KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Charter schools are failing to stem a loss of students from the Kansas City school district’s boundaries.

The Kansas City Star reports that in the past year, more than a thousand students left the district for charter schools. At the same time, more than 500 students left charters for the district schools.

Charter schools, which are independent public schools with their own boards, now make up 40 percent of public school enrollment in the district. But their rise has not boosted public school enrollment in the district’s boundaries.

The combined district and charter enrollment has fallen from 36,353 in 2000, the first year of charters in Kansas City, to 24,435 in 2015.

Administrators say another problem is many students will transfer in the middle of the school year.

KENNETT, Mo. (AP) — A small-town police chief from southeast Missouri is facing three felony charges.

The Kennett Daily Dunklin Democrat reports that Casey Aaron Redden is charged with two counts of parental kidnapping and one count of aggravated stalking.

Redden is the police chief in Wardell, Missouri, a town of about 430 residents.

A complaint filed by the Dunklin County prosecutor’s office says Redden picked up his children without permission from the home of a relative of their mother. He is also accused of making threatening phone calls to his former girlfriend.

Redden was arrested Thursday. A message left Monday with his attorney was not returned.

FLORISSANT, Mo. (AP) — An investigation is underway after a suburban St. Louis police officer was struck by a car and critically injured.

The accident happened at 7:55 a.m. Monday at the intersection of Old Jamestown Road and Highway 67 in north St. Louis County. St. Louis County police say an officer with the Bellefontaine Neighbors Police Department was involved in a minor accident involving the officer’s personal vehicle.

The officer got out to speak with the other driver and a third vehicle struck the officer.

Specific details about the officer’s injuries were not released.

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A trial is underway for a Missouri white supremacist accused of killing three people last year at two Jewish sites in suburban Kansas City.

Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. could face the death penalty if convicted in the April 2014 killings. The 74-year-old is representing himself after firing his attorneys in May, saying he wanted to speak on his own behalf.

Opening statements are set to begin Monday.

Prosecutors say Miller killed 69-year-old William Corporon and Corporon’s 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, outside a Jewish community center before shooting 53-year-old Terri LaManno outside a nearby Jewish retirement home in April 2014.

Miller has pleaded not guilty, though he’s publicly admitted killing the victims. The self-professed anti-Semite says he was morally obligated to kill Jews. All of the victims were Christian.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The official University of Nebraska hot dogs that will be served at football games this fall are now being made in Illinois.

The company that makes the distinctive dyed-red, Fairbury-brand hot dogs moved production from West Point, Nebraska, to its Lansing, Illinois, plant this spring.

 

Land O’Frost bought the Fairbury brand from Wimmer’s Meat Products in 2012.  CEO David Van Eekeren promises the Fairbury hot dog recipe hasn’t changed even though they are now made elsewhere. The dogs have been served in Memorial Stadium since the 1960s.

The only exception was 1994 when the university’s athletic department switched hot dog brands after Fairbury’s owner refused to pay an additional $30,000. Fans objected and Fairbury hot dogs returned the following year.

JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — A Joplin man has drowned after jumping into a drainage ditch to rescue his son and another child.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol identified the victim as 50-year-old Anthony C. Cox. The patrol says the children were playing in the Joplin ditch Saturday afternoon when they became caught in rising water.

Cox rescued the children before he was swept under and drowned.

He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — When the Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia was granted a license to provide medication-induced abortions, it was exempted from the requirement that it have a staff doctor with surgical privileges at a hospital in the community.

Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services director Gail Vasterling discussed the license in a letter Friday to Senator Kurt Schaefer. Vasterling is preparing to appear Tuesday before an interim Senate committee Schaefer leads.

Admitting privileges are required for Missouri abortion centers, but a health department spokesman says no surgical procedures are being performed at the Columbia facility.

While the doctor performing abortions in Columbia doesn’t have admitting privileges, she can refer patients to physicians at the University of Missouri Health Care and obtain treatment reports.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Treating elephant arthritis is among the challenges the Kansas City Zoo is facing as its animals live longer.

Zoos have for years steered away from rejuvenating their collections with wild-born species unless deemed vitally necessary because of captive breeding and wild animal conservation becoming a priority.

The zoo’s chief veterinarian, Kirk Suedmeyer, estimated that some 25 percent of the zoo’s 1,100 animals are what would be considered geriatric.

Since late July, a 47-year-old African elephant named Lady has been receiving inflammation-reducing laser therapy to help soothe arthritis.

The zoo also has trained its aged silverback gorilla, Radi, to present his chest for regular echocardiograms using a portable wand.

WISNER, Neb. (AP) — Construction has begun on a new school to replace the one lost in a 2014 tornado, but it won’t be in the town of Pilger.

The Wisner-Pilger school district held a groundbreaking ceremony last week for the new building being built in Wisner.

The new $10.7 million school will house elementary and middle school students. It replaces the district’s middle school that was destroyed in Pilger and its elementary school in Wisner.

Insurance money will pay for most of the new school, and the district will also receive help from the federal and state emergency management agencies.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kickapoo Tribe is accusing its former chairman of financial malfeasance in a tribal court lawsuit.

The suit’s Aug. 12 filing came nearly seven months after the tribal council voted to remove Clifford “Steve” Cadue from his job as chairman. The suit accuses Cadue of falsifying meeting minutes to fraudulently pass an unbalanced budget.

Cadue says the lawsuit is without merit and should have been handled through the tribal council, not in a courtroom.

The 30-square-mile Kickapoo Tribe reservation is located just a few miles west of Horton in Brown County. Kickapoo vice chairman Fred Thomas says the lawsuit against Cadue marks the first time in tribal history that a tribal official was sued as a person, not a tribal official, for malfeasance.