acquired brain injuries.
In 2014, CMS published final regulations affecting 1915(c) waiver programs. The purpose of the regulations was to ensure individuals receive HCBS in settings that are integrated in and support full access to the greater community. The regulations also aimed to ensure that individuals have a free choice of where they live and who provides services to them, and that individual rights and freedoms are not restricted. CMS has moved away from defining HCBS settings based on specific locations, geography, or physical characteristics, to defining them by the nature and quality of the individual’s experiences. Fundamentally, the regulations set higher standards for HCBS settings in which it is permissible for states to pay for services using federal financial participation under Medicaid, known in Kansas as KanCare.
GARDEN CITY — Every summer since 1922, locals and tourists have flocked to Garden City’s Big Pool. Once promoted as “the world’s largest outdoor free concrete municipal swimming pool,” it holds around 2 million gallons of water. “Holds” might now be an overstatement.
The Big Pool leaks. A lot.
Garden City’s Big Pool, nearly a century old, loses 200,000 gallons of water a day. CORINNE BOYER / KANSAS NEWS SERVICE
Around 200,000 gallons of water from the pool seep into the ground per day — even after renovations that replaced pipes and sealed cracks in the concrete.
Even for a pool of its size, the water loss is “excessive,” according to Fred Jones, Garden City’s water resource manager. “It’s kinda to the point where we feel like it’s probably nearing the end of its service life.”
As the pool’s centennial nears, concern over costs and repairs have grown. The city has been asking residents this year about replacing it, though nothing’s been decided yet.
Drip, drip drip
Refilling the leaking pool costs Garden City $1,000 a day. During the period that the pool is open from Memorial Day until Labor Day, the city spends between $700,000 and $800,000 on repairs, staff and water, according to Assistant City Manager Jennifer Cunningham, who oversees the operation of the pool.
The pool’s water comes from the city’s potable water supply, which is drawn from the Ogallala and Dakota aquifers. Watering and irrigation of landscapes and lawns is the biggest consumer of water in the summer, but Jones said the 200,000 gallons the pool loses each day is still a worry.
Coating the concrete in the pool’s deep end would stop the leakage. The city spent $150,000 to coat the baby pool, the shallow area, and the plunge pool. But Cunningham said the deep end would cost another $750,000, and would only solve the problem for about five years in Garden City’s harsh weather.
“Concrete breaks down over time, especially when it’s out in the cold in the wintertime and it’s out in the heat in the summertime and it’s filled with water,” she said. “It expands, it contracts and eventually breaks down.”
Instead of continuing to throw money into an old facility with porous concrete, Cunningham said bonding the amount spent on the pool and its repairs could pay for a new swimming facility.
The swimming days go way back
During the first weekend in June, Sherry Frizzell, 57, spent time at the Big Pool with her family like she’s done since she was born.
Originally the pool was just one, undivided expanse of water. There have been upgrades over the years that added swim lanes, diving boards and an inflatable obstacle course in the pool’s deep end. A walkway now divides the pool’s deep and shallow ends. Water slides empty into part of the shallow end and a separate wading pool with an elephant slide sits at the entrance.
“I want to see the pool stay,” Frizell said. “Instead of putting other stuff in, they should have fixed what was wrong in the first place.”
Sixteen-year-old Ethan Rich has been going to the pool for most of his life too — since he was 3 or 4.
“It helps in the summer when it’s hot,” he said.
Back in 1921, Garden City’s Mayor H.O. Trinkle liked to swim too and he wanted a pool. So, members of the community started digging.
“It was dug with horse-drawn slips, which is kind of like a great big shovel pulled by horses, and men with shovels,” recounted Laurie Oshel, assistant director of the Finney County Museum.
Ice skaters glided across the frozen surface in the late 1920s — before the water was drained every year.
Two elephants were trained to walk over from the Lee Richardson Zoo next door and swam in the pool from 1987, when they were babies, until around 2004 when they were relocated to Florida, according to former education curator at the zoo, Whitney Buckman.
Former Garden City resident Hank Avila, now 74, remembers taking swimming lessons at the pool in 1950 and 1951. That was soon after Latino residents gained access.
The “water was cold,” he said.
But those lessons were evidence of a breakthrough. Avila recalls that some members of the Hispanic community never learned to swim because the pool was off limits. A few years before he learned to swim, the Latino community had petitioned the city for access to the pool and been denied.
The pool ultimately became integrated before restaurants and movie theaters in the area, and turned into a haven.
“I had a lot of fun there — it was part of daily life during the summer,” Avila said. He and his uncle snuck in on hot nights after hours.
Black residents in Garden City fought longer to gain access to city’s pool.
In a July 12, 1950, Garden City Daily Telegram article, one man demanded that black community members be allowed to enter the pool. S.M. Hawkins spoke at a Garden City Commission meeting and, the newspaper reported, said, “that it was all right for Negroes to participate when it came to paying taxes, but apparently it isn’t all right for Negroes to use the swimming pool which is supported by these same taxes.”
At the same meeting, Commissioner Al Gottschalk said, “It just has never been the policy to admit Negroes.”
Through the 1960s, about 65,000 people visited the pool annually, according to documents at the Finney County Museum.
A new Big Pool?
Around 300 people use the pool every day now. Cunningham said one reason attendance has declined is because of the cost, $2 per person per day. Admission was free until 2003.
“I would love to be able to drive down there and instead of seeing a hundred to 200 kids swimming, that I see 2,000 kids swimming,” she said. “From all over town and enjoying it every day.”
To decide its future, Garden City officials gathered input all over town about the Big Pool. They talked with the Realtor’s Association, the Lion’s Club, the county health coalition, every Garden City student from 3rd through 12th grades, along with kids from nearby Holcomb, Lakin, Deerfield, and Cimarron.
Across all age groups — from households with kids to adults over age 56 — the majority responding to the city’s survey said they wanted a facility similar to the existing pool. Other options, including multiple community pools, splash parks or a water park, all ranked lower.
“This is what Garden City is known for,” said Lana Steinmetz, 46, a Garden City resident who has been coming to the pool since she was 8, hopes it will stay open. “They already put so much money into it.”
Aeroflot Flight 244 (Photos courtesy of Erik Scott)
LAWRENCE — There was a time when hijacking a plane was considered heroic. Glamorous, even.
Erik Scott
“The idea that hijacking was romanticized is hard to fathom in our post-9/11 mentality,” said Erik Scott, associate professor of history at the University of Kansas.
But that was the case 50 years ago when air safety and border security were viewed quite differently.
While working on a book about defection, Scott came across one of the most bizarre incidents of the Cold War: the first successful hijacking of a Soviet aircraft. His research led to writing an article titled “The Hijacking of Aeroflot Flight 244: States and Statelessness in the Late Cold War.” The 10,000-word piece appears in the May issue of Past & Present, one of the world’s leading historical journals..
“It grabbed my attention because it was such a dramatic story,” Scott said.
On Oct. 15, 1970, Pranas Brazinskas and his 15-year-old son, Algirdas, boarded a plane in the Georgian city of Batumi. The two Soviet Lithuanians, armed with pistols and a grenade, handed a note to a young flight attendant named Nadezhda Kurchenko. She reacted by rushing to lock the cockpit door and warn the pilot. The men began shooting when the pilot intentionally nosedived the aircraft, killing Kurchenko and wounding members of the flight crew.
The hijackers eventually commandeered the plane and diverted it to Turkey, hoping to secure asylum.
Algirdas Brazinskas, left, and Pranas Brazinskas, right, confer with a Lithuanian-American supporter after the hijacking.
Scott, who actually tracked down and interviewed the surviving hijacker, said, “The (Brazinskases) were basically trapped in limbo in Turkey for nearly a decade since the incident spurred governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain to crack down on hijacking. Although they ultimately managed to leave Turkey, fleeing to Italy, Venezuela and then the United States, they remained isolated and virtually stateless, rejected by governments around the world.”
The blight of “skyjacking” became prominent in the late 1960s and early ’70s. A five-year stretch of that era witnessed 326 hijacking attempts — an average of about one every five days.
Scott writes in Past & Present: “For a time, hijacking offered non-elite and often marginal individuals the opportunity to reorder the hierarchies that governed airspace and mount a challenge to Cold War boundaries.”
“It was not initially associated with terrorism,” he said. “And so although hijacking was very common, it was not always violent. It certainly involved coercion because you had to demand that the pilot would take a plane somewhere else, but at least at first it rarely involved people getting hurt or dying.”
Airlines and the U.S. government even disregarded the crime for a time, believing the public would not put up with added security measures at airports.
“One thing that’s misunderstood is that most hijackings in this period were not from the socialist camp to the capitalist one, but from the capitalist camp to the socialist one — in particular, from the U.S. to Cuba,” Scott said.
“So for a long time, the Soviet Union took a rather tolerant approach of hijacking beyond its borders. They saw it as a symptom of discontent in the capitalist world. They gave tacit support to hijackers, including some factions of the PLO.”
Nadezhda Kurchenko
The Soviets were not so tolerant of the hijackers of Flight 244, especially seeing as they murdered a crew member. (A 1974 Soviet film titled “Abiturentka” [The Applicant] provided a fictionalized account of this event that heroicized the slain woman.) And their fate became a complex and often absurd saga, stretching on for decades and ultimately involving the U.S.
Scott located the younger Brazinskas currently incarcerated in a California prison, where he was sentenced for bludgeoning his father to death in 2002.
“In the trial, he argued his father had a long history of violence,” Scott says of Algirdas Brazinskas. “But in our correspondence he returned to this idea that this was a heroic action they took, and they should be remembered accordingly. My own take on the incident is rather different. I see it as a very murky episode that fits with my broader research on defectors. While we tend to think of defectors as people who made a conscious political choice, many were people at the margins of society whose motivations were personal as well as political, and whose decision to flee was more impulsive than deliberate.”
While researching this article, Scott scoured the recently declassified KGB archives in Georgia. He also made trips to Russia, the U.K. and the National Archives in Maryland.
He considers this a part of a larger book project examining how defection was jointly produced by the way socialist states criminalized exit and the way capitalist states encouraged departure.
The Boston native has earned a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. He’s hoping to complete the book manuscript within the next two years.
Scott, who has worked at KU since 2012, is an expert in Soviet and global history, and he offers courses on the history of migration, comparative empires and modern Russia. He is fluent in Russian and Georgian.
“We live in a time when people like to make comparisons to the Cold War, but historians are still coming to terms with what that period entailed,” Scott said.
“While it is common to think of the Cold War as a time when borders were solid and impermeable, this incident shows that Cold War borders were much more tenuous and contested. And though the Cold War is now over and people from the former Soviet Union are free to travel abroad, all of us now live in a world where airspace and airports are much more regulated than they were in the early days of air travel.”
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A 25-year-old man has been sentenced to 46 years and two months in prison for breaking into a Topeka home with three other people and killing a man after they robbed a doughnut shop.
Kirtdoll photo Shawnee Co.
Erion Kirtdoll was sentenced Thursday for second-degree murder and aggravated robbery in the death of Tyrone Baggett.
District Attorney Mike Kagay says Baggett was shot in February 2018 when four men broke into his home. Detectives also connected the four to an armed robbery about 45 minutes earlier at Daylight Donuts.
Another suspect, Dion Troupe, is awaiting sentencing after pleading no contest to second-degree murder and three counts of aggravated robbery. And a plea hearing is scheduled for next week for a third man, Eli Perry.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly says she plans to issue an executive order to end a longstanding economic border war between her state and Missouri in the Kansas City area.
Kelly told reporters Friday that her executive order will mirror a new Missouri law that prevents incentives from being used to lure businesses across the border in the metropolitan area. The Missouri law takes effect only if Kansas acts.
It was the first time that Kelly publicly committed to issuing an executive order. In Missouri, such a policy requires a change in state law.
Both states have spent millions of dollars luring businesses across the state line over the past decade. Area officials see such efforts as wasteful and want to focus on attracting businesses from outside the region.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Federal prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of $470,000 in suspected drug money that was seized earlier this year during three Kansas traffic stops.
That one stop alone yielded $250,000 in cash. A Kansas Highway Patrol trooper found that money in vacuum-sealed plastic bags and a duffel bag after stopping a rented car in February on Interstate 70 in Ellsworth County. Three days earlier, $55,000 was found during a traffic stop along I-70 in Wabaunsee County.
Another $165,000 was found in March wrapped in plastic and hidden inside the rear fender panel of a sport utility vehicle that was pulled over on Interstate 35 in Chase County.
For now, the money that the government wants to keep is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.
SEDGWICK COUNTY — For the second time this week, fire officials in Kansas say discarded smoking materials blamed for a residential fire.
Thursday morning fire in Wichita photo courtesy KWCH
Just after 6a.m. Thursday, fire crews responded to 12351 East Willlowgreen Court in Wichita, according to Captain Jose Ocadiz. As crews arrived on the scene, the found heavy smoke and fire from the home’s garage.
The fire did $60,000 to the home and an additional $40,000 to the contents. A cigarette discarded in a plastic trash can caused the fire, according to Ocadiz.
All family members were able to safely escape because they had working smoke alarms. There were no injuries.
A fire in a duplex Thursday in Hutchinson was blamed on discarded smoking materials.
TOPEKA —Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and other leaders are responding the state Supreme Court decision approving a new law boosting funding for public schools.
Today’s KS Supreme Court decision was a victory for Kansas and our kids. Educating our kids is not just one of the best ways to address challenges facing our state, it’s also our moral and constitutional obligation. #kslegpic.twitter.com/Xe0OX8prP0
— Governor Laura Kelly (@GovLauraKelly) June 14, 2019
The high court declined in its ruling Friday to close the protracted education funding lawsuit that prompted the decision.
The school finance law boosted funding roughly $90 million a year.
The court declared the new money is sufficient under the Kansas Constitution but said it was keeping the underlying lawsuit open to ensure that the state keeps its funding promises.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly had hoped the Supreme Court would end the lawsuit. Four local school districts sued in 2010.
The districts’ attorneys argued the new law would not provide enough new money after the 2019-20 school year. Education funding tops $4 billion a year.
In 2010, 55% of Kansas high school graduates enrolled at a state higher education institution, but by 2017 — the most recent year for which data is available — that figure had dropped to 50.3%, according to a May report by the Kansas Board of Regents.
