News & Issues

Stories from around the Kansas City Metro area on a variety of topics.

The Kansas City Museum at Corinthian Hall

Celebrating, Bemoaning the passage of time

The Kansas City Museum at Corinthian Hall is celebrating its 75th anniversary tonight, and it’s a good thing that the celebration is happening during the evening: In the light of day, the museum is clearly in need of a facelift – possibly an estimated $36 million dollar facelift. Starting in 2005, the Kansas City Museum…

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art sculpture at Synergy Services

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…

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Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson

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…

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Claudia Rivera (right) and her boyfriend, Jesùs Varela, stand in the yard of their Liberal, Kansas, home with their 1-year-old son, Fabian. (Photo: Esther Honig | Heartland Health Monitor)

Take 5 for your health

High Teen Birth Rates In Rural Kansas Pose Obstacles To Economic Advancement Nineteen-year-old Claudia Rivera shares a single-story tract home in Liberal, Kansas, with her boyfriend, 20-year-old Jesùs Varela. Last month, Varela’s mother moved in so she could watch Rivera’s baby boy, Fabian, while Rivera works at the Dollar General store and Valera pulls down a shift at…

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What’s in a name?

Next year marks the centennial for the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, which for most of its history has been an anchor along Independence Avenue. That continuity, however, has not extended to the name of the institution, which began downtown as the Kansas City College of Osteopathy and Surgery. The college became the…

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