SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A college in southwestern Missouri has raised $6.8 million in less than a year to renovate and expand its classrooms.

The Springfield News-Leader reports the project will allow Cox College to increase its enrollment for programs including nursing. The nursing program’s enrollment will increase from 250 students to 400.

Amy DeMelo is the president of the Springfield college housed at CoxNorth. She says there’s a significant nursing shortage nationwide, which the college hopes to address.

Other programs offered include medical assistant, radiography and diagnostic imaging. The college currently admits up to 80 percent of its eligible applicants.

The U.S. Department of Commerce $2.2 million of the funding and the Mabee Foundation gave a match grant of $1 million. The rest of the expansion funds came from a variety of donors.

KENNETT, Mo. (AP) – The sudden closure of a hospital has left some expectant mothers in the Missouri Bootheel region scrambling for care in an area that already has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the U.S.

Twin Rivers Regional Medical Center in Kennett announced recently that it will close in July.

The closure will leave the surrounding area in southeast Missouri without an OB-GYN. A hospital in neighboring Pemiscot County is taking on the Kennett hospital’s OB-GYN and four other physicians, but that hospital is struggling to stay afloat, too.

The closure is critical because Dunklin County has some of the worst birth outcomes in the state. Babies die at twice the national average and one-in-five black children are boon premature.

By JIM MCLEAN

Democrat Laura Kelly all but set the field in the Kansas governor’s race Thursday by picking fellow state Sen. Lynn Rogers as her running mate.

Among the leading contenders, only former Republican state Sen. Jim Barnett has yet to complete his ticket. He’s expected to do that a day ahead of the June 1 filing deadline.

Kelly’s choice of Rogers, a longtime member of the Wichita school board before winning a Senate seat vacated by a Republican incumbent in 2016, signals an intention to make education a cornerstone of her campaign.

“His commitment to our schools, students and staff make him the right choice to help lead Kansas at this critical time,” Kelly said at an announcement ceremony staged with Topeka High School serving as a scenic and topical backdrop.

As a senator and school board member, Kelly said Rogers has “fought tirelessly to reverse the damage of the (state’s tax cut) experiment and give all our children the opportunities they deserve.”

As the top Democrat on the Senate’s budget writing committee, Kelly has long railed against the income and business tax cuts that former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback pushed through the Legislature in 2012.

Kelly and others charge that those cuts precipitated a state revenue crisis that forced repeated cuts in higher education, highways and social services and the issuance of $1 billion in bonds backed by the state pension fund.

“After years of crisis and turmoil, it’s time for us to elect a governor who will be a champion for our families and invest in the priorities we share — especially public schools,” Rogers said.

If Kelly wins the Democratic nomination, she would likely face either a Republican nominee who must defend Brownback’s policies — former lieutenant governor, now Gov. Jeff Colyer — or one who has promised a new round of tax cuts if elected — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

The Kelly/Rogers ticket is long on experience. She’s a 68-year-old lawmaker in her fourth term and he’s a retired banker soon to turn 60 in the middle of his first term at the Statehouse.

“We are at a time of crisis,” she said. “We need someone who can go into that governor’s office and go to work on day one to fix this state.”

Their main primary opponents are taking a different tact.

Former legislator and state agriculture secretary Josh Svaty, 38, and Katrina Lewison, 40, are selling their youth. They’re also hoping that Lewison’s background — a West Point graduate who led a Black Hawk helicopter platoon in Iraq — appeals to voters looking for fresh faces.

“This is less of a policy primary and more of a personality primary,” Svaty said Wednesday after paying the filing fee to get on the August ballot.

Both tickets check multiple boxes with voters, said Washburn University political scientist Bob Beatty. But, he said, while Rogers is “solid,” Lewison is “exciting.”

“Oh, she’s a huge asset,” he said. “What a find.”

On Tuesday, another contender for the Democratic nomination, former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, named another former mayor as his running mate. Brewer said that Chris Morrow, former mayor of Gardner, “has shown again and again that he listens to the community her serves.”

Morrow, a Navy veteran who lost a bid to unseat Republican state Sen. Julia Lynn in 2016, is the vice-chair of the Johnson County Democratic Party.

On the Republican side, Beatty said Kobach’s choice of former rival Wink Hartman seems a good fit. Hartman, a wealthy Wichita businessman, gives the ticket geographic and private-sector experience balance, Beatty said.

Colyer made his choice in February. Shortly after Brownback’s departure for an ambassador’s post in the Trump administration moved him into the governor’s office, Colyer installed Tracey Mann to replace him as lieutenant governor.

Mann, who lives in Salina but works for a Kansas City-based commercial real estate firm, ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House in 2010. His campaign for the 1st District seat was sidetracked when he called on then-President Barack Obama to prove he was an American citizen.

Mann called his foray into birther politics a mistake.

“I had a football coach one time that said ‘when you make a mistake you don’t make excuses and you move on,’” he said when he Colyer appointed him lieutenant governor. “I’ve moved on from that.”

A recent poll showing Kobach and Colyer in a near tie with nearly half of GOP voters undecided indicates that Barnett and Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer are still factors, Beatty said.

“This race will be decided by the undecideds,” he said.

The poll, conducted by Remington Research Group, a GOP polling firm based in Kansas City, put Colyer’s support at 29 percent, with Kobach at 27 percent.

Barnett, the only moderate in the Republican race, drew support from 9 percent of respondents while 5 percent said they favored Selzer.

On Monday, Selzer named Goodland businesswoman Jenifer Sanderson as his running mate. She’s the owner of a Sonic Drive-In franchise and a past chair of the board that oversees the Kansas Chamber’s leadership program.

Sanderson, Selzer said in a campaign news release, “brings a small business owner’s experience to fixing an overreaching government, a wealth of financial management education and a mother’s commitment to a better world for the next generation.”

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks.

SALINE COUNTY — A Missouri teen died in an accident just after 12a.m. Saturday in Saline County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2001 Kia passenger vehicle driven by Kristen D. Moore, 18, Independence, was eastbound on Interstate 70 near Sweet Springs. A possible vehicle defect caused the vehicle to skid, travel off the right side of the road and roll multiple times ejecteing the four occupants, according to the MSHP.

Moore was transported by Lifeflight to Centerpointe Hospital where she died.

Lifeflight transported Livia R. Halla, 17, and Celia Arrendondo Rodriguez, 17, both of Independence to University Hospital in serious condition, according to the MSHP.

Saline County EMS transported Tobias A. Seek, 20, Independence, to University Hospital.
Air Evac transported Seth A. Steele, 19, to Research Medical Center.

See was the only occupant wearing a seat belt, according to the MSHP.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) – Police in a Kansas City suburb says a 52-year-old man has died after crashing a car into a house.

The crash happened around 11:10 a.m. Saturday in Independence, Missouri.

Investigators say the man’s sport utility vehicle veered off the road and collided with the house. Police say there were people in the home, but no one inside the house was injured.

Police have not released the driver’s name pending notification of his family members.

The crash remains under investigation.