Shawnee Mission

The city of Mission said it decided to terminate its deal to bring a $270 million mixed-use development to the long-vacant Mission Gateway site, after the owner failed to pay almost half a million dollars in property taxes by deadline.

Shawnee Mission North math teacher Alex Morris was booked into Johnson County jail on Wednesday. He is charged with five counts of sexual exploitation of a child.

The long-stalled Mission Gateway project, a $268 million redevelopment plan whose future has been up in the air for a decade, is back on the table again. Plus: After a medical condition abruptly ended Marcus Walker's pro basketball career, he's turned to teaching the next generation in Kansas City.

A new initiative pairs an artist with conservation efforts to remove the invasive species of bush honeysuckle in Johnson County’s parks.

Two federal efforts — one in Congress and one at the U.S. Interior Department — could affect the search for marked and unmarked graves at the Shawnee Indian Mission in Fairway and Haskell University in Lawrence.

The Shawnee Mission school board's new plan completely removes a requirement that schools bring back masks if 5% of students are absent due to illness — the threshold that prompted seven elementary schools to bring back universal masking earlier this month.

Six elementary schools in the Shawnee Mission school district returned to wearing masks Monday. All of the schools surpassed the district’s 5% threshold of overall student absence rates related to illness.

Shawnee Mission secondary students and staff will all be required to wear a mask as of Jan. 24. The board of education unanimously approved universal masking until Feb. 15, although it could be extended at the board's Feb. 14 meeting.

Rev. Thomas Johnson was a slaveholder and led the “Bogus Legislature” that sought to install Kansas as a slave state before the Civil War. But rather than renaming Johnson County, the Charter Commission may decide to change its namesake.

School board meetings held a reputation for being tame — even boring — affairs focusing on things like student achievement and bond issues. Now, it's a totally different ballgame.

Over the summer, the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children were discovered at a Canadian boarding school. Since then, officials in Fairway, Kansas, said they would work with the Shawnee Tribe to look into the history of the Shawnee Indian Mission.

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.