USD 234 Preschool Screening
Unified School District 234
424 south Main
Fort Scott, KS 66701-2697
www.usd234.org
520-223-0800 Fax 620-223-27 60
DESTRY BROWN, Superintendent
November 15,2022
USD 234 will provide preschool screenings for children up to the age of5 years on December 2,2022. Children may have vision, hearing, speech/communication, motor skills, socialization skills, and general development screened.
The purpose of the screenings is to locate and identify children with
possible developmental delays who may need special education preschool and/or related services.
Appointments may be scheduled by calling Tammy Catron, Fort Scott Preschool Center,223-8965, Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The deadline for scheduling an appointment is November 22,
2022
The Lowell Milken Center Reaches an All-time Record for Visitors
Since its inception in 2007, the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes has hosted visitors from around the world, including 104 countries and all 50 US states. On November 4, 2022, the center reached a new milestone with its 12,634th visitor for 2022. That number marks the highest number of visitors the Center has had in one calendar year.
81-year-old John Hammes from Bangor, Wisconsin was the honored visitor for 2022. He is a Vietnam veteran, who visited the Center on his way to a veteran’s celebration in Branson, Missouri with his wife and children. They enjoyed learning the stories of all of the LMC’s Unsung Heroes and could relate to those about Harry Hue and Douglas Hegdahl, both Vietnam veterans themselves. While John was awarded with special gifts from the Center to mark this milestone day, he also gifted the LMC staff with his own special stories about his four tours of duty in Vietnam. The Center thanks John for his service to our country and congratulates him as the 12,634th Visitor for 2022!
Visitors like John and his family continue to help the mission of the Center grow, as they learn about and share the featured Unsung Heroes’ stories and their important impact on the history of our country and the world.
As interest in the Center grows, the number of projects entered in the Discovery Award and ArtEffect competitions grows as well. Consequently, new Unsung Hero exhibits are continually being added to the Lowell Milken Center’s Hall of Heroes, the Lowell Milken Park, and the Center’s website. These unsung heroes become role models that inspire all who learn about them to seek to make a difference in the lives of others.
About the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes:
The Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes works with students and educators across diverse academic disciplines to develop history projects that highlight role models who demonstrate courage, compassion and respect. Through our unique project-based learning approach, students discover, develop and communicate the stories of Unsung Heroes who have made a profound and positive impact on the course of history. By championing these Unsung Heroes, students, educators and communities discover their own power and responsibility to effect positive change in the world. Visit www.lowellmilkencenter.org to learn more.
Thompson-Harkey American Legion Post #25 Chili Cook-off Nov. 19
Who: Thompson-Harkey American Legion #25
When: November 19th, 2022. Doors Open at 11:00 a.m. Judging will begin at 1:00 p.m., There will be two categories “Hottest” and “Most flavorful.”
Where: Memorial Hall, 1 East Third Street, Fort Scott, KS 66701.
The General Public is invited to participate and attend.
Entry Fee is $10.00 per Category. There will be prizes for the top three Winners in each Category.
Media Contact: Jessica Allison, Commander, American Legion Post #25. 620-224-4733, [email protected]
Dems Meeting Canceled for Nov. 20
Bourbon County Democrats will not meet on Nov. 20th. Enjoy the holiday with family and friends.
Submitted by
Carol MacArthur
Chair, Bourbon Co. Democrats
Reading With Miss Val: Kansas Reads to Preschoolers Month
Schedule a Reading with Miss Val for
Kansas Reads to Preschoolers Month
In honor of Kansas Reads to Preschoolers Month, Miss Val, Youth Librarian at Fort Scott Public Library, would like to read “Not a Box” by Antoinette Portis to local preschool children. If you run a daycare or teach at a preschool and would like to schedule a reading, email Miss Val at [email protected] or call (620)223-2882.
The story “Not a Box” is a simple tale about a rabbit who uses its imagination to turn a box into many different things, including a rocket ship, racecar, burning building, and a mountain peak.
According to the State Library of Kansas website, “Kansas Reads to Preschoolers is an annual event that promotes reading to all Kansas children from birth through age five.
Through the statewide program, parents, librarians and caregivers are encouraged to read the chosen title during a selected week and month.”
Star Gazing Parties in the Future For the Lowell Milken Center Fort Scott
A telescope will be an added attraction at the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes at the corner of First and Wall Street in downtown Fort Scott.
“The telescope will be used to educate the community on… amazing unsung heroes of the stars,” Ronda Hassig, funding developer for the center, said.
Hassig wrote the $2,500 grant proposal for the telescope and carrying case and the Fort Scott Area Community Foundation awarded the grant last month.
“The telescope is remote and GPS controlled,” Hassig said. ” We had an astronomer from Nebraska stop by the center and we found out he is the director of the Stargazing Project in Nebraska! He is so excited for us, that he has agreed to come back down as soon as the telescope arrives and help us get used to using it. There’s a definite learning curve but he thinks we can handle it!”
“The telescope will be used in the Lowell Milken Park (adjacent to the center) for viewing of the moon and planets,” she said. “For deeper space, we are hoping to be able to use it at the Fort (Fort Scott National Historic Site) along with their telescope!”
“We hope to get both young and old excited about seeing the stars and the heavens so we will be having star parties here at the center in the Lowell Milken Park,” she said. “The parties will contain stargazing along with guest speakers and expert astronomers from all over the country. Everyone will be invited!”
“I think no matter how old you are, if you have ever looked through a telescope and seen the moon up close, or the actual rings of Saturn, you are hooked forever,” she said.
The telescope has been ordered and the center staff hope to have it sometime this week.
“Then I’ll get to start planning our first star party,” she said. ” I’ll be paying special attention to moonless nights and hopefully cloudless nights and we may get lucky and get to have a party in the next several months. It will be cold but if you’re bundled up you won’t care! There will be warm drinks and treats for everyone!”
“Stay tuned for dates and please plan to come enjoy our newest device at the Lowell Milken Center provided with the gracious funds of the Fort Scott Community Foundation,” she said.
“We are really trying to educate the community on all of the different unsung heroes here at the Lowell Milken Center, by having fun and having educational activities around those heroes,” she said.
Two of the astronomy heroes that are featured at the center are:
“Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born right after the Civil War and was educated at Oberlin and Radcliffe,” Hassig said. “She got excited about astronomy after taking a course on it. When she graduated she began volunteering at the Harvard College Observatory and after 14 years she was paid for her work at $.30 an hour. She was essentially 1 of 20 women computers. Through her work, Leavitt earned graduate credit towards her degree but never completed it. She did however make an amazing discovery – she figured out how to measure objects in space. This discovery led to the launching of the Hubble Telescope and more recently the Webb Telescope! As she aged, her health got worse and a bout with cancer caused her to lose her hearing. She died at age 53, but her dedication to astronomy has given us some of our most advanced knowledge about space!”
“Gene Shoemaker was the founder of astrogeology,” Hassig said. “The first person to determine the origin of the famous Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, the first director and creator of the Astrogeology Research Program of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, and along with David Levy discovered the Shoemaker-Levy Comet.
“Shoemaker worked for NASA preparing himself and the other astronauts to walk on the moon. Gene was to be the first geologist on the moon. But after all his hard work he was unable to go to the moon because he had Addison’s Disease. He commentated the moonwalk with CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite during the live flights. Although he was horribly disappointed not to go, he kept looking for impact craters and space rocks. He searched for craters and rocks all over the world. He was looking for craters in Australia when he was tragically killed in a car accident. NASA wanted to honor this amazing scientist so they called his family and asked for some of his ashes. They put the ashes in a space probe and crashed it on the moon. Gene Shoemaker is the only human buried on the moon and just one of two buried in space.”
Managing Water Use in Drought Years
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Girls Who Code Club Program at the Fort Scott Public Library
The Fort Scott Public Library’s Miss Val wants to help local children and teens gain interest and skills in the high-demand field of computer coding. While, as the name implies, Girls Who Code clubs have a special focus on attracting girls to the male-dominated coding industry, club meetings are open to all genders, and the curriculum is gender-neutral.
The library applied to form local club chapters and received approval in late October. The first meeting for the 3rd-5th graders’ club will take place on November 17 at 4:30 pm in the library’s event room. The 6th-12th grade club will begin on December 1 at 4:30 pm in the same place. The middle and high school club will continue meeting on the first Thursday of the month and the elementary club on the third Thursday, from January through May.
All club meetings are free, and will include an after school snack.
To register a child or teen for Girls Who Code Club, parents can fill out a registration form at Fort Scott Public Library or follow the instructions linked on the library’s website. Forms are also available for students through Bethany Higgins, technology teacher at Eugene Ware Elementary, and through Adam Feagins, technology teacher at Fort Scott Middle School.
Visit fortscott.mykansaslibrary.org to learn more.
According to the Girls Who Code website, “Girls Who Code is on a mission to close the gender gap in technology and to change the image of what a programmer looks like and does.” Girls Who Code clubs are available in the United States, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom, with at least 470,000 students who
Patients For Profit: Kaiser Health News
KFF’s Kaiser Health News Investigates Private Equity’s Stealth Takeover of Health Care in the United States
A new investigation by KFF’s Kaiser Health News (KHN) lays bare the sizeable efforts by private equity investors to take over large and lucrative parts of the U.S health care system in recent years. KHN found that private equity firms have invested nearly $1 trillion through thousands of deals to acquire hospitals and specialized medical practices during the last decade alone. The deals, many of them unnoticed by federal regulators, typically result in a ratcheting up of providers’ pursuit of profits – and higher prices for patients, lawsuits, and complaints about quality of care.
The investments range widely and include the acquisitions of physician practices, dental clinic management companies, companies that treat autism, drug addiction and other behavioral health care, and ancillary services such as diagnostic and urine testing labs and software for medical billing. Through other deals, companies tied to private equity have come to dominate specialized medical services such as dermatology, gastroenterology, and anesthesiology in certain markets around the country. All of it has come on top of better-publicized takeovers of hospital emergency room staffing firms as well as the buying up of entire rural hospital systems. Federal regulators have been almost blind to the incursion. KHN found that more than 90 percent of private equity takeovers or investments fell below the $100 million threshold that triggers an antitrust review by the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department.
Whistleblowers and injured patients, however, have turned to the courts to press allegations of misconduct or other improper business dealings. KHN found that companies owned or managed by private equity have agreed to pay fines of more than $500 million since 2014 to settle at least 34 lawsuits filed under the False Claims Act. Most of the time, the private equity owners have avoided liability.
The latest story, published today in USA Today, is part of a broader ongoing series, “Patients for Profit: How Private Equity Hijacked Health Care” in which KHN has examined a wide range of private equity’s forays into the health care system. They include the marketing of America’s top-selling abortion pill, the establishment of “obstetric emergency departments” at some hospitals, investments in the booming hospice care industry and even takeovers of funeral homes and cemeteries. The series includes a video primer, “How Private Equity Is Investing in Health Care”.
KHN collaborates with many editorial partners, and media outlets can publish these and other KHN stories at no charge. KHN also will publish the stories on khn.org and promote them through its social media platforms. KHN journalists also are available for interviews about their stories. News organizations interested in working with KHN should contact the news service at [email protected], and those interested in helping to expand and improve health journalism around the country should contact KFF at [email protected].
About KFF and KHN KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis, Polling and Survey Research and Social Impact Media, KHN is one of the four major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
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The Bourbon County Sheriff’s Office Daily Reports Nov. 14
One-Hit Wonder by Carolyn Tucker
Keys to the Kingdom
In 1973, Vicki Lawrence became a one-hit wonder with her recording of “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.“ Her husband, Bobby Russell, wrote the song and it reached #1 on the charts in the United States and Canada. Vicky is best known and loved for her successful comedy career on The Carol Burnett Show which aired from 1967 to 1978. Vicki actually introduced and performed her one-and-only hit song on the show. And then we never heard her sing another song on the airways again. She was a flash-in-the-pan recording artist, but I still remember her and the song as being great!
There’s an interesting account in the New Testament about a one-hit wonder named Ananias. He was a believer who lived in Damascus and one day the Lord spoke to him in a vision. He told Ananias to go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for Saul of Tarsus. (Previously, Saul had been struck with blindness on the way to Damascus so his friends had to lead him on into town.)
Because Saul had a reputation for jailing and stoning believers, Ananias responded, “’But Lord, I’ve heard many people talk about the terrible things this man has done to the believers in Jerusalem! And he is authorized by the leading priests to arrest everyone who calls upon Your name.’ But the Lord said, ‘Go, for Saul is My chosen instrument to take My message to the Gentiles and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel.’ So Ananias went and found Saul. He laid his hands on him and said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road, has sent me so that you might regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ Instantly something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he regained his sight” (Acts 9:13-15,17-18 NLT).
The name “Ananias” means “the Lord’s gracious gift.” Saul needed this obedient believer to pray for him so he could receive his sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit in order to fulfill the calling God had placed on his life. You might say Ananias was a New Testament flash-in-the-pan because we never hear anything about him again. I’ve wondered what would have happened if Ananias had refused to obey God‘s instructions. I’m thankful he rejected the spirit of fear and chose to obey, inspiring us to do the same. Ananias was a man of God who didn’t let his trust rust — he used it to greatly advance God’s kingdom. His prompt obedience got Saul off the starting blocks with his ministry.
The important lesson to grasp is that Ananias obeyed God. As far as we know, he was simply a believer, not a high priest, religious leader, pastor, or teacher. He received the strength and power from God to obey and perform his assignment. Any believer can be used to do God’s work. You don’t have to be qualified, you just have to be available — and willing to trust and obey.
Christ followers should have a full-fledged trust in God. Perhaps Ananias was quoting these verses on his way to pray for Saul: “But I trusted in, relied on, and was confident in You, O Lord; I said, You are my God. My times are in Your hands; deliver me from the hands of my foes and those who pursue me and persecute me” (Psalm 31:14,15 AMP).
The Key: When the Lord says, “Go,“ let’s trust Him enough to obey in a flash.