EMPORIA — Laura Braun, an Emporia State University rehabilitation services education major from Hays, was among more than 570 students who made the honor roll in the fall 2013 semester.
To qualify for the semester honor roll, students must earn a minimum 3.80 semester grade point average in at least 12 graded hours.
Planning for the future is vital for families who want to preserve assets for the next generation.
K-State Research and Extension will offer the workshop “Preserving the Family with Estate Planning,” to aid families in beginning the process of transitioning from one generation to another. Topics will include estate planning basics, family communication, transfer of non-titled assets, charitable estate planning and farm transition planning.
The workshop will be held in two locations:
• Thursday, March 13, a Immanuel Lutheran Church, Hoxie
• Friday, March 14, at Thirsty’s, Hays.
The cost for the all-day workshop is $15 by March 7 and includes program handouts, refreshments and lunch.
The goal of the workshop is to help families use estate planning to preserve the most valuable asset of all: the family itself. Save the date and plan to attend.
Contact the Ellis County Extension Office at (785) 628-9430 for a registration brochure and more information.
TOPEKA — The House Education Committee dealt a blow to advocates of a financial literacy requirement in high schools Thursday. After lengthy debate, the committee tabled House Bill 2475, which would mandate a financial literacy class as a requirement for graduation.
All members of the committee agreed that the subject teaches critical skills that students need to have after graduation but issues such as schedule disruption persisted.
“It may not be appropriate for us to even have perception of mandating it at the level of junior and senior level and have because I know of a lot of kids who have their whole schedule completely full and to have them drop something to have this option is not fair,” said Rep. Shanti Gandhi, R-Topeka. “I don’t think we can really go through with this because there are some loose ends that we need to really polish up. I don’t think that can happen. I think we may be going a little too quick.”
If passed, the bill would be put into effect in July, just in time for the 2014-15 school year. Rep. Melissa Rooker, R-Fairway, argued that while it may not be a disruption for teachers, it will be for students, as they are already enrolled in classes for next semester. Still, others said the bill is a matter that needs to be taken care of sooner, rather than later.
In addition to opposing the bill, Rooker was concerned with an amendment that would allow school districts to offer a personal financial literacy assessment for students in lieu of the semester-long course. Her main concern was the cost and whether it would be stepping on the toes of the State Board of Education.
The test would be created by the State Board of Education and would have to coincide with state standards. While there are currently some financial literacy questions on math assessments, there is not a single existing assessment on the subject.
“So don’t think that it’s already here and all we have to do now is just transfer it,” said Rep. Carolyn Bridges, D-Wichita. “Test development is a big deal.”
The amendment passed, but issues with the bill being a mandate forced the committee to table it with a 9-8 vote.
WICHITA — State officials say they’re close to launching a website for helping Kansans figure out which nursing home offers the highest quality care in their communities.
Shawn Sullivan, secretary of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services
“It should be up sometime in April,” said Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services Secretary Shawn Sullivan, at a meeting of the House Committee on Children and Seniors earlier this week. “The idea is for this to become a resource for people to use when they’re having to choose a nursing facility for themselves or for a loved one. It shouldn’t be the only factor in the decision-making process, but it’s a resource that we feel should be made available.”
The new program, called Kansas Nursing Home Report Card, will assign each of the state’s 330 nursing homes a series of one-to-five ratings based on licensure inspections, quality indicators, staffing data, and resident satisfaction surveys.
The KDADS report card, Sullivan said, would be similar to but better than the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid’s Five-Star Quality Rating System, which has been in place since 2008.
KDADS, he said, has contracted with a national company, My InnerView, to conduct in-person interviews with roughly 7,000 of the state’s 18,000 nursing home residents.
Sullivan said that survey should be completed this week. The survey questions, he said, were designed to measure residents “overall satisfaction” and whether they would recommend their facility to others.
The report card’s quality indicators, he said, would be “risk adjusted” so that facilities that care for “higher acuity” residents are not penalized for admitting especially frail residents.
Quality indicators include the prevalence of pressure sores, use of restraints, undue weight loss, and reliance on catheters.
The federal rating system’s data, Sullivan said, are not risk adjusted and do not measure resident satisfaction.
The KDADS report card, he said, would allow users to find out which issues were of the most concern to residents in a particular nursing home.
Most of the website has been developed in-house by KDADS staff. The department’s contract with My Innerview is for $295,000 for two years, agency officials said.
Rep. Melissa Rooker, a Fairway Republican, said the initiative seemed like a good idea.
“Anytime a family is put in a position of having to contemplate putting a loved one in a nursing, it’s a highly emotional issue,” she said. “So anything we can do to help families not make those decisions blindly is a step in the right direction.
“I fully understand how confusing and frightening and unnerving it is for families to have to make these decisions,” Rooker said. “It’s a constant challenge.”
Debra Zehr, chief executive of LeadingAge Kansas, which represents non-profit nursing homes, agreed with Sullivan’s critique of the federal rating system.
“It has a lot of problems,” she said. “I’m confident that the one KDADS is putting together will be better.”
Zehr said her members “conceptually” support the report card but would encourage family members not to limit their decisions to information pulled from inspection reports.
“I tell people to visit the facility, drop by unannounced, talk to staff – don’t just take the tour,” Zehr said. “Go there afterhours or on a weekend. Talk to other residents’ family members. Call the (Kansas Long-term Care) Ombudsman’s Office, ask them what they’ve heard.”
Mitzi McFatrich, executive director of Kansas Advocates for Better Care, said she hoped KDADS would expand the report card to include the state’s assisted living and residential health care facilities.
Currently, she said, “there really is no national or state government data on these facilities that the public can access.”
Angela de Rocha, a spokesperson for KDADS, said the agency would explore expanding the report card after it’s had time to measure the initiative’s effectiveness.
To contact the ombudsman’s office, call (877) 662-8362 (toll-free) or email [email protected].
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Police say a frozen body discovered last week in Kansas City was an Arizona truck driver who was reported missing in October.
The body of 53-year-old Lawrence Peter Muirhead was found Sunday inside a freezer in a detached garage behind a home in Kansas City.
Police said Thursday his death is considered a homicide.
Muirhead’s family reported him missing Oct. 1 when he didn’t return home to Tucson after a trip to Pennsylvania. Relatives said their last contact with him was Sept. 28.
The truck he was driving was found abandoned Oct. 4 in Merriam.
Kansas City police haven’t said how Muirhead died.
HUTCHINSON — Area law enforcement have been working trying to find man who has been missing since Sunday.
Adam Sabari, 54, is missing from Wichita and was last seen approximately 10 a.m. Sunday. He owns Timeout Sports Bar and Grill, McPherson.
His ATM card was used in Wichita, even though he had told someone he was going to Hutchinson.
McPherson Police reportedly were sent to the restaurant for a welfare check, but Sabari was not there.
He was last known to be driving a 2008 White Saturn Aura with Kansas tag 785 AIZ or 786 AIZ.
He stand 5 feet, 5 inches tall, weighs 140 pounds and has dark brown hair and brown eyes.
If you have seen Sabari or know of his whereabouts, all the Wichita Police Department at (316) 268-4111 or McPherson Police Department at (620) 245-1200.
TOPEKA — University of Kansas Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little is scheduled to appear before a legislative committee Thursday to renew a request for state help in financing a state-of-the-art classroom building at its medical school.
KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little
In testimony to the Joint Committee on State Building Construction, Gray-Little is expected to say that the $75 million building is urgently needed to meet accreditation standards and to accommodate new ways of teaching that emphasize active learning in small-group settings over note taking in large lecture halls.
“We want to make sure that we have a facility that is adequate to (meet) those standards and that provides us with an opportunity to educate our medical students the way that medical students are educated now rather than the way they were educated 50 years ago,” Gray-Little said in a recent interview.
The proposed structure would replace one built on the school’s Kansas City, Kan. Campus in 1976 that university officials say is outdated and needs $5.3 million of repairs.
The new building also would allow the university to do more address the growing shortage of physicians across the state, Gray-Little said.
“Part of the reason for the health education building is to allow us to expand the size of our classes,” she said. “We are 39th in terms of the number of physicians for the population. We need to replace physicians at a much higher rate that we’re (now) able to do.”
The university’s plan is to increase students on its Kansas City campus to 200 per class year instead of the current 175.
The university has authority to issue $75 million in bonds to finance construction of the building, but Gray-Little said it can’t afford to move forward with the project unless lawmakers and Gov. Sam Brownback agree to cover $40 million of the cost.
“This would be a partnership between the state, the university and private donors to make this possible,” she said.
At the start of the session, the governor proposed restoring some of the $33 million in higher-education cuts approved last year. But his budget proposals didn’t include any money for the health education building.
The university is requesting that the state provide $15 million over several years to help it pay off the bonds. In addition, the university wants to use $25 million recently returned to the state to compensate it for Social Security contributions made on behalf of medical school residents that were subsequently deemed unnecessary.
An attempt last week by Sen. Laura Kelly, a Topeka Democrat, to add $1.5 million to the fiscal 2015 budget to cover the first debt-service payment failed on a tie vote. She said she is hoping that the chancellor will make a strong enough case to switch a vote or two.
“Some members have expressed an interest in knowing more,” Kelly said. “So, that’s why we asked the chancellor and officials from the Med Center to come over here and educate the committee.”
The committee is scheduled to meet at noon Thursday in room 159-South at the Statehouse.
OAKLEY — An Oakley woman was hospitalized after hitting a semi head-on in Gove County at 5:27 p.m. Wednesday.
The Kansas High Patrol reported a 2006 GMC pickup driven by Janine Renee Hayden, 47, was eastbound on Gove County Road CC when the driver reached to pick something off the floor. The pickup and a 2007 Peterbilt semi driven by Kyle A. Spresser, 41, Hoxie, struck head-on.
Hayden was taken to Logan County Hospital, Oakley, for treatment. Spresser was not injured.
KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia (AP) — The public has spoken: Katie Uhlaender went with the larger eagle on her helmet for the women’s skeleton competition at the Sochi Games on Thursday. Uhlaender, who spent much of her youth in the Rawlins County community of McDonald, had two helmets to choose from and couldn’t decide which design she liked best.
She turned to Twitter. A quick search of her mentions shows the helmet with a larger eagle and stars-and-stripes motif was the popular pick. She trained in the new headgear on Monday.
And she’s got some gold-medal mojo working already. Turns out the helmet was painted by the artist who also did designs for some of Olympic gold medalist Picabo Street’s headgear during her alpine skiing career.
“I had a helmet that I’ve been sliding with since Vancouver basically, with a design that was inspired by Jimmy Shea,” Uhlaender said, referring to the 2002 men’s skeleton gold medalist from Lake Placid, N.Y. “And then Picabo and I hooked up in 2010 and she’s been a mentor, a huge inspiration for me. I got a new helmet and she offered to hook me up with her guy who painted her helmet for the 2002 Games.”
Early returns are good: Uhlaender, of Breckenridge, Colo., was in fourth place following the opening round of competition.
Representatives from Thomas More Prep-Marian High School have expressed their dissatisfaction with the turnaround built on Victory Road, said Superintendent Dean Katt at Tuesdays’ USD 489’s work session Tuesday.
Katt said the complaint comes from motorists who have noticed the turnaround does not have a big enough radius for large vehicles.
“A car can turn, a minivan is … questionable, and an SUV, none of those vehicles can turn,” said Katt.
Instead, Katt said, the drivers of the vehicles must make a three-point turn in order to exit the turnaround and drive back onto to Victory Road.
Katt said he has “started the conversation” with TMP and will be working through the redesign and see what can be done to make the turnaround functional for larger vehicles.
The turnaround was built by USD 489 as a temporary solution to joint use of Victory Road by TMP and O’Loughlin Elementary School.
Victory Road is owned by Capuchin Province of Mid-America and is used by hundreds of parents each day to drop off and pick up students at O’Loughlin.
TMP spokesman Jeff Brull said Thursday that he has not heard complaints about the turnaround from anyone at TMP.
“None whatsoever,” he said. “We have made a lot of changes so O’Loughlin could use the road during drop-off and pickup times exclusively.”
Brull said he has been happy with the cooperation between TMP and USD 489.
“In past years, I know there were some disagreements,” he said, but said now he considers the “cooperation to be phenomenal.”
“It is wonderful to see level headed people doing what is best for the kids,” he said, specifically pointing out USD 489’s help in allowing TMP basketball games to be played at Hays High School.
A problem arose last summer when administrators said the road was in need of repairs, leading to a closure of the road to USD 489 traffic. Administrators from TMP and USD 489 then began working on a long-term solution for road repairs.
The cement for the turnaround was poured a few weeks ago, and other repairs to the road are planned for the future.
According to district spokeswoman Elizabeth Jaeger, the district spent $9,470 on the turnaround.
First District Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, has scheduled several town hall meetings this month, including a stop in Russell.
Huelskamp is scheduled to appear at the Russell town hall at 10 a.m. Feb. 20 at Meridy’s, 1220 Fossil.
Other town halls have been scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Feb. 18 in Abilene, 3:30 p.m. Feb. 18 in Alma, 1 p.m. Feb. 19 in Wamego, and 8 a.m. Feb. 20 in Ellsworth.
