Blue Valley

Blue Valley, De Soto, Olathe and Shawnee Mission school districts say the state of Kansas has failed to meet its legal obligation for funding special education for 15 years, forcing them to fill the gap. The four districts say that cost more than $119 million alone last year.

Hailes spent the last several years in New York, where she performed in "Hadestown" on Broadway and started her own solo career. She's back in Kansas City ahead of a show at The Blue Room on August 5.

During the first year of open enrollment in Kansas, where schools could allow students from outside their district, Olathe, Blue Valley and Shawnee Mission only accepted a few dozen applicants each.

Election Day 2023 featured several important races across the Kansas City area. Voters decided a number of mayoral, city council and school board races across Wyandotte and Johnson counties, and voters in Kansas City, Missouri, approved the continuation of a sales tax crucial to the public bus system.

Candidates for the Blue Valley Board of Education who campaigned as the “pro-public education” slate won their races. Shawnee Mission School District board candidates who voiced strong support for the district’s approach to diversity and equity also won comfortably.

Karizma Nola, a junior at Blue Valley High School, opened Krazy Crepes in April 2022 and has since popped up at neighborhood events and small business celebrations.

Soon after the start of the new semester, several school districts in Johnson County have re-instituted mask mandates after seeing high rates of COVID-19 transmission among students.

In Blue Valley and other districts, school board races that previously were tame affairs are increasingly lit up by hot-button national issues, including schools’ efforts at addressing race and diversity.

Johnson County school districts began reporting their first COVID-19 data for the 2021-22 school year this week. All four northern Johnson County districts are each reporting dozens of students either with confirmed positive cases or in quarantine.

The band that's an indie music fixture in Kansas City has a new album coming out.

The open letter urged the Blue Valley School District — one of the Kansas City metro’s largest — to change its current policy and require “universal masking” of all students, staff and visitors inside its facilities.

Two local gymnasts, Kara Eaker and Leanne Wong, had strong performances at the 2021 U.S. Championships last weekend, which were largely a repeat of their 2019 showings that earned them 2nd and 3rd place medals behind Olympic gymnast Simone Biles.