Parkway Elementary school recently received a $5,000 Lowe’s “Toolbox for Education” grant to build an outdoor reading garden for their school. The “Toolbox for Education” grant is a national grant through Lowe’s, awarded for permanent facilities enhancement and landscaping projects that encourage community involvement.

Laura Stites, a fifth grade teacher at Parkway, worked closely with the Parkway PTA to make this grant a reality. Stites was approached by the PTA President and Vice President last fall to help write the grant.

“When I saw ‘reading garden’ in the list of sample projects on the site, I said ‘I’m in!’” said Stites. “We have such a beautiful location here at Parkway, and we had been looking to do something for the outside of our building that would help beautify and update our school.”

Parkway plans to convert a large median in front of the school into the outdoor reading area. Currently, the median is grass with a few trees and bushes. A committee formed of staff and PTA members will be working to design the median for multi-purpose use.

“We want it to be a functional space,” said Stites. “We don’t want it to sit empty, because that’s what it does now. For most of the year we’ll have another space where teachers can take kids to do outdoor science experiments or have reading time.”

Stites hopes to get the whole school and the community involved. “Our Lowes in town has already been awesome about contacting us to get involved. We hope to involve our students through the student council, and we plan to reach out to the community and get them involved, too. We want to make it fun for the community.”

The school plans to begin work on the area in the spring, once plans are finalized, with the goal of finishing work by the start of school in the fall.

(AP) — A Guatemalan man who was living in Kansas will serve two years in prison for his role in an identity theft scam involving the St. Joseph license office.

Twenty-nine-year-old Pedro Pablo-Solis, of Liberal, Kan., was sentenced Thursday to two years without parole for aggravated identity theft.

He pleaded guilty in September to providing false identification documents to get licenses for more than 100 illegal immigrants through a St. Joseph license office.

Prosecutors say he obtained Social Security cards and birth certificates that were used by people in the country illegally to obtain identification documents in Missouri.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released interim financial results for the Medicare Shared Savings Program Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and Advance Payment ACOs, as well as preliminary evaluation results for the Pioneer ACOs and final results from the Physician Group Practice Demonstration initiatives.

According to the findings, Medicare ACOs that shared in savings under the Shared Savings Program generated shared savings totaling $128 million for the Medicare trust fund. Of the 114 ACOs that started program operations in 2012, 54 ACOs had lower expenditures than projected, and 29 will share interim savings totaling more than $126 million – a strong start this early in the program.

Heartland Regional Medical Center is one of the ACOs that is eligible to share in savings.

“As an organization we focus on the triple aim of high quality, low cost, and the patient experience,” said Mark Laney, MD, president and CEO of Heartland Health and Mosaic Life Care. “For more than 10 years, we successfully applied the accountable care model to our own employees ­­– long before becoming an ACO under the CMS Shared Savings Program. We believed we had the right focus, the right tools and the right knowledge. This success proves that we are on the right track.”

Heartland Regional Medical Center will receive a $2.86 million payment from CMS as their portion of shared savings

The Medicare Shared Savings Program was created to facilitate coordination and cooperation among providers to improve the quality of care for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries and reduce the growth in costs. ACOs share with Medicare any savings generated from lowering the growth in health care costs while meeting standards for high quality care. Final performance year 1 results will be released later this year, but the early results are promising.

– Congressman Sam Graves (MO-06) has introduced legislation to make it easier for dependent children of military families to remain on their parents’ TRICARE health insurance plan until the age of 26.  Under current law, children must enroll in their own plan through a completely separate program.  Graves’ bill, the TRICARE Family Improvement Act (H.R. 3974), would streamline the process so that children are able to seamlessly remain covered by their parents’ TRICARE plan.

Currently, TRICARE coverage for children on their family plans ends when a dependent child turns 21 – or 23 if the child is enrolled in college, which is three years earlier than what is now typically allowable for non-military families.  The cost of this bill will be fully offset with cuts to foreign aid accounts in the federal budget.

“Considering the sacrifice made by our military families, I don’t think it is asking too much to allow them to stay on as long as non-military children are allowed to, and save a few extra dollars on their health insurance costs,” Graves said.

“Our government already spends too much money on wasteful foreign aid programs, like green energy programs in Africa, or climate change initiatives in Asia.  Cutting spending to these senseless items in order to prioritize caring for the families of brave Americans who protect our freedom on the front lines is something we should all get behind,” Graves said of his proposed plan to pay for any costs associated with the legislation.