LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Lawrence police are looking for a man and woman suspected of being involved in a shooting near the University of Kansas campus that wounded three people.

Arrest warrants have been issued for 20-year-old Rachael Ann Hampton and 24-year-old Robert Alan Long for aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary.

The charges stem from a Feb. 8 shooting at a home just south of the Kansas campus. The three men at the home were treated and released for gunshot wounds.

Twenty-two-year-old Caleb Chrisman of Grain Valley, Missouri was charged last week in connection with the shooting, which authorities say occurred during an attempted robbery.

Hampton’s parents issued a statement Saturday saying they haven’t heard from her since Feb. 7 and asking for her safe return.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas Senate committee is having a hearing this week on Gov. Sam Brownback’s appointment of a new judge to the state Court of Appeals.

The Judiciary Committee plans to convene Wednesday for testimony on the nomination of Kathryn Gardner of Topeka to the state’s second-highest court. The committee’s agenda says the hearing could continue Thursday and a vote is possible then.

The Republican governor named Gardner to the appeals court to fill a vacancy created last year by Brownback’s elevation of then-Judge Caleb Stegall to the Kansas Supreme Court.

Gardner has been U.S. Senior Judge Sam Crow’s law clerk since 2000 and was an attorney in private practice with a Wichita law firm for 12 years before that. She also writes cowboy poetry.

JOHN HANNA, AP Political Writer

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Top Republican officials in Kansas are working on a plan to overhaul funding for public schools designed to prevent unanticipated demands for new spending.

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is calling on the GOP-dominated Legislature to junk the state’s current formula for distributing $3.6 billion in aid to school districts. He’s proposed distributing most of the money to districts in “block grants” that remain stable while lawmakers draft a new formula.

The chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees said they expect to have a bill drafted by the end of this week. They said the measure will bring predictability to state and school district budgets.

But Kansas school boards lobbyist Mark Tallman said predictability hurts school districts with rising costs or a growing number of students.

ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress’ dysfunction isn’t limited to the struggle to keep a Cabinet department running without interruption.

Lawmakers couldn’t finish their work last year and it’s showing now.

The leftover business could prove even more divisive than the dispute over rolling back President Barack Obama’s immigration policies on a bill providing money for the Department of Homeland Security.

Stretches of brinkmanship are certain to consume much of the legislative calendar in 2015.

One critical issue is whether to increase the nation’s borrowing authority. That debate could have major repercussions for the recovering economy.

The to-do list includes forestalling a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments to physicians, preventing a cutoff of highway and transit dollars in the middle of peak construction season this summer and renewing critical parts of the Patriot Act.

By DAVE RANNEY
The House Social Services Budget Committee changed its mind Wednesday, voting to shelve an earlier recommendation that could have led to the Parents as Teachers program being cut from the state budget.

“We’re going to have another hearing,” said Rep. Will Carpenter, a Republican from El Dorado and chairman of the committee.

Earlier in the week, the committee voted to encourage the House Appropriations Committee to consider dropping Parents as Teachers from the list of programs supported by the Children’s Initiatives Fund, the state’s repository for tobacco settlement monies.

“That really wasn’t about grabbing money,” Carpenter said. “It had more to do with getting their attention, which I think it did.”

Carpenter said that after listening to recent presentations by Janice Smith, executive director of the Kansas Children’s Cabinet, and Jackie Counts, director of the Center for Public Partnerships and Research at the University of Kansas, he and others on the committee were left with the impression that Parents as Teachers’ effectiveness was questionable and that the program appeared to resist gathering and sharing data needed to measure its success.

“I just didn’t think the credible data was there to prove the efficacy of the whole program,” said Rep. Peggy Mast, a Republican from Emporia and vice chairwoman of the Social Services Budget Committee, after the initial vote.

But after that vote, committee members were flooded with emails and telephone calls from child advocates, assuring them that Parents as Teachers is effective, relies on evidence-based practices and includes a thorough evaluation process.

Carpenter said he welcomed hearing from advocates for the program, which offers support to parents in the early years of their children’s lives.

“I don’t think anyone on the committee has anything against Parents as Teachers. I don’t, certainly,” he said. “But that’s really not what this was about. This was about accountability and our being able to justify how the ‘people’s money’ is being spent. It looks like (Parents as Teachers) can do that, so I think they’ll come out of this all right.”

Nancy Keel, executive director of the Kansas Parents as Teachers Association, and Dale Dennis, deputy commissioner of the Kansas Department of Education, are scheduled to appear March 5 before the committee.

“I’m going to review the facts, and I think the facts are going to speak for themselves,” Dennis said. “It’ll be positive. Parents as Teachers has been around a long time. It’s a good program.”

Keel said: “We’ll be letting them know that Parents as Teachers is a viable program.”

There are approximately 70 Parents as Teachers programs in Kansas administered by their local school districts. The programs employ more than 200 home-visitation workers who met with more than 10,000 families last year, Keel said.

The Parents as Teachers total operating budget is $12.3 million a year, made up of $7.2 million from the Children’s Initiatives Fund and $5.1 million from school districts, grants, foundations and local charities.

“Our high-water mark, funding-wise, was back in 2008 when we were at $7.5 million,” Keel said, referring to the program’s Children’s Initiatives Fund allocation. “We were lowered to $7.2 million when the recession hit, and we’ve never gotten to go back to our original amount. We’ve been at $7.2 million ever since.”

Keel attributed the committee’s accountability concerns to a misunderstanding about the forms used to measure parents’ satisfaction with the program.

“There’s a line on page 15 of one of the reports that says the parent satisfaction survey is not valid and is not reliable,” she said.

The committee, Keel said, assumed that meant the survey results were skewed when it actually meant they likely were not a 100 percent accurate reflection of what parents truly think about the program.

“There isn’t a survey form that’s considered valid and reliable,” she said.

Still, the report gave the survey 95 out of a possible 100 points.

 

Dave Ranney is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly six years after the Great Recession, a clear majority of American families say they feel unprepared for a financial emergency.

The Pew Charitable Trusts’ poll of 7,000 U.S. households finds that 57 percent don’t consider themselves ready for a sudden financial setback, 55 percent say they break even or spend more than they make each month, and a third have no savings.

“Despite a steady economic recovery, many Americans continue to feel vulnerable,” says Erin Currier, director of Pew’s financial security and mobility project.

Still, the survey notes signs of improvement: 56 percent rate their own financial situation as positive, up from 55 percent on the eve of the recession in 2007; 27 percent give the economy a positive grade, equal to pre-recession levels.

WELDA- A child died and two adults were injured in an accident just before 2 p.m. on Saturday in Anderson County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2006 Nissan Murano driven by Judith Wright, 52, Chanute, was northbound on U.S. 169 just north of Welda.

The driver lost control in the snow. The vehicle entered the southbound lane and was struck by a semi.

A passenger in the Nissan Drake Walls, 5, Chanute, was transported to Anderson County Hospital where he died.

Wright and another passenger Hailey Wright, 25, Chanute was also transported to Anderson County Hospital.

The semi driver was not injured.
The KHP reported all were properly restrained at the time of the accident.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas man whose capital murder conviction was overturned has pleaded no contest to killing two women in Topeka in 2003.

King Phillip Amman Reu-El, who was known as Phillip Cheatham Jr., avoided the death penalty by pleading no contest Friday to capital murder and attempted first-degree murder in the shooting of a third woman. .

Amman Reu-El was convicted of capital murder in 2005 and sentenced to death but the Kansas Supreme Court overturned the conviction, saying he had ineffective counsel.

Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor said Friday the time Amman Reu-El has already served will apply to his sentence.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that means Amman Reu-El could be eligible for parole after he serves 25 years. He will be sentenced March 20.