October 2023

This weekend in Memorial Hall on the Bethel College Campus a few groups will combine - The Newton High School Orchestra will join Newton Mid-Kansas Orchestra and Newton High School Chorus for the annual Fall Classics Concert.

TOPEKA — A member of an education advocacy group on Monday asked lawmakers tasked with education policy to focus on reliable public school funding.In response, Republican lawmakers questioned the function of his advocacy group.Scott Rothschild, who monitors legislation for the Kansas Association of School Board on behalf of the 286 school boards statewide, ignited the discussion by pushing back on the use of state assessment scores as an important measure of Kansas public schools’ educational success.Lawmakers on the Special Committee on Education have tried to leverage low assessment scores in their push for private school voucher programs, including one program in the last legislative session that would have granted about $5,000 to students attending private schools and unaccredited home schools.Rothschild said student assessment scores were often influenced by students’ home life, with lower-income students and disabled students often scoring worse, and using the scores as an indicator of public school failure was “ill-advised.”“Student performance on state and national assessments is greatly influenced by societal factors that teachers cannot control,” Rothschild said.

In March of 2016, the Anderson Creek fire set a grim state record by burning about 280,000 acres in south-central Kansas.Just one year later, this Kansas record changed again when more than 460,000 acres burned in the Starbuck fire farther west.Large wildfires have become much more common on the Great Plains in recent decades.In Kansas, risks are particularly high on the outskirts of some cities, as well as in rural areas of the state with aggressively spreading tree and shrub species that intensify grassland blazes.But Kansans can take steps to protect themselves and their property.And now they can type their addresses into a new online tool from the Kansas Forest Service — kansaswildfirerisk.org — to better understand the danger that a wildfire could break out near their home, ranch, farm or business.The risk of that varies greatly across the state.Take the proliferation of homes with several acres of land each at the fringes of suburbia.

TOPEKA — Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody has resigned, less than two months after he instigated a widely covered raid on a local newspaper that culminated in a federal lawsuit and one woman’s death.Marion Mayor David Mayfield announced Cody’s departure during a Monday city council meeting, following the previous week’s announcement that Cody was suspended.