JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Some parents are praising legislation that would expand charter schools in Missouri, while administrators for traditional public schools are raising concerns that they will drain resources.
Rep. Rebecca Roeber
Republican Rep. Rebecca Roeber, of Lee’s Summit, has introduced a bill that would allow charter schools in any city with more than 30,000 residents, the Columbia Missourian reports . Currently, charters are mostly limited to students residing in the Kansas City and St. Louis districts, as well as those in unaccredited school systems.
“I am not against traditional public schools,” Roeber said. “However, when they are not working for kids, families should have other options.”
During a hearing this past week before the House Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education, several parents, teachers and education stakeholders shared emotional testimony about how school choice has opened access to quality education.
Carmen Ward said her son, who has autism and intellectual disabilities, bounced around public and private elementary schools in St. Louis for years. She said it wasn’t until he reached fifth grade that Ward found somewhere that met his special educational needs: KIPP, which is short for the Knowledge is Power Program, part of a national nonprofit network of public charter schools.
“His reading has improved beyond my expectations, and I have seen a drastic improvement in his mathematics skills,” Ward told the committee.
Among opponents, the chief concern was financial. State funding is based largely on enrollment, so fewer students equal less money.
“When we are faced with charter school expansion down the road, that could take kids away in an unpredictable way that I can’t plan for,” said Kearney school district superintendent Bill Nicely. “This bill doesn’t provide a level playing field for choice to occur in a responsible way.”
Rep. Chuck Basye, R-Rocheport, who is the vice chairman of the committee, said he is in favor of the intent behind the bill.
“I’m very supportive of parental choice, whether it be for a public, private or charter school,” he said.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A man found guilty of sexually assaulting and burglarizing victims at a Kansas City, Kansas, apartment complex has been sentenced to more than 33 years in prison.
Adalberto Mata-Deras -photo Wyandotte Co.
Wyandotte County District Attorney’s office announced 36-year-old Adalberto Mata-Deras was sentenced Friday. A judge ordered lifetime post-release supervision and registration as a sex offender for Meta-Deras
Mata-Deras was convicted last April of two counts of rape, aggravated sexual battery, three counts of aggravated burglary and interference with law enforcement.
The case stemmed from multiple sexual assaults and burglaries reported at Woodview Apartments between August 2014 and October 2016.
Prosecutors say DNA evidence linked Mata-Deras to one of the victim’s apartments.
Another hospital led by EmpowerHMS, the North Kansas City company that has defaulted on its bills and missed payroll at its hospitals over the last couple of months, is under new management.
Jorge Perez addresses a crowded city council chamber in Fulton, Missouri, after he was introduced as the new owner of the town’s hospital in September 2017. BRAM SABLE-SMITH / KBIA/SIDE EFFECTS PUBLIC MEDIA- via Kansas News Service
City officials said that Fulton Medical Center, a 37-bed acute-care hospital in Fulton, Missouri, is now being run by a management team led by its CEO, Mike Reece.
Bruce Hackmann, economic development director of the Callaway Chamber of Commerce, told KCUR that EmpowerHMS’ contract to run the hospital had expired and not been renewed.
“We’re now hearing very good things about how the hospital is performing and that’s the main thing to us, because we have jobs at stake and a hospital means a lot to a community our size,” Hackmann said.
In fact, Empower had not acquired the hospital. Rather, it had a contract with Leawood, Kansas,-based NueTerra, the hospital’s owner, to manage the hospital and an option to buy it. But those agreements expired sometime last year, according to Hackmann, and NueTerra did not renew them.
NueTerra officials did not return calls seeking comment.
Missed payments
Empower and other companies affiliated with Perez own around 20 rural hospitals in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and elsewhere. Since late last year, various news outlets have reported that Empower has missed payments to its hospitals’ creditors and been late in paying hospital employees.
Last month, a Kansas state judge appointed a receiver to run Hillsboro Community Hospital in Hillsboro, Kansas, about 50 miles north of Wichita, after it defaulted on a bank loan and the bank foreclosed on the hospital. Around the same time, a Tennessee state judge appointed a special master to temporarily oversee the finances of Lauderdale Community Hospital in Ripley, Tennessee.
More recently, The Kansas City Star reported that employees of Horton Community Hospital in northeast Kansas did not receive their paychecks last week and were dipping into their own pockets to pay for supplies. Other Empower hospitals in Oklahoma have experienced similar financial woes recently.
The CEO of Horton Community Hospital, Ty Compton, told the Topeka Capital-Journal this week that a clerical error caused paychecks to be deposited late. He also blamed the hospital’s woes on the problems afflicting rural hospitals nationwide.
“It’s at risk in every rural community,” Compton told the newspaper. “The facility in Fort Scott and the facility in Independence, Kansas, both closed and those are much bigger towns than Horton is. So we’d be naive to say that health care’s not in a crisis. It certainly is in a crisis. Rural America, in general, is in a crisis.”
The U.S. Government Accountability Office last year said that rural hospital closures were generally preceded and caused by financial distress. That distress, it said, was due to multiple factors, including the higher percentage of elderly residents in rural areas, the higher percentage of residents with chronic conditions, lower median household incomes, decreasing populations and slow employment growth.
Lab billing backlash
George Ross, senior marketing director at Empower, blamed Empower’s cash flow problems on insurers’ unwillingness to pay Empower’s hospitals in the wake of questions raised about lab billing arrangements at other hospitals owned by groups affiliated with Perez.
“There’s so much backlash right now that it’s real hard for him to receive his money,” Ross said. “Yet he tries to find a way to pay the bills even though he’s not receiving money.”
One of Perez’s hospitals, Putnam County Memorial Hospital in Unionville, Missouri, was the subject of a highly critical audit by Missouri State Auditor Nichole Galloway in 2017. Galloway questioned the legality of the lab billing arrangement, under which the tiny hospital billed insurers for lab tests for patients who had never set foot in the hospital.
“Based on our review of hospital accounts, the vast majority of laboratory billings are for out-of-state lab activity for individuals who are not patients of hospital physicians,” the audit stated.
Perez, through a company called Hospital Partners Inc., took over Putnam County Memorial Hospital in late 2016. At the time, the hospital was on the verge of closing. The hospital is now under different management and Hospital Partners has since sued the hospital for breach of contract and Galloway for exceeding her authority.
Ross said Perez had taken out personal loans to cover bills and payroll, all the while awaiting delayed reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid.
“See, if these hospitals are little gold mines feeding him money, or if there’s no money coming in, right? And I don’t have to tell you, if there’s no money coming in, then the guy’s going above and beyond to make it happen,” Ross said.
Ross insisted the lab billing arrangement at Putnam County Memorial Hospital was perfectly legitimate.
“He had all his hospitals send their samples to that hospital,” Ross said. “He basically invested money into lab equipment (at Putnam County Memorial Hospital) in order to be able to process what you’d normally send” to Quest Diagnostics, the giant lab testing company.
A federal judge recently declined to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the lab billing scheme was fraudulent. The suit was brought last year by RightChoice Managed Care and dozens of Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance plans.
The suit charges that Hospital Partners and individual defendants, including Perez, defrauded RightChoice by billing it for blood, urine drug and other lab tests run through Putnam County Memorial Hospital, even though the tests were performed at outside labs throughout the country.
RightChoice alleges the scheme defrauded it of more than $73 million — a staggering sum for a hospital that in fiscal 2016, before it was taken over by Hospital Partners, posted operating revenues of just $7.5 million.
Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor in conjunction with the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.
PHELPS COUNTY —One person died in an accident just after 12:30p.m. Saturday in Phelps County.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2018 Chevy Silverado driven by Carl B. Rial, 68, Eaton Rapids, MI., was eastbound on Interstate 44 at Route 8 near St. James.
The pickup struck Stephen D. Goode, 65, Union, who had walked into the path of the vehicle.
Goode was pronounced dead at the scene and transported to Jones Funeral Home. The MSHP released no additional details late Saturday.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The country’s top child abuse hotline recently launched its first text line, and now the nonprofit is looking to Missouri for help determining the efficiency of the service.
The new text line is part of national child advocacy nonprofit Childhelp’s efforts to reach more young people, who may be less comfortable or unable to report abuse over the phone.
Michelle Fingerman, Childhelp’s national director, told the Kansas City Star that the majority of people calling the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline are adults speaking on children’s behalf. But informal testing of text lines in recent years found that more than 80 percent of users were younger than 18 years old, Fingerman said.
“It confirmed what we were suspecting,” Fingerman said. “That youth weren’t calling, because they were comfortable reaching out in other ways . including text.”
Childhelp officials plan to study what works for text line counselors in Missouri, which ranks third in the country for helpline calls made per capita.
The ranking doesn’t reflect higher abuse rates than other states. Missouri’s rates of substantiated abuse cases dropped to 3 percent in 2017, below the country’s 9 percent rate, according to hotline data, federal statistics and the census.
With the state’s strong history of using the national hotline, Childhelp leaders said testing the text line’s success in Missouri will be key to understanding and improving the service.
Trained counselors face unique challenges when collecting crisis information via text, which could take longer than 45 minutes compared to an average hotline call that lasts about nine minutes. Hotline operators could face difficulties conveying tone or inflection that offers comfort over text or live chats.
“For us it is leveraging technology in a positive way,” Fingerman said. “If we know if this is how youth connect at this point, I think our priority is to meet them where they are at.”
COLE COUNTY — Authorities have identified a man arrested and a victim in a deadly shooting in central Missouri.
Austin Corrigan-photo Cole Co.
The Cole County sheriff’s office says in a news release that deputies rushed to a home early Friday after a woman called 911 and said she and her husband had been shot. Deputies found 63-year-old Clifton Withers dead and the woman wounded. Investigators say she was able to tell deputies who had shot them.
Jefferson City police later located the suspect’s vehicle and tried to stop it. The pursuit ended in Holt Summit, where the suspect — identified as 21-year-old Austin Corrigan — wrecked the vehicle. Corrigan was arrested after a short pursuit.
Corrigan has been charged with second-degree murder, first-degree assault and armed criminal action.
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COLE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a fatal shooting and have a suspect in custody.
Just before 4a.m. Friday, the Cole County Sheriff’s Department responded to the 4500 block of Route E for a possible weapons violation., according to a media release.
A woman called 911 and stated her and her husband had been shot and told us who had shot them. Upon arrival, deputies located two victims, one of them was deceased the other was taken to University Hospital in Columbia.
A Jefferson City Police Officer was able to locate the suspect vehicle and tried to stop it. The subject failed to yield and a pursuit ensued. The subject was taken into custody in Holt Summit after the vehicle wrecked and a short foot pursuit.
The suspect was taken to the Cole County Sheriff’s Department without further incident. He was booked and processed with the charges of Murder 1st Degree, Assault 1st Degree and Armed Criminal Action. The sheriff has not released the name of the suspect or victims.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A Silicon Valley company has donated $2 million to the University of Kansas to support research related to cryptocurrency and digital payments, such as Bitcoin.
photo courtesy University of Kansas
The university says in a news release that the donation from Ripple will provide $400,000 each year for five years. It will go to the Information and Telecommunication Technology Center at the Kansas School of Engineering.
The university will determine its own research topics and Ripple, which provides digital commerce services, will collaborate with students and faculty and provide technical resources and expertise.
The gift also will support the KU Blockchain Institute, a student-led organization that promotes the use of blockchain technology. Blockchain is a digital record that is often used to track the use of cryptocurrency, or digital money.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A Joplin, Mo., day care operator was sentenced in federal court this week for a scheme to take the infant daughter of a client to Arkansas to be adopted by another couple, according to the United State’s Attorney.
Lasonya Faye Poindexter-photo Greene County
Lasonya Faye Poindexter, 31, of Joplin, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool to six years in federal prison without parole. The court also ordered Poindexter to pay $1,500 in restitution to the victim parents.
On June 21, 2018, Poindexter pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud.
Poindexter began taking care of a Joplin couple’s two children at her home day care in April 2017. Poindexter admitted that she contacted a couple in Lincoln, Ark., and offered to make arrangements for the couple to adopt one of those children, a five-month-old daughter identified in court documents as Jane Doe. The infant’s parents had never put Jane Doe up for adoption, nor had they ever told anyone that Jane Doe was available to be adopted.
Poindexter made multiple trips to Lincoln in June and July 2017 so the Arkansas couple, who had recently suffered the loss of their unborn child due to a miscarriage, could spend time with Jane Doe. Jane Doe’s parents had never given Poindexter permission to take their daughter across state lines to Arkansas and were unaware that any of the trips occurred. The Arkansas couple usually met with Poindexter at the home of Poindexter’s aunt, but one visit was at the couple’s own home (where they had prepared a nursery room for Jane Doe).
Poindexter falsely told the Arkansas couple that the infant’s mother had left her baby at Poindexter’s house and wanted her to find a good family for Jane Doe because she was the product of a rape. Poindexter told the Arkansas couple that Jane Doe’s mother wanted a closed adoption.
Poindexter asked the Arkansas couple for money to provide for the care of Jane Doe until the adoption was finalized. The couple refused to provide Poindexter money until the adoption was finalized.
The Arkansas woman who sought to adopt Jane Doe viewed the mother’s Facebook page in July 2017 and noticed numerous images of Jane Doe with her mother. On July 20, 2017, the Arkansas woman contacted the mother of Jane Doe through Facebook. She sent the mother of Jane Doe a private message, telling the mother that she and her husband were planning to adopt Jane Doe and asking if she truly wanted to put Jane Doe up for adoption. Jane Doe’s parents then contacted law enforcement.
The Arkansas woman confronted Poindexter after communicating with Jane Doe’s mother. Poindexter sent her a screen shot of an e-mail that appeared to be from an attorney. In reality, the fake e-mail was created by Poindexter. The attorney later told investigators he had never represented Poindexter, had any communication with her and was not involved with any adoption proceeding with Jane Doe.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A long-awaited agreement among most of airlines that will fly out of a new Kansas City International Airport could result in a reduction of the project’s cost, according to developers and city officials.
images courtesy FlyKCI.com
The cost for developing the project will be about $1.5 billion rather than a previous estimate of $1.64 billion, developers said Thursday. The news came a day after six of the eight airlines, the Kansas City Aviation Department and developer Edgemoor Infrastructure and Real Estate reached a deal on their costs.
After years of debate, voters in November 2017 overwhelmingly approved replacing the three-terminal Kansas City International Airport with a single-terminal airport. The city has said no taxpayer money will be used on the project, and airlines will be responsible for cost overruns.
The project was delayed since November for negotiations when two smaller airlines, Allegiant and Spirit, balked at the $1.64 billion budget. The airlines also disagreed over how to share the cost of a baggage handling system valued at $20 million a year.
Kansas City Mayor Sly James said having the agreement was a big step after seven years working on the project.
“Folks should understand this is not a negotiation to get on a Lime scooter and ride from one part of town to the other — lots of moving parts, biggest project in the history of this city,” James said.
Aviation Director Pat Klein said he expected six of the eight airlines that serve KCI to sign the agreement by Feb. 25.
Edgemoor managing director Geoffrey Stricker told city council committee members Thursday between 10 and 15 percent of the design work is complete and can find cost savings of $140 million. Under questioning from committee members, Stricker said the design team would consider changes to flooring and lighting systems to reduce costs.
“We don’t view this as cuts to anything,” said Steve Sisneros, managing director of airport affairs for Southwest Airlines. “The savings are going to be in design.”
Some council members were hesitant about the agreement.
“I am not one to generally celebrate victory until I understand what the victory is,” said Councilman Scott Wagner.
He noted the $1.5 billion does not include the costs of financing the project and expressed concern that the council did not yet know what kind of contingency fund the project would have if it goes over the new budget.
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona is trying to catch up to with a state law in Kansas and 9 other states allowing electronic monitoring and other technology aimed at deterring abuse of vulnerable people at long-term care facilities, following the rape of an incapacitated Phoenix woman who later gave birth.
Nathan Sutherland photo Maricopa County Sheriff
Cameras are most commonly used, but they pose privacy issues, and advocates and experts disagree about their effectiveness.
Some say video surveillance can help in criminal cases but may not stop attacks, while others have seen improvements and urge any effort to safeguard those who are aging, sick, disabled or otherwise unable to protect themselves.
The Arizona House is considering a measure that would let certain facilities install video surveillance in common areas. The providers would have to detail how to avoid privacy violations.
“We’re looking into how to make it so parents have more reliable ways to ensure their loved ones are safe,” Republican Rep. Nancy Barto, the measure’s sponsor. “I’m learning a lot of group homes already do this. Some of those policies are actually working.”
Arizona would join Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington with laws or regulations allowing surveillance equipment inside nursing homes, assisted living centers and other group residential settings.
Most of those laws place the option and cost of electronic monitoring on residents and their guardians. A majority of the laws say residents or their surrogates can put a camera or monitoring device in their rooms but must notify the facility, among other conditions.
Carole Herman, founder of the advocacy group Foundation Aiding the Elderly, is not sure cameras would have helped her aunt, who died of bedsores in a nursing home but said that they might be useful in other cases.
Cameras in hallways can show who is at a patient’s bedside and how often the patient is getting care, she said. She questions why any facility would oppose them.
“The industry doesn’t want it obviously,” Herman said. “But if they care about these people, what’s the resistance to these cameras?”
Nicole Jorwic, director of rights policy at The Arc, a national advocacy group serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, cautioned that cameras are not a “magic pill.”
“Even if the law’s written perfectly well, it’s not going to capture every form of abuse and neglect,” Jorwic said.
While cameras could help catch abusers, it’s not clear they’re effective at preventing violence, said Brian Lee, a former Florida long-term care public advocate who heads the advocacy group Families for Better Care.
“As far as prevention, I don’t know,” Lee said, “but I’ve seen it used for prosecution.”
But one expert says a properly designed closed-circuit TV system with multiple monitoring points can be a good deterrent. A common mistake is to have one monitoring area that nobody is watching, which makes cameras reactive instead of proactive tools, said Steve Wilder, president of Sorensen, Wilder & Associates, an Illinois-based health care safety and security consulting group that works primarily with hospitals and senior living communities.
“A lot of facilities think cameras give the message of ‘We’re not a safe facility.’ Nothing could be further from the truth,” Wilder said.
Details were not known about the security system at the Phoenix facility, where a licensed nurse is accused of sexually assaulting a 29-year-old woman who had a baby boy Dec. 29.
Hacienda HealthCare said Thursday that it was closing the intermediate care facility that serves young people with intellectual or developmental disabilities and would work with the state to move patients elsewhere.
After the birth, the Arizona Department of Health Services implemented new safety measures at Hacienda, including more monitoring of patient care areas but not video cameras.
The department declined to comment on the surveillance legislation Thursday.
In Texas, a 2013 law allowing facilities to install and operate video surveillance equipment in common areas has made an impact, health officials said. Devices can only be placed in the state’s 13 intermediate care facilities, which serve nearly 3,000 patients with intellectual disabilities.
Cameras have both confirmed and cleared staff in allegations of abuse, neglect or exploitation.
“There was an initial rise as (the Department of Family Protective Services) was able to confirm cases more readily, but since then, the rates have fallen,” Carrie Williams, a Texas Health and Human Services Commission spokeswoman, said in an email.
New Jersey has taken a different approach. Its “Safe Care Cam” program aims to catch abuse or neglect by allowing residents to borrow a hidden camera.
A loaner camera led to the January arrest of a caretaker at an assisted living facility. The attorney general’s office said footage showed her slapping a 90-year-old bedridden woman on the hand and roughly pushing her head back onto a pillow several times. The victim couldn’t communicate verbally because of a stroke.
In Arizona, the lawmaker behind the camera legislation said it has “a good chance” of passing. As chairwoman of the House Health & Human Services Committee, Barto can likely get the measure a hearing.
Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, is usually skeptical of regulations and has touted his record of rolling them back, but the Republican has ordered agencies to improve protections for people with disabilities.
Arizona also is considering legislation that would require facilities like Hacienda to get a state license and conduct background checks of employees that care for clients. So far, neither bill is scheduled for a vote.
