Examples of my work
As a journalist in both Nebraska and Kansas City, MO, I have covered a plethora of topics, ranging from in-depth stories on $550 million school budgets to a ballot controversy that nearly left multiple candidates disqualified, a large residential development planned on historical land and efforts to decrease technology use in KC schools. Check out some of my stories published in both The Kansas City Star as a local government accountability reporter and the Lincoln Journal Star as the K-12 education and early childhood reporter.
KC could build 200 homes on grounds of massive plantation: ‘History will be lost’
Nearly 150 years ago, women dressed in tight-fitted corsets, bell-shaped skirts and heavy petticoats stepped out of carriages onto a large rock and made their way up the grand, 100-foot path to a Clay County mansion’s front porch.
There, they would join a crowd of party-goers sipping cocktails or sit on the sweeping lawn for a mid-afternoon picnic as enslaved men, women and children tended to the grounds of the Multnomah Plantation.
It’s here, on land formerly owned by John Dougherty of Liberty, that a towering mansion once stood set behind a circle drive. Where Civil War veterans were buried and enslaved people likely lived in small cabins dug out along the creekside.
And it’s here, among the remnants of a once bustling plantation, that a 200-home subdivision development could soon be constructed.
FULL STORY:
Park Hill examines school technology use. Why some parents are pushing for change
When Molly Christie’s kindergarten student came home with her own school-issued iPad last year, she was shocked.
As a family who limits screen time for their children, she never expected her young child to be given a personal device in kindergarten, let alone that one would come home with her every day.
But her concerns didn’t end there.
She later learned some classes in the Park Hill School District offer screen time as rewards for good behavior, and that parents don’t know how much time students spend on devices during class, or even what those devices are used for day-to-day — a question parents say they have previously received no solid answer to.
“That was kind of the beginning,” Christie said.
In the year since, Christie has also learned she isn’t alone in her concerns.
Now, just several months after a group of concerned parents helped push the Shawnee Mission School District to change its classroom technology practices, a new group up north is tackling the same mission.
FULL STORY:
Northland group fielded years of code complaints against suspect before killing
Terri Wolfe’s worst fears were confirmed when she saw the news Monday morning that a man had been shot and killed in a Northland neighborhood.
She didn’t need names, photos or an exact address to guess what had happened. Wolfe immediately knew the shooting had occurred in the very same neighborhood she had been taking so many calls from in recent months.
A feeling of “complete devastation” washed over her, she recalled.
As the director of administration at Northland Neighborhoods, Inc., which Kansas City contracts to conduct code enforcement in part of the city, Wolfe fields complaints from neighbors about issues ranging from overgrown lawns to cars parked in fire lanes.
What had been going on in Maplewoods Estates, just north of Gladstone, was not only out of the ordinary, but it had been getting increasingly hostile, Wolfe said.
Kansas City records show that complaints about an unruly neighbor, Jeffrey Traviss King, began flowing in eight years ago, escalating over the last 11 months until this week’s fatal dispute.
FULL STORY:
KC residents fear data centers could drive up bills. Why Evergy says not to worry
When David Hickok first moved to the Smithville area north of Kansas City over 10 years ago, he never would have guessed an influx of massive data centers nearby would someday be the reason he considered leaving for good.
But after Meta, the parent company of Facebook, opened the doors to its massive data center at the intersection of Interstate 435 and U.S. 169, Hickok began worrying about how it would impact his life — and specifically, his electricity bill.
“If we’re going to sell, we’re leaving here. We’re getting out of Clay County. We’re gone,” said Hickok, who is retired from the military.
Now, as Google continues construction of its own 500-acre, $1 billion data center located directly across the highway from Meta’s, and another $100 billion data center dubbed Project Kestrel begins construction in the area, Hickok said he worries he and his neighbors could take on the brunt of the costs of providing energy to such big projects.
And he’s not alone.
FULL STORY:
7 Platte County candidates could be pulled off ballot due to ‘misleading’ error
Several candidates vying for seats representing Platte County this fall could be disqualified from the election after a “misleading,” county-issued slip of paper led them to incorrectly file financial statements.
The Platte County Commission is considering taking steps to remove seven candidates from the August ballot after they did not file their personal financial disclosure statements with both the state and the county before the April 21 deadline — a mistake some say was largely caused by inaccurate information provided by local election officials.
FULL STORY:
For 100 years, iconic high school has been ‘the root’ of ever-changing Northland
The view from Nancy Knipfel’s old classroom feels the same as it did 45 years ago when she first took up a teaching post at North Kansas City High School — fulfilling a lifelong dream of teaching at her alma mater.
Even still, after years spent analyzing Shakespearean plays, discussing classic pieces of literature with students and eventually swapping her classroom gig for various roles throughout the high school, Knipfel, a 1964 graduate, likes to sneak up to her old classroom on the top floor to admire the trees that sit outside the window.
It’s a reminder of the dream she once spent a decade chasing, the subsequent years of teaching English to countless students and just how special North Kansas City High — lovingly nicknamed “Northtown” — is to her and thousands of students, teachers and families who have walked its halls over the last century.
And as the school celebrates 100 years of serving the community this year, Knipfel said the widespread pride for Northtown is more apparent than ever.
FULL STORY:
'Exhausting, heartbreaking, devastating': Racism at Wayne school pushes family out of Nebraska
hen Lee Graham and his family moved to Wayne from California in April 2023, he thought it would be the final landing place for his family.
The city of 6,000 people in northeast Nebraska had the small-town feel he wanted for his family. And for a while, Graham thought he had gotten it right.
“At first it was great,” he said.
But when his son, who is Black, was first called a racial slur by his new classmates at Wayne High School, Graham’s picture-perfect view of Wayne began to crumble.
Maybe it was a one-time thing. Maybe it would stop. Maybe his classmates just needed to get to know him better, needed to learn their actions were hateful.
As the school year continued, however, things only escalated. It grew from use of the N-word to making offensive actions toward him daily.
It was too much for the teenager to handle.
In January, the Grahams pulled their son, who the Journal Star agreed not to name in this article, out of public school and home-schooled him for the remainder of the year. In May, the family packed up and moved out of Nebraska – just over a year after they first called Wayne home.
“It was exhausting, heartbreaking, devastating,” Graham said. “Watching our son and hoping our son is not permanently injured emotionally, and that he can process through this.”
FULL STORY:
‘This is a long game’: A year after Roe, abortion access fight moves to blue states like New Mexico
CLOVIS, N.M. – The sanctuary in Grace Covenant Reformed Church was packed.
People stood shoulder to shoulder wherever they could – near the stained glass windows depicting scenes from the Bible, behind the neatly lined rows of chairs that serve as pews, against a wall covered in crosses made from painted wood, wire, glass and ceramic red chiles.
Bibles and hymnals rested under every seat, but they weren’t used that Monday night last September. There was no sermon, because this wasn’t a church service.
Residents of Clovis, a town of some 40,000 people a mere 20-minute drive to the Texas state line, crammed into this little brick building that night to discuss a plan of action to ban abortion.
Just three months earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that had legalized abortion in the U.S. for almost 50 years.
As trigger laws banning the procedure began going into effect across the nation – in places including neighboring Texas – abortion providers took up residence in New Mexico, which has some of the most permissive abortion laws in the U.S.
“As the laws in this country change before our very eyes,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said on the day Roe was reversed, “I will continue to fight for the right to a safe, legal abortion in New Mexico and stand as a brick wall against those who seek to punish women and their doctors just because they seek the care they need and deserve.”
In the year since Dobbs, New Mexico has been a brick wall and a safe haven – for those who provide abortions and those who desire or need them.
But it’s also become something else: a new battleground in the fight over access to abortion in this country, with smaller towns and bigger cities – and American versus American – warring against one another.
“We gained a lot of ground with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but now it’s at the state level,” said Logan Brown, a science teacher from Portales, New Mexico, who helped organize the September church gathering. He’s a self-proclaimed abortion abolitionist, intent on outlawing abortion at all stages, for any reason.
“Now,” Brown said, “instead of one battlefield, it’s 50 battlefields.”
FULL STORY: https://americaafterroe.news21.com/stories/abortion-ban-fight-moves-texas-to-new-mexico-access-laws/