(Missourinet) – Some passionate discussions are likely to unfold Tuesday at the Missouri Capitol during a legislative committee hearing about a possible statewide charter schools expansion.

The same arguments return year after year in some legislators’ quest to go beyond current state law of allowing charter schools in St. Louis and Kansas City school districts, and any that are unaccredited.

State Rep. David Wood, R-Versailles, who chairs the Joint Committee on Education, tells Missourinet he hopes discussion will go beyond the typical divisive battle cries.

“It becomes kind of like battle lines and when dollars are involved, it always very touchy. But the truth is, we’re really needing to look out for the education of the students. In an ideal world, they would work together and keep the students’ benefit at the center of their controversies, not the dollars and not the accountability piece,” says Wood.

Opponents of charter schools, which are publicly funded and operate independently, say the for-profit organizations take money away from public schools and more charter schools are failing than public schools.

Supporters of such legislation say charter schools allow students in failing public schools to go to a school that is providing a better education and charter schools have just as much accountability as public schools.

“I would like to see the argument of the APR scores really take a backseat and look more at what we can do positive to say ‘Here’s what we need to do to make charter schools more effective,’ if it’s holding them to a higher standard, closing the bad ones, having more accountability,” he says.

Wood hopes a workable solution can be found during next year’s legislative session that all sides can live with.

“I think if we don’t have the discussion like we’re going to have with the Joint Committee and come to language that we can all agree on or at least a large portion, it’s probably going to meet the same fate as every other year,” says Wood.

Today’s hearing will begin at 10 a.m.

(Missourinet) – The growing number of teens and young adults who are without a home in Missouri and three neighboring states will be the focus of a conference tomorrow in Kansas City.

Nancy Thoma, with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says the number of homeless youth in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska increased by 17-percent between 2015 and ’16.

“In January 2016, we found 1,142 people under the age of 25 were homeless in our region,” Thoma says. “And 185 of them were not even sheltered…so, on the street.”

Thoma has helped organize the “Ending Youth Homelessness in the Heartland” conference. She says a study found many of the homeless young people in the region come from families that had been homeless at one point.

“Or they’ve had instances of abuse or their house has had issues with drug addiction or mental health,” Thoma said. “Many of the kids who left their home, 45-percent, said they’d either been kicked out or no one would want to live in the kind of home they lived in.”

National and regional leaders in fighting youth homelessness will spearhead the daylong conference. According to Thoma, it takes many groups working together in a community to help those young people find both employment and safe housing.

“We have some examples where community providers have pulled together advisory committees of youth – they’ve pulled together people from all professional walks of life that need to support young people if they’re going to get through that transition,”

Thoma said. More than 200 people have registered to attend the conference, set to take place Tuesday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Kauffman Foundation Conference Center in Kansas City.

(News release) – A Kirksville, Mo., man has pleaded guilty in federal court to embezzling more than $380,000 from the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity in Columbia, Mo.

Burt Louis Beard, 62, of Kirksville, waived his right to a grand jury and pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Willie J. Epps on Thursday, Sept. 8, 2017, to a federal information that charges him with bank fraud.

By pleading guilty, Beard admitted that he defrauded the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity of $380,502 during the period between March 2008 and August 2014.

Beard was the volunteer treasurer from 2000 to 2014. During that time, Beard was responsible for all financial duties related to maintaining the house, paying various vendors and collecting rent checks.

Beard wrote himself in excess of 150 checks. Beard claimed the checks to himself were for reimbursement of personal loans to SAE for direct payments he made to venders. When asked for copies of his personal checks, Beard supplied copies of checks to fictitious vendors or existing vendors that did not have an account receivable for that amount or during that period. In cases where Beard supplied vendor invoices for his reimbursements, vendors said the invoices were not theirs.

SAE elected a new slate of officers for the fraternity in the fall of 2014. During the transition of financial responsibilities from Beard to the new treasurer, numerous red flags began to appear. SAE hired RGL Forensics, a forensic accounting company, to investigate Beard’s wrongdoing. Based on the documentation provided and reviewed, RGL calculated $380,502 as the entire loss from March 2008 through September 2014. The calculated loss consisted of $414,979 in checks issued to Beard from March 2008 through September 2014, less $34,477 in payments that Beard issued to or on behalf of SAE.

Under federal statutes, Beard is subject to a sentence of up to 30 years in federal prison without parole. The maximum statutory sentence is prescribed by Congress and is provided here for informational purposes, as the sentencing of the defendants will be determined by the court based on the advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors. Sentencing hearings will be scheduled after the completion of presentence investigations by the United States Probation Office.

(Missourinet) – The discovery of a headless, handless body in a 55 gallon drum in mid-Missouri’s Rocky Mount has led to an arrest in Morgan County.

According to Sheriff Norman Dills, the victim’s head and hands are missing.

Authorities have not made a positive identification, but they believe the body is that of 54-year-old Joanna Anderson. She was reported missing in May 2016.

According to Dills, 44-year-old Darrell Willis has been questioned about the disappearance of Anderson. Willis claims that he helped transport the barrel and the remains of Anderson.

Willis has been charged with abandonment of a corpse and 3 counts of felony tampering with evidence. His bond has been set at $250,000.

The investigation is continuing and more charges are expected.

(Missourinet) – According to the ACT organization, about 23% of Missouri high school graduates are college ready. Nancy Bowles with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education tells Missourinet students have gained a little ground.

About 23% of Missouri ACT-tested graduates are college ready, racial gap persists

“That’s up a percent, but it’s pretty clear that there’s still some work to be done to ensure that all kids are able to succeed on the test,” says Bowles.

This year’s class in Missouri has a slightly higher average score of 20.4. The national average ACT score is 21.

About 56% of Missouri graduates are college ready in English, 40% in reading, 32% in math and 31% in science. These scores remained flat or increased slightly from the previous year.

Most of Missouri’s minority students continue to fall behind the rest of the student population on their college entrance exams. Asian students have the highest average score of 23, followed by white students with 20.8, Hispanics with 18.8 and African Americans with 16.5.

“We hope that there might be a student who hadn’t been considering college before, but when he or she got their ACT results back they thought ‘Well hey, I can go to college.’”

Seventeen states, including Missouri, have tested 100% of its 2017 graduates. The Show-Me state has the fourth highest ACT score among that group of states. When compared to all 50 states, Missouri is ranked 31st.

The ACT organization says about one-tenth of 1% of students taking the exam earn a perfect score of 36. Of this year’s graduating class, 71 Missouri students have received the top achievement.