JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – The Missouri Legislature is again bracing for a battle over an effort to protect the rights of the LGBT community.

Similar efforts have failed over the past two decades. Still, Democratic State Rep. Greg Razer believes his bill known as the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act would have enough support to pass this year, he told the Kansas City Star .

Rep. Tom Hannegan, a St. Charles Republican, is sponsoring a similar version of Razer’s bill. Razer and Hannegan are the only openly gay members of the Missouri Legislature.

Those measures face a challenge from Republican Rep. Mike Stephens of Bolivar, who is sponsoring a nondiscrimination bill of his own, but with one big exception: It excludes protections for gender identity.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Legal challenges to a Kansas law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote are headed to trial next month.

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson on Friday added additional days to a previously scheduled trial that begins March 6 in Kansas City, Kansas. The new schedule sets aside eight days for the bench trial.

American Civil Liberties Union sued Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on behalf of the League of Women Voters and voters over the requirement that people produce a document such as a birth certificate or U.S. passport to register at motor vehicle offices.

The ACLU’s lawsuit’s key argument is that the Kansas law violates a federal law requiring minimal information to register. A separate but similar case also simultaneously goes to trial arguing a right-to-vote claim.

SIDNEY, Neb. (AP) – Bass Pro and Cabela’s are offering $10,000 scholarships to four women from Nebraska or the Ozarks region of Missouri.

The outdoor outfitters are working with the Harry and Reba Huge Foundation to offer the scholarships.

The winners will receive $2,500 a year for four years, and they will have opportunities to intern with the company and learn from women in leadership positions.

By STEPHEN KORANDA

Kansas schools that want to offer gun training in the earliest grades would be required to use a program designed by the National Rifle Association, under a bill lawmakers studied this past week.

That legislation would switch programs beyond the eighth grade to hunter education training designed by the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism.

The bill doesn’t insist on gun training for schoolchildren. Rather, it would dictate which programs public schools could use — first the NRA’s, later the state’s — if they decide to put gun training into their curriculum.

Students eighth grade or younger would receive Eddie Eagle GunSafe training provided by the NRA.

NRA training uses an animated video and worksheets to drive home the message that kids should not touch a gun if they see one and should tell an adult when they stumble on a firearm. (“STOP! … Don’t touch … Run away … Tell a grown-up.”)

Republican Rep. John Whitmer told the Federal and State Affairs Committee on Tuesday that the state should require the NRA curriculum for gun safety because it’s the largest and most common program.

“Guns aren’t going away,” Whitmer said. “Let’s arm kids with the knowledge of what to do if they encounter a firearm. This is such a simple program.”

The Eddie Eagle program has been both lauded and criticized over the years. The NRA, the most powerful gun rights lobby in the country, and other Second Amendment advocates say it’s played an important role in teaching children how to behave safely around firearms. They credit it partly for a dropping number of accidental gun deaths among children.

Critics contend the reduction in those deaths could just as easily be credited to improved emergency medical care techniques and a smaller number of homes with guns. (While the number of guns in the United States has increased in recent years, those firearms tend to be owned by fewer people with larger collections.)

Gun control groups such as the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, argue the NRA-sponsored program provides a false sense of security and has been “found to have no effect on participating children’s behavior around guns.”

One study found that children who went through the Eddie Eagle program learned the basics of gun safety more clearly than kids who didn’t go through the training. But it found that learning often didn’t translate to simulations where they encountered a gun. It also found that other behavioral skills training — being told how to act around guns, watching a trainer model that behavior, and then practicing — was more effective than the NRA program.

No guns are used in the NRA training, but they are shown in the animated video.

Republican Rep. Stephanie Clayton said she was torn over the bill. On one hand, she likes the message of the curriculum. Yet Clayton said she has concerns about mandating that gun training in schools must use these programs.

“Is it my place,” she said, “to tell local of boards of education what they can and cannot teach?”

Rob Gilligan, with the Kansas Association of School Boards, said the group opposes the bill for the same reason.

“It is taking away that right of the districts to set what their curriculum could be,” Gilligan said.

Schools can currently teach gun safety training if they choose, said Gilligan. He said the NRA and state hunting programs are already used in some Kansas schools.

Whitmer said he is opposed to mandating training.

“I want to leave the discretion up to the districts,” Whitmer said. “I felt that leaving it as an optional program was probably the best way to go.”

Stephen Koranda is Statehouse reporter for KPR a partner in the Kansas News Service. Follow him on Twitter @kprkoranda.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Speedway officials are seeking information on who stole two trucks, a paint trailer and various tools last week from the speedway in Kansas City, Kansas.

Speedway officials are offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest in the case.

Speedway President Patrick Warren says in a written release that he would also like people to “keep their eyes open in case anyone attempts to sell any of these items and to contact the police immediately.”

The items, which were stolen on Jan. 30, are worth as much as $100,000.

One of the trucks was abandoned and recovered. One still missing is a red 2001 Ford F250 that had a Kansas Speedway logo on the door.

ST. LOUIS (AP) – Several school superintendents in Missouri are organizing in a push to change standardized testing amid concerns that the current model fails to provide useful feedback on how much students are learning.

St. Louis Public Radio reports more than 40 superintendents have joined a group called the Missouri Assessment Partnership to work on developing a new way of handling performance exams.

Critics say standardized testing that escalated in the early 2000s under federal laws force districts to “teach to the test” in an effort to boost scores.

Missouri’s roughly 900,000 public school students take exams in the springs and districts see results the following autumn. Those results play a large role in a district’s annual performance report, which factors heavily into accreditation from the Missouri State Board of Education.