FINNEY COUNTY – Law enforcement authorities are investigating two former employees from USD 457 in Garden City on misdemeanor criminal charges.

On Friday, the Garden City Police Department reported a possible theft involving USD 457 employees, according to a media release.

Further investigation revealed that from October 1, 2014, to June 1, 2015, Martin Segovia Jr., 45, El Paso Texas, formerly the UDS 457 Athletic Director-Assistant Principal and Juan Neri, 34, a former teacher in Garden City allegedly used USD 457 equipment and supplies to create products for sale.

These products were sold to individuals and companies while leading the customers to believe that profits from the sales would benefit the school district.

Segovia and Neri allegedly completed the transactions and retained over $10,000 in sales for personal use without providing the money to the school district.

In April, Neri turned himself in to authorities and on June 15, 2017, Segovia turned himself into authorities.

The Finney County Attorney’s Office has charged them with Criminal Deprivation of Property.

Segovia is a former state champion wrestler in Kansas. He also was a champion wrestler for University of Nebraska-Kearney. He currently works for the schools district in El Paso, TX.

DCF

TOPEKA –A young women, formerly in Kansas foster care, was recently selected for an internship with the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI). Alexandria Ware, 24, was one of 12 young professionals selected to participate in the CCAI’s Foster Youth Internship Program. Through the program, Ware gained a summer internship with the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means.

Prior to acquiring this congressional internship, Ware was a successful participant in the Kansas Department for Children and Families’ (DCF) Independent Living program in the Wichita Region. During that time, she was also an active member in the Kansas Youth Advisory Council (KYAC) and the Regional Youth Advisory Council (RYAC).

Ware graduated in May 2016, with a bachelor’s degree in Family Studies and Human Services, with a minor in Conflict Analysis and Trauma Studies from Kansas State University, while utilizing DCF’s Independent Living services. She also received a certificate in Conflict Analysis and Trauma Studies, as well as a certificate in Non-violent studies. Ware is currently a graduate student at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa, pursuing a master’s degree in Human Development and Family Science.

“Alexandria is setting a wonderful example for Kansas youth from foster care,” DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore said. “She is demonstrating how perseverance, hard work and dedication are the keys to success, no matter the trauma one experiences early in life.”

She co-founded Fostering Success, a program that seeks to provide college students in or exiting from the foster care system with resources and skills, along with connections to mentors.

Her goal is to advocate for those in foster care with the hope of establishing a center where youth in foster care will have access to tutoring, mentoring and assistance for future college admissions.

CCAI is a non-profit organization that “works to raise awareness about the needs of children without families and to remove policy barriers that hinder children from knowing the love and support a family provides.”

Currently, there are nearly 7,000 children in foster care in Kansas. DCF serves as the State social service agency, providing oversight for the well-being of children and their families. In May, DCF released a new Foster Care Recruitment Campaign designed to recruit foster families, provide support to current foster families and increase the public’s awareness about the need for temporary, stable homes for children coming into care in Kansas. If you would like to learn more about this campaign, visit fosterkskids.org.

Learn more about services available to youth aging out of Kansas foster care at Independent Living. You can also read more about Ware and the CCAI at https://ccainstituteblog.org/.

By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

In his 26 years at Meade Unified School District 226, a 400-student district southwest of Dodge City, Superintendent Kenneth Harshberger has watched the educational landscape change.

Teachers are harder to recruit — even for elementary jobs, which were traditionally easier to fill.

“The first time I tried to hire an elementary teacher 25, 26 years ago, we had over 100 applicants,” he recalled. “Now I can’t get five applicants.”

While there likely are numerous reasons behind that change, a new national report on rural teacher pay in the 50 states shows Kansas ranks lowest. That report follows another Kansas-specific study noting evidence of a teacher shortage in some rural areas of the state, particularly in the southwest corner.

Ken Weaver, dean of the Teachers College at Emporia State University, co-authored an analysis of the teacher shortage situation in Kansas that was released last year. He thinks the newly released national report on teacher pay may shed light on one of the reasons for the Kansas shortage.

“I do think that’s an important piece of the puzzle,” he said. “The challenge is, how does that piece of the puzzle kind of make it out there, into the minds and into the hearts of policymakers and decision-makers?”

The national compilation by the Rural School and Community Trust draws on 2012 information that schools reported to the federal government — total instructional salaries divided by the number of instructional staff in each district. The trust uses this calculation as a stand-in for teacher pay.

At rural schools in Kansas, this works out to about $40,900, compared to a national average of just under $57,800. Missouri came in second-lowest around $44,100.

The trust used the federal government’s definition of rural school districts. Nationally, nearly 20 percent of public school students attend rural schools. In Kansas, the figure is a little higher.

The trust’s report does not adjust for cost of living differences among rural areas in different regions of the country.

Jeremy Hill, director of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University, noted other potential caveats about the national report. It is possible, for example, that pay varies because some states tend to employ teachers with more experience or higher educational attainment.

Getting creative

In the Meade district, Harshbarger has become creative in finding teachers. Last year district officials worked with a college for the first time on an arrangement to hire a student as a full-fledged teacher — albeit with supervision.

And with some college students landing teaching job offers before graduation, they’ve begun calling universities.

“I will call K-State or Wichita State and ask for the heads of the departments and say, ‘Can you give me the names of any kids?’” Harshberger said. “And a lot of times they won’t give it to us unless they’ve been given permission. And I say, ‘Well, can you ask those kids if we can have permission to contact them?’”

The teacher shortage report that Weaver and others authored found 109 unfilled teaching jobs in southwest Kansas in the 2015-16 school year. Those jobs remained vacant at least through the first half of the academic year and into the spring, when tallies were finalized.

The report, which found teachers were migrating from rural areas to more populated ones, corroborated anecdotes of shortages that had prompted warnings from top Kansas education officials in recent years.

Nationally, teachers earn more in larger towns, suburbs and cities than rural areas.

The trust’s report found rural salary spending per instructional staff lagged nearly $2,000 behind towns and more than $10,000 behind suburban and urban districts, though those figures don’t factor in cost of living.

A decade-old U.S. Department of Education analysis that did do so found rural teacher pay lagged $1,000 to $2,900 behind cities, towns and suburbs after adjusting for this difference.

‘Several areas of concern’

The authors of last year’s report on Kansas teacher vacancies suggested further monitoring and investigation to explore causes and solutions. But they suspected pay as a factor.

“The low salaries are one of several areas of concern and they need to be addressed,” Weaver said.

In Meade, starting pay for a teacher straight out of college is around $36,000.

It’s unclear how this compares to the statewide average. The Kansas State Department of Education doesn’t track starting pay.

But the Kansas Association of School Boards conducts a voluntary annual survey. For 2016-17, 220 of 286 school districts reported their starting salaries to the association. The average among these was about $34,700.

District budgets vary, as do local spending priorities, which are determined by school boards.

Kismet-Plains USD 483, a 700-student district next to Meade, offers beginning teachers $42,000 a year.

“We have to pay well just to attract folks,” Superintendent Elton Argo said, adding that the area lacks amenities that draw many applicants to larger towns, cities or suburbs.

The 540-square-mile district does not have a dentist or optometrist, he said, and a physician comes to the area only a few days a week. Outdoor opportunities like fishing and hunting abound, but there’s not a movie theater or bowling alley.

“Geography will always be a complication,” he said.

Like Harshberger, Argo, who has been superintendent in Kismet-Plains for 11 years, said the traditional paths to finding teachers are less fruitful than they once were.

“Job fairs — we still attend some of those, but it’s kind of a waste of our time,” Argo said. “There aren’t many applicants there.”

Fewer future teachers

Secondary teaching positions and special education jobs are particularly difficult to fill, superintendents say.

Their concerns come amid a drop in students preparing to become teachers.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, about 2,500 fewer people enrolled in teacher preparatory programs in Kansas in 2015 compared to four years earlier. The number of people completing such programs slid by about 460 over the same period.

State universities and the Kansas State Board of Education are responding with efforts ranging from changes to teacher certification requirements to new career-transition programs.

Just two examples: Kansas State University has a new one-year online master’s degree for aspiring elementary teachers who didn’t major in education at college and Emporia State has received approval from the Kansas Board of Regents for such a program, too.

But superintendents, university faculty and education officials alike have suggested the teaching field has become less attractive, not just because many other jobs offer better pay and health insurance, but because of a years-long fight over state aid to schools, lawmakers’ decision to strip teacher tenure from Kansas statute and other factors. The picture they paint is one of low morale.

In Meade, Harshberger said, summer school programs disappeared amid years of budget cuts, purchases of equipment and supplies like textbooks slowed, individual teachers took on more duties at work and pay stagnated.

“They know they’re not in it for the money. None of us are in it for the money — we’re in it because we love kids,” he said. “But I’ve seen a lot of dismay, particularly in the last seven years, that we’ve been hardly able to put any money in schools.”

Weaver, who often speaks with families of students considering an education major, put it this way: Though he can promise parents that their children will have jobs to choose from upon graduation, he can’t deflect their concerns about compensation.

“Moms and dads are saying truthfully, ‘We love our child. We want the best for our child, but we cannot support our child going into teaching as a career,’” he said.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of kcur.org, Kansas Public Radio and KMUW covering health, education and politics. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.  

SHERIDAN COUNTY –  Two people were injured in an accident just after 9:30p.m. Friday in Sheridan County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2006 Freightliner Semi driven by Phillip L. Anderson, 50, Concordia, was westbound on U.S. 83 one mile east of Selden.

The driver attempted to pass a westbound John Deere Tractor pulling a Swather and driven by Michael Anthony Ritter, 51, Selden.

The semi sideswiped an eastbound 1999 Ford F250 driven by Wright, Lavon R. Wright, 64, Ullysses, and ran into back of the John Deere and Swather.

Anderson and Ritter were transported to the hospital in Hoxie. Wright and a passenger were not injured.

Anderson and Wright were properly restrained at the time of the accident. The tractor does not have a seat belt.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court has unanimously upheld the convictions for murder and other charges against the leader and self-proclaimed seer of a Kansas commune which lived off the life insurance payouts of its dead members.

The state’s highest court affirmed on Friday the convictions against Daniel U. Perez.

He was also convicted of fraud for lying on life insurance applications along with numerous counts of rape and other sexual assault charges involving young girls who had been living at the commune with their mothers.

Although Perez was charged with only one murder count for the 2003 death of Hughes, several members who carried hefty life insurance policies also died.

Perez was charged in 2011 when a woman who had been 12 at the time told authorities the drowning was staged.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has signed into law a measure that creates an independent task force to review the state’s child welfare system.

The measure was in response to the deaths of a number of children who had been in state custody. It also followed a series of audit reports that were critical of the Kansas Department for Children and Families’ management of the state foster care system.

The measure calls for a 19-member panel to examine all aspects of the state’s child welfare system. The task force will include lawmakers, people involved in family court services and social welfare, and law enforcement.

The group will file a progress report at the 2018 legislative session’s start, with a final report due in January 2019.

TOPEKA— A homeless man has been charged with killing another man behind a Topeka gas station.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that 41-year-old Jason Hottman was charged Thursday with second-degree murder in the killing 34-year-old Jason Baker. Police found Baker bleeding and unresponsive June 2 behind the Haag’s Express gas station in the western part of the city.

Police said that on June 4, Hottman jumped off a bridge onto Interstate 70. He sustained injuries not believed to be life-threatening.

Hottman has previous convictions in Dickinson and Saline County for burglary, criminal threat, harassment by telephone, criminal trespass and violation of a protection order.

The prosecutor’s office didn’t immediately return an email message asking whether Hottman has an attorney.

HARPER COUNTY – A fifth earthquake this week jolted portions of Kansas Friday afternoon.

The quake just before 3p.m. measured a magnitude 2.5 and was centered approximately 7 miles southwest of Harper, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The agency recorded earthquakes in the same general area Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning. They measured 3.1 and 3.7.

A pair of quakes shook portions of Kansas Monday. Just after 2.am. a 2.9 quake hit 6 miles northwest of Mankato in Jewell County. At 10:15 p.m. Monday, the USGS recorded a 2.6 quake three miles south of Rose Hill in Butler County.

The USGS has recorded 15 quake in Kansas in June.

They reported 9 Kansas earthquakes in May, nearly a dozen in April, seven in March and six in February.

There are no reports of damage or injury from Friday’s quake.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has signed a bill that will delay enforcement of part of a new law that toughens regulations for amusement park rides.

The measure signed Friday calls for stricter inspection requirements and more oversight of rides and still will take effect July 1. The bill Brownback signed delays a provision that creates criminal penalties for operating a ride without a license until Jan. 1 and prohibits the Department of Labor from enforcing penalties until new rules are published.

The department had been concerned that some parks wouldn’t be able to comply with the new tougher standards by July 1.

The initial law was enacted in April after the death of Republican Rep. Scott Schwab’s son, Caleb, last summer at Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City, Kansas.