Mike Sherry
Contributor and Former Senior Reporter
Stories by Mike Sherry
Anti-smoking measures advance to KC council
A Kansas City Council committee on Wednesday approved three anti-smoking measures that critics said wrongly include electronic cigarettes and premium cigars. Taken together, the three ordinances raise the legal age for purchasing tobacco products and e-cigarettes from 18 to 21 and add e-cigarettes, also known as vapes, to the city’s ban on indoor smoking, including…
Parents, staff pan KC school district plan for Attucks Elementary
About 80 people attended a Wednesday evening open house hosted by Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS), and a sizeable contingent came with one question: Why Attucks? Staff and parents wanted to know why the district was proposing to close Crispus Attucks Elementary School, located at 2400 Prospect Ave. “What is the district trying to do?”…
KC Osteopathic School On Track To Open Joplin campus
The Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences is nearing a milestone in its march toward opening Missouri’s first new medical school in four decades, with a fundraising campaign for its Joplin campus now entering the home stretch. The Joplin-area committee running the campaign has commitments for more than 80 percent of the $30 million…
Wyandotte County Could Lead Region In hiking Legal Age For Cigarette Sales
Supporters of banning the sale of cigarettes to teens and young adults in the Kansas City area may be close to landing their first major coup. On Monday night, a legislative committee of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, one of the region’s largest municipalities, endorsed revising its legal code to ban the…
KC effort aims to snuff out teen smoking
Business and health leaders on Thursday announced an ambitious initiative to convince elected officials in the dozens of municipalities throughout the Kansas City area to raise the legal age for buying cigarettes from 18 to 21. Spearheaded by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, “Tobacco…
Med students mix volunteerism, fitness in KC’s Historic Northeast
It was windy and unseasonably warm, but that didn’t stop a group of students from Scuola Vita Nuova Charter School from gathering one afternoon this week for their long-distance-running training session. Sweating right along with the roughly two dozen fifth- through eighth-graders was a trio of medical students from Kansas City University of Medicine and…
New KC Mental Health Center Will Get $20M From Hospital Sales
The sale of two Kansas City-area hospitals will generate $20 million in the next decade to help operate a new mental health crisis center on the city’s East Side, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said Wednesday. Koster made the announcement while standing outside the state office building at the corner of 12th Street and Prospect…
Children’s services tax on table for Jackson, Clay Counties
Jackson and Clay counties are hoping to join a handful of Missouri municipalities that have enacted a local tax to fund services for at-risk children and youth. The Jackson-Clay Children’s Services Fund Committee is hoping that voters will enact a quarter-cent sales tax that the committee estimates could generate as much as $40 million in…
Agreeability trumps algebra, Kansans tell state education officials
Kansas residents, educators and business leaders agree that academic know-how takes a backseat to “soft” skills, such as being agreeable and conscientious, when it comes molding the next generation of workers. That was one big takeaway from a 90-minute presentation delivered in Olathe Tuesday by Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson and his deputy, Brad…
KC-area students explore government work
More than 3,000 students from Kansas City-area middle schools and high schools got a glimpse of public service careers during the first-ever CORE4 Youth Career Expo held Tuesday at Bartle Hall. The students came from roughly four dozen schools. Hosting the event were the metropolitan area’s four core local governments — the city of Kansas City, Mo.;…