A proposition on the August ballot is asking St. Joseph voters to approve a salary increase for teachers and staff at the St. Joseph School District.

 Proposition 'S' has been added to the August 6 ballot. If approved, a $0.59 property tax levy increase per $100 of assessed value would raise salaries by more than $2,700 for all school district staff.

Kevin Kelly, CEO of LifeLine Foods and Proposition 'S' campaign co-chair, says St. Joseph lags behind its peers in teacher salary.

"Without a good school district, a town doesn't have as much of an ability to attract families and good workers to it," Kelly told KFEQ Radio. "There's no question St. Joseph School District has been behind the 8-ball for a number of years. It starts and stops with teachers. If you don't have good teachers, and attract and retain them, you don't have a good school district."

A 'yes' vote on Proposition 'S' would waive the Proposition 'C' rollback and allow for a raise in taxes.

Of the 518 school districts in Missouri, St. Joseph School District is one of just 26 districts in the state with no Prop C waiver.

The Prop C rollback, passed in 1982, supplemented school funds by an additional one cent on dollar sales taxes. It also reduced property taxes for schools by one-half of the additional sales tax revenue received by schools, unless residents voted to waive the rollback.

Kelly says the district is hurting by not having a competitive salary for its employees.

"We've suffered by not generating the revenue we need for a quality school district," Kelly said. "This Prop S then enacts that (Prop C) waiver and we're allowed to have a levy rate that is for teachers and for investment in the community, and we'll have a competitive wage rate for our staff and teachers."

Kelly reiterates the salary increase would be the same across the board for all employees in the school district.

"This Proposition S is all about paying them the wages that's very fair," he said. "It's a flat fee, $2,750, that's being paid to every employee. Obviously, on a percentage basis, the lower wage people absolutely benefit more on a percentage than the higher wage people, and it's intended that way."

"We're trying to lift all boats and this Proposition S will do that."

The state of Missouri already lags behind in teacher salary, ranking dead last in the country in average starting salary for teachers at $36,829 annually, per the National Education Association.

Kelly notes St. Joseph voters are at times wary of voting for a tax increase, but he’s confident Proposition S will pass, seeing as it would directly benefit educators in the community.

"We've had opposition at time in St. Joseph to tax increases and I understand that," Kelly pointed out. "But, the fact of the matter is, very few times has it ever come out against teachers."

"The general population, they recognize that we need to pay a living and quality wage. Therefore, I'm very optimistic people will hold to their word and vote yes on Proposition S."

You can follow Tommy on Twitter @TommyKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/5/1715717196530.jpeg" alt="Stock photo." />
 <figcaption>Stock photo.</figcaption>
 </figure>By TOMMY REZACSt. Joseph PostA proposition on the August ballot is asking St. Joseph voters to approve a salary increase for teachers and staff at the St. Joseph School District. Proposition 'S' has been added to the August 6 ballot. If approved, a $0.59 property tax levy increase per $100 of assessed value would raise salaries by more than $2,700 for all school district staff.Kevin Kelly, CEO of LifeLine Foods and Proposition 'S' campaign co-chair, says St. Joseph lags behind its peers in teacher salary."Without a good school district, a town doesn't have as much of an ability to attract families and good workers to it," Kelly told KFEQ Radio. "There's no question St. Joseph School District has been behind the 8-ball for a number of years. It starts and stops with teachers. If you don't have good teachers, and attract and retain them, you don't have a good school district."A 'yes' vote on Proposition 'S' would waive the Proposition 'C' rollback and allow for a raise in taxes.Of the 518 school districts in Missouri, St. Joseph School District is one of just 26 districts in the state with no Prop C waiver.The Prop C rollback, passed in 1982, supplemented school funds by an additional one cent on dollar sales taxes. It also reduced property taxes for schools by one-half of the additional sales tax revenue received by schools, unless residents voted to waive the rollback.Kelly says the district is hurting by not having a competitive salary for its employees."We've suffered by not generating the revenue we need for a quality school district," Kelly said. "This Prop S then enacts that (Prop C) waiver and we're allowed to have a levy rate that is for teachers and for investment in the community, and we'll have a competitive wage rate for our staff and teachers."Kelly reiterates the salary increase would be the same across the board for all employees in the school district."This Proposition S is all about paying them the wages that's very fair," he said. "It's a flat fee, $2,750, that's being paid to every employee. Obviously, on a percentage basis, the lower wage people absolutely benefit more on a percentage than the higher wage people, and it's intended that way.""We're trying to lift all boats and this Proposition S will do that."The state of Missouri already lags behind in teacher salary, ranking dead last in the country in average starting salary for teachers at $36,829 annually, per the National Education Association.Kelly notes St. Joseph voters are at times wary of voting for a tax increase, but he’s confident Proposition S will pass, seeing as it would directly benefit educators in the community."We've had opposition at time in St. Joseph to tax increases and I understand that," Kelly pointed out. "But, the fact of the matter is, very few times has it ever come out against teachers.""The general population, they recognize that we need to pay a living and quality wage. Therefore, I'm very optimistic people will hold to their word and vote yes on Proposition S."You can follow Tommy on Twitter @TommyKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.

Proposition S on August ballot would boost salary for all SJSD staff

ATCHISON COUNTY—Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect on drug allegations.

Just after midnight Monday, police arrested 44-year-old Dustin R. Dudley of Atchison in the 700 block Commercial, according to Police Chief Mike Wilson.

He is being held on requested charges for possession of cocaine and possession of marijuana. Dudley had been taken into custody on a Municipal Court warrant for failure to appear in court after an officer on patrol had observed Dudley walking the area of the 700 block Commercial. Dudley was subsequently found to be in possession of cocaine and marijuana on his person.&nbsp;

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/7/1720470129867.png" alt="Dudley-Photo Atchison Co." />
 <figcaption>Dudley-Photo Atchison Co.</figcaption>
 </figure>ATCHISON COUNTY—Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect on drug allegations.Just after midnight Monday, police arrested 44-year-old Dustin R. Dudley of Atchison in the 700 block Commercial, according to Police Chief Mike Wilson.He is being held on requested charges for possession of cocaine and possession of marijuana. Dudley had been taken into custody on a Municipal Court warrant for failure to appear in court after an officer on patrol had observed Dudley walking the area of the 700 block Commercial. Dudley was subsequently found to be in possession of cocaine and marijuana on his person.&nbsp;

Kan. man wanted on a warrant was transporting cocaine

Stuff the Bus is coming up next month and the United Way of Greater St. Joseph is currently looking for volunteers.  

Director of Community Investment Jodi Flurry says the event is the largest single day volunteer event held by the organization.  

"Last year almost 250 people shared their time by volunteering for United Way Stuff the Bus, helping to collect school supplies on Tax Free Weekend," Flurry tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.  "And then the supplies that's collected through Stuff the Bus is then distributed out through United Way partner agencies and programs, including the Salvation Army school supply distribution." 

Flurry says currently they are asking people to volunteer for this year's event.  Flurry says volunteers are asked to work an hour and a half a day. 

"It could be really hot that first weekend of August, but thankfully because the half long, and you're out there having fun, you're working with people, you're collecting supplies, you're getting it organized, it goes fast and it's a really simple way to help out the community," Flurry explains.  

The supply drive will be held August 2nd and 3rd and the south and north belt Walmart locations.  

Flurry says numerous groups and people volunteer for the effort making it the largest single day volunteer event.  

Flurry says it's also an event that younger people can volunteer for. 

"Often times there's not a lot that younger children can do to volunteer in our community, but Stuff the Bus is something that as long as they're with their parents or guardian that even young children. five years old, can be out there handing out the flyers, bringing us the supplies to the school bus," Flurry says. "So, it is a simple way to show young children how you volunteer and can have an impact in the community." 

To learn more about volunteering you can contact the United Way or click <a href="https://www.stjosephunitedway.org/stuffthebus">HERE</a>.

You can follow Matt on X @KfeqMatt and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.

By MATT PIKE St. Joseph Post Stuff the Bus is coming up next month and the United Way of Greater St. Joseph is currently looking for volunteers. Director of Community Investment Jodi Flurry says the event is the largest single day volunteer event held by the organization. "Last year almost 250 people shared their time by volunteering for United Way Stuff the Bus, helping to collect school supplies on Tax Free Weekend," Flurry tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "And then the supplies that's collected through Stuff the Bus is then distributed out through United Way partner agencies and programs, including the Salvation Army school supply distribution." Flurry says currently they are asking people to volunteer for this year's event. Flurry says volunteers are asked to work an hour and a half a day. "It could be really hot that first weekend of August, but thankfully because the half long, and you're out there having fun, you're working with people, you're collecting supplies, you're getting it organized, it goes fast and it's a really simple way to help out the community," Flurry explains. The supply drive will be held August 2nd and 3rd and the south and north belt Walmart locations. Flurry says numerous groups and people volunteer for the effort making it the largest single day volunteer event. Flurry says it's also an event that younger people can volunteer for. "Often times there's not a lot that younger children can do to volunteer in our community, but Stuff the Bus is something that as long as they're with their parents or guardian that even young children. five years old, can be out there handing out the flyers, bringing us the supplies to the school bus," Flurry says. "So, it is a simple way to show young children how you volunteer and can have an impact in the community." To learn more about volunteering you can contact the United Way or click <a href="https://www.stjosephunitedway.org/stuffthebus">HERE</a>. You can follow Matt on X @KfeqMatt and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.

Volunteers needed to help Stuff the Bus

A public informational meeting will be held
August 1st to discuss the future of Lake Contrary.

Buchanan County officials will be available. An
expert will describe the methods used to eliminate the existing vegetation that
has overtaken the lake.

Presiding County Commissioner Scott Nelson says
if Lake Contrary is to be restored, the foliage needs to be removed first.

“It’s not just kill what you see. You’ve got to
kill the root ball, because the type of dredging we’re thinking about is hydro-dredging,”
Nelson tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline. “So, you don’t want to clog
up the hydro-dredge with root balls. So, they have to be decomposed; one way,
shape, or form they have to be decomposed.”

Lake Contrary, located just south of St. Joseph,
no longer resembles a lake. It is overgrown with vegetation. It could take six
months to get rid of it.

Nelson estimates the cost of restoring Lake
Contrary at $8 million, though he is quick to say that is a high estimate. Nelson
sees value in restoring Lake Contrary.

“And I’ve said it before. People will agree.
People will disagree. But it is my opinion that if we are able to have a
recreational lake in our county, I think that’s a good thing.”

Nelson says some counties assess a dedicated tax
for such projects, but he doesn’t believe that will be necessary.

“I don’t want to do that,” Nelson says. “I don’t
want to raise taxes. I want to do it with whatever money we have, soft money which
I call it. I don’t want to raise taxes to do it.”

Such soft money, according to Nelson, includes
interests accrued on various accounts.

Buchanan County has scheduled an informational
meeting on the future of Lake Contrary August 1st. The public meeting begins at six o’clock Thursday,
August 1st, at the Remington Nature Center.

You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/7/1720445370024.jpeg" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>By BRENT MARTINSt. Joseph PostA public informational meeting will be held
August 1st to discuss the future of Lake Contrary.Buchanan County officials will be available. An
expert will describe the methods used to eliminate the existing vegetation that
has overtaken the lake.Presiding County Commissioner Scott Nelson says
if Lake Contrary is to be restored, the foliage needs to be removed first.“It’s not just kill what you see. You’ve got to
kill the root ball, because the type of dredging we’re thinking about is hydro-dredging,”
Nelson tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline. “So, you don’t want to clog
up the hydro-dredge with root balls. So, they have to be decomposed; one way,
shape, or form they have to be decomposed.”Lake Contrary, located just south of St. Joseph,
no longer resembles a lake. It is overgrown with vegetation. It could take six
months to get rid of it.Nelson estimates the cost of restoring Lake
Contrary at $8 million, though he is quick to say that is a high estimate. Nelson
sees value in restoring Lake Contrary.“And I’ve said it before. People will agree.
People will disagree. But it is my opinion that if we are able to have a
recreational lake in our county, I think that’s a good thing.”Nelson says some counties assess a dedicated tax
for such projects, but he doesn’t believe that will be necessary.“I don’t want to do that,” Nelson says. “I don’t
want to raise taxes. I want to do it with whatever money we have, soft money which
I call it. I don’t want to raise taxes to do it.”Such soft money, according to Nelson, includes
interests accrued on various accounts.Buchanan County has scheduled an informational
meeting on the future of Lake Contrary August 1st. The public meeting begins at six o’clock Thursday,
August 1st, at the Remington Nature Center.You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.

Public gets a chance for input on the future of Lake Contrary

DEKALB —A St. Joseph man was injured in an accident just after 8p.m. Sunday in DeKalb County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 1965 Chevy Impala driven by Randall A. Maddox, 57, St. Joseph, was westbound on U.S. 36 one mile northeast of Osborn.

The car struck a deer. A private vehicle transported Maddox to Cameron Regional Medical Center. He was properly restrained, according to the MSHP.

DEKALB —A St. Joseph man was injured in an accident just after 8p.m. Sunday in DeKalb County.The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 1965 Chevy Impala driven by Randall A. Maddox, 57, St. Joseph, was westbound on U.S. 36 one mile northeast of Osborn.The car struck a deer. A private vehicle transported Maddox to Cameron Regional Medical Center. He was properly restrained, according to the MSHP.

St. Joseph man injured after classic car strikes deer

CLINTON COUNTY —Three people were injured in an accident just before 8:30a.m. Sunday in Clinton County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2019 Honda Civic driven by Colt M. Micoley, 20, El Paso, Texas, was southbound on on Interstate 35 and took the exit to Highway BB.

The car traveled off the south side of the road and struck a guardrail.

Cameron EMS transported Micoley and a passenger Ryan J. Lockridge, 20, El Paso, Texas, to Cameron Regional Medical Center. Cameron EMS transported a second passenger Arlene M. Cooper, 25, El Paso, Texas, to Liberty Hospital. Lockridge was not wearing a seat belt, according to the MSHP.

CLINTON COUNTY —Three people were injured in an accident just before 8:30a.m. Sunday in Clinton County.The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2019 Honda Civic driven by Colt M. Micoley, 20, El Paso, Texas, was southbound on on Interstate 35 and took the exit to Highway BB.The car traveled off the south side of the road and struck a guardrail.Cameron EMS transported Micoley and a passenger Ryan J. Lockridge, 20, El Paso, Texas, to Cameron Regional Medical Center. Cameron EMS transported a second passenger Arlene M. Cooper, 25, El Paso, Texas, to Liberty Hospital. Lockridge was not wearing a seat belt, according to the MSHP.

3 injured after car strikes guardrail

CALDWELL COUNTY—One person was injured in an accident just after 4:30a.m. Sunday in Caldwell County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2008 Ford F250 driven by Chance M. Summers, 33, Cheyenne, Wyoming, was westbound on U.S. 36 five miles east of Hamilton.

The pickup traveled off the south side of the road and the driver overcorrected. The vehicle returned to the road, traveled off the north side of the road and overturned.

Life Flight Eagle transported Summers to Liberty Hospital. He was properly restrained, according to the MSHP.

CALDWELL COUNTY—One person was injured in an accident just after 4:30a.m. Sunday in Caldwell County.The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2008 Ford F250 driven by Chance M. Summers, 33, Cheyenne, Wyoming, was westbound on U.S. 36 five miles east of Hamilton.The pickup traveled off the south side of the road and the driver overcorrected. The vehicle returned to the road, traveled off the north side of the road and overturned.Life Flight Eagle transported Summers to Liberty Hospital. He was properly restrained, according to the MSHP.

Driver hospitalized after pickup overturns on NW Mo. highway

DAVIESS COUNTY—A Missouri woman was injured in an accident just after 3p.m. Saturday in Daviess County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2020 Massimo Warrior 200 mini bike driven by Jennifer A. Reynolds, 34,Chillicothe, was traveling on private property at&nbsp;18,595 285th Street three miles northwest of Jamesport.&nbsp; The vehicle overturned.

Life-Flight transported Reynolds to Truman Medical Center in Kansas City. She was not wearing a helmet, according to the MSHP.

DAVIESS COUNTY—A Missouri woman was injured in an accident just after 3p.m. Saturday in Daviess County.The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2020 Massimo Warrior 200 mini bike driven by Jennifer A. Reynolds, 34,Chillicothe, was traveling on private property at&nbsp;18,595 285th Street three miles northwest of Jamesport.&nbsp; The vehicle overturned.Life-Flight transported Reynolds to Truman Medical Center in Kansas City. She was not wearing a helmet, according to the MSHP.

Missouri woman air-lifted to hospital after mini bike accident

MOScholars is expanding on multiple fronts. Here is a look at the top donors to the growing program

BY:&nbsp;ANNELISE HANSHAW&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2022/09/21/missouri-judge-once-again-delays-decision-on-closing-agape-boarding-school/">Missouri Independent</a>

The largest donors to a tax credit program supporting private school tuition scholarships in Missouri are a Fortune 500 health care corporation, a cable company and the founding family of the Kansas City Chiefs.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. has given the most since 2023 to the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program, dubbed MOScholars, with a $2 million donation last year and $3.5 million pledged this year.

Lamar Hunt Jr. and his wife Rita Hunt, part of the family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs, reserved $800,000 in tax credits last year and $500,000 this year.&nbsp;<a href="https://lamarhuntjrsports.com/lamar-hunt-jr-biography/" target="_blank">Hunt Jr.</a>&nbsp;is also the founder of the Kansas City Mavericks hockey team and a philanthropist tied to Catholic ministries.

MOScholars allows taxpayers to give to one of six educational assistance organizations to fund scholarships for private, parochial and homeschooled students. Donors use an application on the State Treasurer’s Office to register the amount they intend to donate with the state, reserving a tax credit in that amount up to half of their tax burden.&nbsp;

Treasurer Vivek Malek told The Independent this year’s donations are off to a promising start, topping figures from this time last year.

So far, taxpayers have reserved $5 million of the tax credits available this year. Typically, donations are strongest at year-end. MOScholars donors can receive their donation amount back in a tax credit, up to half their tax burden, with the reservations. So donations come nearer to tax time.

Last year, donations&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2023/11/21/funding-lag-creates-barrier-for-missouri-private-school-tax-credit-program/">looked sparser at this time,</a>&nbsp;and the number of students recorded as a returning MOScholars student was low. This number grew, though, as donations came through at the end of last year with a total of $16.6 million by the end of 2023.

Among those who have given to MoScholars since lawmakers created the program in 2022 are political mega donors, national corporations and hundreds of individuals, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://mapyourtaxes.mo.gov/MAP/TaxCredits/Categories/Customer.aspx?cat=Z&amp;year=2024&amp;prog=226" target="_blank">Missouri Accountability Portal</a>.

Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield, major political donors in Missouri and advocates for private and charter schools, gave $1 million between two educational assistance organizations last year.

David Steward, founder and chairman of IT provider World Wide Technology, gave $500,000 to a St. Louis-based educational assistance organization.

Charter Communications, which serves customers as Spectrum, gave $334,000 to each educational assistance organization for a total of just over $2 million.

Herzog Enterprises, a railway construction company once run by political donor Stanley Herzog, gave $250,000 to its nonprofit arm, the Herzog Tomorrow Foundation. Brad Lager, who once served in Missouri’s legislature and now leads Herzog Enterprises, reserved $200,000 in tax credits.

Also included in the list of donors in 2023 is former Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft and his wife Janet. Ashcroft served as governor from 1985 to 1993 before becoming a U.S. Senator and later U.S. attorney general.

Treasurer’s office staff told The Independent that fundraising has been focused on both individuals and corporations. More than half of the office’s expenditures in 2023 were spent on advertising its various programs.

State Rep. Phil Christofanelli, a Republican from St. Peters and sponsor of the bill that created MOScholars, said there has been outreach to corporations through accountant associations.

“We definitely want to work with the larger corporate entities so that they become aware of the program. Corporations are sometimes a little slower to adopt than individual donors and taxpayers,” he said.

There were 1,301 total approved applications for tax credits last year. There have been 161 applications approved in 2024.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/7/1720265891025.png" alt=" State Treasurer Vivek Malek testifies in January in support of a bill by Sen. Andrew Koenig that would expand the MOScholars program. Both are campaigning for the 2024 State Treasurer’s election (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent)." />
 <figcaption> State Treasurer Vivek Malek testifies in January in support of a bill by Sen. Andrew Koenig that would expand the MOScholars program. Both are campaigning for the 2024 State Treasurer’s election (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).</figcaption>
 </figure><h2>MOScholars is expanding on multiple fronts. Here is a look at the top donors to the growing program</h2>BY:&nbsp;ANNELISE HANSHAW&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2022/09/21/missouri-judge-once-again-delays-decision-on-closing-agape-boarding-school/">Missouri Independent</a>The largest donors to a tax credit program supporting private school tuition scholarships in Missouri are a Fortune 500 health care corporation, a cable company and the founding family of the Kansas City Chiefs.UnitedHealth Group Inc. has given the most since 2023 to the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program, dubbed MOScholars, with a $2 million donation last year and $3.5 million pledged this year.Lamar Hunt Jr. and his wife Rita Hunt, part of the family that owns the Kansas City Chiefs, reserved $800,000 in tax credits last year and $500,000 this year.&nbsp;<a href="https://lamarhuntjrsports.com/lamar-hunt-jr-biography/" target="_blank">Hunt Jr.</a>&nbsp;is also the founder of the Kansas City Mavericks hockey team and a philanthropist tied to Catholic ministries.MOScholars allows taxpayers to give to one of six educational assistance organizations to fund scholarships for private, parochial and homeschooled students. Donors use an application on the State Treasurer’s Office to register the amount they intend to donate with the state, reserving a tax credit in that amount up to half of their tax burden.&nbsp;Treasurer Vivek Malek told The Independent this year’s donations are off to a promising start, topping figures from this time last year.So far, taxpayers have reserved $5 million of the tax credits available this year. Typically, donations are strongest at year-end. MOScholars donors can receive their donation amount back in a tax credit, up to half their tax burden, with the reservations. So donations come nearer to tax time.Last year, donations&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2023/11/21/funding-lag-creates-barrier-for-missouri-private-school-tax-credit-program/">looked sparser at this time,</a>&nbsp;and the number of students recorded as a returning MOScholars student was low. This number grew, though, as donations came through at the end of last year with a total of $16.6 million by the end of 2023.Among those who have given to MoScholars since lawmakers created the program in 2022 are political mega donors, national corporations and hundreds of individuals, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://mapyourtaxes.mo.gov/MAP/TaxCredits/Categories/Customer.aspx?cat=Z&amp;year=2024&amp;prog=226" target="_blank">Missouri Accountability Portal</a>.Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield, major political donors in Missouri and advocates for private and charter schools, gave $1 million between two educational assistance organizations last year.David Steward, founder and chairman of IT provider World Wide Technology, gave $500,000 to a St. Louis-based educational assistance organization.Charter Communications, which serves customers as Spectrum, gave $334,000 to each educational assistance organization for a total of just over $2 million.Hobby Lobby Stores gave $300,000.Herzog Enterprises, a railway construction company once run by political donor Stanley Herzog, gave $250,000 to its nonprofit arm, the Herzog Tomorrow Foundation. Brad Lager, who once served in Missouri’s legislature and now leads Herzog Enterprises, reserved $200,000 in tax credits.Also included in the list of donors in 2023 is former Missouri Gov. John Ashcroft and his wife Janet. Ashcroft served as governor from 1985 to 1993 before becoming a U.S. Senator and later U.S. attorney general.Treasurer’s office staff told The Independent that fundraising has been focused on both individuals and corporations. More than half of the office’s expenditures in 2023 were spent on advertising its various programs.State Rep. Phil Christofanelli, a Republican from St. Peters and sponsor of the bill that created MOScholars, said there has been outreach to corporations through accountant associations.“We definitely want to work with the larger corporate entities so that they become aware of the program. Corporations are sometimes a little slower to adopt than individual donors and taxpayers,” he said.There were 1,301 total approved applications for tax credits last year. There have been 161 applications approved in 2024.

Major corporations, wealthy donors fuel growth of Mo. private school scholarship program

ATCHISON COUNTY —Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect for an alleged violent crime. 

On Wednesday, police arrested 29-year-old Tracy D. Lindsey of&nbsp; Atchison in&nbsp; 1500 block Applegate Drive, according to Police Chief Mike Wilson.

He is being held on a requested charges of domestic battery on a $2500 bond, according to online jail records

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/7/1720193101300.png" alt="Lindsey from an earlier arrest in Atchison Co." />
 <figcaption>Lindsey from an earlier arrest in Atchison Co.</figcaption>
 </figure>ATCHISON COUNTY —Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect for an alleged violent crime. On Wednesday, police arrested 29-year-old Tracy D. Lindsey of&nbsp; Atchison in&nbsp; 1500 block Applegate Drive, according to Police Chief Mike Wilson.He is being held on a requested charges of domestic battery on a $2500 bond, according to online jail records

Kansas man accused of violent domestic crime

A St. Joseph resident who has worked with election technology
for more than 20 years assures voters they can be confident in the election
process.

Ed Smith is now Vice President for Election Solutions for MTX.
He once worked with Dominion Voting, which became infamous among supporters of
former President Donald Trump who disputed the 2020 presidential election.
Smith had left Dominion before the 2020 election.

Smith says though electronic counting machines and computers
process election returns, the key is the paper ballot used to verify the
outcome.

“Whether it’s adversarial nations trying to come in from outside
our borders and change the results of the election or whether your concern is
about an insider threat. You’re not going to change million and millions of
ovals and pieces of paper,” Smith tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline.

That includes the controversies arising from the 2020 election.

Smith has worked with election authorities in more than 30
states. He has read anywhere from 800 to 900 affidavits filed in the
presidential battleground states, claiming voter fraud.

“And they’re oftentimes well-meaning people,” Smith says. “They
saw what they saw with their own eyes and they thought that something nefarious
was going on, but what they saw was actually normal, legal, ethical election
practices. They just didn’t have the context to put those in place and
understand what they were seeing.”

Smith says paper ballots confirm the results given by
electronic machines. Smith adds no one contesting election results in the 2020
presidential election has been able to withstand judicial scrutiny.

“No matter how voluminous it seems, no matter how frequently
people publicize what they believe is proof, it’s just not there,” according to
Smith. “When it comes to an adversarial setting where they can make their
claims and someone has an opportunity to rebut them and a neutral judge
listens, they just fall apart completely.”

Smith urges skeptical voters to get involved. He suggests
working as a poll worker or asking the local election authority, the county
clerk, to give them a demonstration of how they process election results.

By BRENT MARTINSt. Joseph PostA St. Joseph resident who has worked with election technology
for more than 20 years assures voters they can be confident in the election
process.Ed Smith is now Vice President for Election Solutions for MTX.
He once worked with Dominion Voting, which became infamous among supporters of
former President Donald Trump who disputed the 2020 presidential election.
Smith had left Dominion before the 2020 election.Smith says though electronic counting machines and computers
process election returns, the key is the paper ballot used to verify the
outcome.“Whether it’s adversarial nations trying to come in from outside
our borders and change the results of the election or whether your concern is
about an insider threat. You’re not going to change million and millions of
ovals and pieces of paper,” Smith tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline.That includes the controversies arising from the 2020 election.Smith has worked with election authorities in more than 30
states. He has read anywhere from 800 to 900 affidavits filed in the
presidential battleground states, claiming voter fraud.“And they’re oftentimes well-meaning people,” Smith says. “They
saw what they saw with their own eyes and they thought that something nefarious
was going on, but what they saw was actually normal, legal, ethical election
practices. They just didn’t have the context to put those in place and
understand what they were seeing.”Smith says paper ballots confirm the results given by
electronic machines. Smith adds no one contesting election results in the 2020
presidential election has been able to withstand judicial scrutiny.“No matter how voluminous it seems, no matter how frequently
people publicize what they believe is proof, it’s just not there,” according to
Smith. “When it comes to an adversarial setting where they can make their
claims and someone has an opportunity to rebut them and a neutral judge
listens, they just fall apart completely.”Smith urges skeptical voters to get involved. He suggests
working as a poll worker or asking the local election authority, the county
clerk, to give them a demonstration of how they process election results.<div><iframe src="https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/kfeq-news/embed/episodes/Confidence-in-the-voting-process-e2lml2c" height="102px" width="400px" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe></div>You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.

St. Joseph expert says voters can be confident in election results

Cyberattacks on health care systems don’t just cost money. They can make it harder for clinicians to keep their patients safe.

By&nbsp;<a href="https://thebeaconnews.org/stories/author/rachana-pradhan/">Rachana Pradhan</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://thebeaconnews.org/stories/author/kate-wells/">Kate Wells</a><a href="https://thebeaconnews.org/">The Beacon</a>

In the wake of a debilitating cyberattack against one of the nation’s largest health care systems, Marvin Ruckle, a nurse at an Ascension hospital in Wichita, said he had a frightening experience: He nearly gave a baby “the wrong dose of narcotic” because of confusing paperwork.

Ruckle, who has worked in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph for two decades, said it was “hard to decipher which was the correct dose” on the medication record. He’d “never seen that happen,” he said, “when we were on the computer system” before the cyberattack.

A May 8 ransomware attack against Ascension, a Catholic health system with 140 hospitals in at least 10 states, locked providers out of systems that track and coordinate nearly every aspect of patient care. They include its systems for electronic health records, some phones, and ones “utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications,” the company said in a May 9 statement.

More than a dozen doctors and nurses who work for the sprawling health system told Michigan Public and KFF Health News that patient care at its hospitals across the nation was compromised in the fallout of the cyberattack over the past several weeks. Clinicians working for hospitals in three states described harrowing lapses, including delayed or lost lab results, medication errors, and an absence of routine safety checks via technology to prevent potentially fatal mistakes.

Despite a precipitous rise in cyberattacks against the health sector in recent years, a weeks-long disruption of this magnitude is beyond what most health systems are prepared for, said&nbsp;<a href="https://medicine.umich.edu/dept/pharmacy/john-s-clark-pharmd-ms-bcps-fashp">John Clark</a>, an associate chief pharmacy officer at the University of Michigan health system.

“I don’t believe that anyone is fully prepared,” he said. Most emergency management plans “are designed around long-term downtimes that are into one, two, or three days.”

Ascension in a&nbsp;<a href="https://about.ascension.org/cybersecurity-event">public statement May 9</a>&nbsp;said its care teams were “trained for these kinds of disruptions,” but did not respond to questions in early June about whether it had prepared for longer periods of downtime. Ascension said June 14 it had restored access to electronic health records across its network, but that patient “medical records and other information collected between May 8” and when the service was restored “may be temporarily inaccessible as we work to update the portal with information collected during the system downtime.”

Ruckle said he “had no training” for the cyberattack.

Lisa Watson, an intensive care unit nurse at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis hospital in Wichita, described her own close call. She said she nearly administered the wrong medication to a critically ill patient because she couldn’t scan it as she normally would. “My patient probably would have passed away had I not caught it,” she said.

Watson is no stranger to using paper for patients’ medical charts, saying she did so “for probably half of my career,” before electronic health records became ubiquitous in hospitals. What happened after the cyberattack was “by no means the same.”

“When we paper-charted, we had systems in place to get those orders to other departments in a timely manner,” she said, “and those have all gone away.”

Melissa LaRue, an ICU nurse at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, described a close call with “administering the wrong dosage” of a patient’s blood pressure medication. “Luckily,” she said, it was “triple-checked and remedied before that could happen. But I think the potential for harm is there when you have so much information and paperwork that you have to go through.”

Clinicians say their hospitals have relied on slapdash workarounds, using handwritten notes, faxes, sticky notes, and basic computer spreadsheets — many devised on the fly by doctors and nurses — to care for patients.

More than a dozen other nurses and doctors, some of them without union protections, at Ascension hospitals in Michigan recounted situations in which they say patient care was compromised. Those clinicians spoke on the condition that they not be named for fear of retaliation by their employer.

An Ascension hospital emergency room doctor in Detroit said a man on the city’s east side was given a dangerous narcotic intended for another patient because of a paperwork mix-up. As a result, the patient’s breathing slowed to the point that he had to be put on a ventilator. “We intubated him and we sent him to the ICU because he got the wrong medication.”

A nurse in a Michigan Ascension hospital ER said a woman with low blood sugar and “altered mental status” went into cardiac arrest and died after staff said they waited four hours for lab results they needed to determine how to treat her, but never received. “If I started having crushing chest pain in the middle of work and thought I was having a big one, I would grab someone to drive me down the street to another hospital,” the same ER nurse said.

Similar concerns reportedly led a travel nurse at an Ascension hospital in Indiana to quit. “I just want to warn those patients that are coming to any of the Ascension facilities that there will be delays in care. There is potential for error and for harm,” Justin Neisser&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NofGfUnptfs">told CBS4</a>&nbsp;in Indianapolis in May.

Several nurses and doctors at Ascension hospitals said they feared the errors they’ve witnessed since the cyberattack began could threaten their professional licenses. “This is how a RaDonda Vaught happens,” one nurse said, referring to the Tennessee nurse who was convicted of&nbsp;<a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/radonda-vaught-nurse-drug-error-vanderbilt-guilty-verdict/">criminally negligent homicide</a>&nbsp;in 2022 for a fatal drug error.

Reporters were not able to review records to verify clinicians’ claims because of privacy laws surrounding patients’ medical information that apply to health care professionals.

Ascension declined to answer questions about claims that care has been affected by the ransomware attack. “As we have made clear throughout this cyber attack which has impacted our system and our dedicated clinical providers, caring for our patients is our highest priority,” Sean Fitzpatrick, Ascension’s vice president of external communications, said via email on June 3. “We are confident that our care providers in our hospitals and facilities continue to provide quality medical care.”

The federal government requires hospitals to protect patients’ sensitive health data, according to cybersecurity experts. However, there are no federal requirements for hospitals to prevent or prepare for cyberattacks that could compromise their electronic systems.

Hospitals: ‘The No.1 Target of Ransomware’

“We’ve started to think about these as public health issues and disasters on the scale of earthquakes or hurricanes,” said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-tully-672679102/">Jeff Tully</a>, a co-director of the Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity at the University of California-San Diego. “These types of cybersecurity incidents should be thought of as a matter of when, and not if.”

Josh Corman, a cybersecurity expert and advocate, said ransom crews regard hospitals as the perfect prey: “They have terrible security and they’ll pay. So almost immediately, hospitals went to the No. 1 target of ransomware.”

In 2023, the health sector experienced the largest share of ransomware attacks of 16 infrastructure sectors considered vital to national security or safety, according to an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2023_IC3Report.pdf">FBI report on internet crimes</a>. In March, the federal Department of Health and Human Services said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/03/13/hhs-office-civil-rights-issues-letter-opens-investigation-change-healthcare-cyberattack.html">reported large breaches involving ransomware</a>&nbsp;had jumped by 264% over the past five years.

A cyberattack this year on Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division that processes billions of health care transactions every year,&nbsp;<a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/unitedhealth-change-healthcare-hack-cyber-cybersecurity-ransomware/">crippled the business</a>&nbsp;of providers, pharmacies, and hospitals.

In May, UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty&nbsp;<a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/what-we-learned-change-healthcare-cyber-attack">told lawmakers</a>&nbsp;the company paid a $22 million ransom as a result of the Change Healthcare attack — which occurred after hackers accessed a company portal that didn’t have multifactor authentication, a basic cybersecurity tool.

The Biden administration in recent months&nbsp;<a href="https://aspr.hhs.gov/cyber/Documents/Health-Care-Sector-Cybersecurity-Dec2023-508.pdf">has pushed</a>&nbsp;to bolster health care cybersecurity standards, but it’s not clear which new measures will be required.

In January, HHS&nbsp;<a href="https://aspr.hhs.gov/newsroom/Pages/HHS-Releases-CPGs-and-Gateway-Website-Jan2024.aspx">nudged companies</a>&nbsp;to improve email security, add multifactor authentication, and institute cybersecurity training and testing, among other voluntary measures. The Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services is expected to release new requirements for hospitals, but the scope and timing are unclear. The same is true of an update HHS is expected to make to patient privacy regulations.

HHS said the voluntary measures “will inform the creation of new enforceable cybersecurity standards,” department spokesperson Jeff Nesbit said in a statement.

“The recent cyberattack at Ascension only underscores the need for everyone in the health care ecosystem to do their part to secure their systems and protect patients,” Nesbit said.

Meanwhile, lobbyists for the hospital industry contend cybersecurity mandates or penalties are misplaced and would curtail hospitals’ resources to fend off attacks.

Ascension in 2022 was the third-largest hospital chain in the U.S. by number of beds, according to the most recent data from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (Travis Heying/ KFF Health News)

“Hospitals and health systems are not the primary source of cyber risk exposure facing the health care sector,” the American Hospital Association, the largest lobbying group for U.S. hospitals, said in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aha.org/testimony/2024-04-17-aha-house-statement-fiscal-year-2025-department-health-and-human-services-budget">an April statement</a>&nbsp;prepared for U.S. House lawmakers. Most large&nbsp;<a href="https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf">data breaches</a>&nbsp;that hit hospitals in 2023 originated with third-party “business associates” or other health entities, including CMS itself, the AHA statement said.

Hospitals consolidating into large multistate health systems&nbsp;<a href="https://news.utdallas.edu/business-management/hospital-mergers-hacking-2023/">face increased risk</a>&nbsp;of data breaches and ransomware attacks, according to one study. Ascension in 2022 was the third-largest hospital chain in the U.S. by number of beds, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ahrq.gov/chsp/data-resources/compendium.html">most recent data</a>&nbsp;from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

And while cybersecurity regulations can quickly become outdated, they can at least make it clear that if health systems fail to implement basic protections there “should be consequences for that,”&nbsp;<a href="https://ioe.engin.umich.edu/people/bagian-jim/">Jim Bagian</a>, a former director of the National Center for Patient Safety at the Veterans Health Administration, told Michigan Public’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.michiganpublic.org/podcast/stateside/2024-05-22/stateside-podcast-ransomware-attack-at-ascension">Stateside</a>.

Patients can pay the price when lapses occur. Those in hospital care face&nbsp;<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4579292">a greater likelihood of death</a>&nbsp;during a cyberattack, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Workers concerned about patient safety at Ascension hospitals in Michigan have called for the company to make changes.

“We implore Ascension to recognize the internal problems that continue to plague its hospitals, both publicly and transparently,” said Dina Carlisle, a nurse and the president of the OPEIU Local 40 union, which represents nurses at Ascension Providence Rochester. At least 125 staff members at that Ascension hospital have&nbsp;<a href="https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/urgent-ascension-providence-rochester-medical-professionals-demand-safety-precautions-in-hospital-amid-cyber-attack">signed a petition</a>&nbsp;asking administrators to temporarily reduce elective surgeries and nonemergency patient admissions, like under the protocols many hospitals adopted early in the covid-19 pandemic.

Watson, the Kansas ICU nurse, said in late May that nurses had urged management to bring in more nurses to help manage the workflow. “Everything that we say has fallen on deaf ears,” she said.

“It is very hard to be a nurse at Ascension right now,” Watson said in late May. “It is very hard to be a patient at Ascension right now.”

This story was originally published by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kff.org/">KFF Health News</a>.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/7/1719930547420.png" alt="Marvin Ruckle, who has worked for two decades as a neonatal intensive care unit nurse at an Ascension hospital in Kansas, said confusing paperwork nearly led him to administer the wrong dose of a narcotic to a baby after the health system suffered a cyberattack on May 8. Credit: Travis Heying / KFF Health News" />
 <figcaption>Marvin Ruckle, who has worked for two decades as a neonatal intensive care unit nurse at an Ascension hospital in Kansas, said confusing paperwork nearly led him to administer the wrong dose of a narcotic to a baby after the health system suffered a cyberattack on May 8. Credit: Travis Heying / KFF Health News</figcaption>
 </figure><h2>Cyberattacks on health care systems don’t just cost money. They can make it harder for clinicians to keep their patients safe.</h2>By&nbsp;<a href="https://thebeaconnews.org/stories/author/rachana-pradhan/">Rachana Pradhan</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://thebeaconnews.org/stories/author/kate-wells/">Kate Wells</a><a href="https://thebeaconnews.org/">The Beacon</a>In the wake of a debilitating cyberattack against one of the nation’s largest health care systems, Marvin Ruckle, a nurse at an Ascension hospital in Wichita, said he had a frightening experience: He nearly gave a baby “the wrong dose of narcotic” because of confusing paperwork.Ruckle, who has worked in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph for two decades, said it was “hard to decipher which was the correct dose” on the medication record. He’d “never seen that happen,” he said, “when we were on the computer system” before the cyberattack.A May 8 ransomware attack against Ascension, a Catholic health system with 140 hospitals in at least 10 states, locked providers out of systems that track and coordinate nearly every aspect of patient care. They include its systems for electronic health records, some phones, and ones “utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications,” the company said in a May 9 statement.More than a dozen doctors and nurses who work for the sprawling health system told Michigan Public and KFF Health News that patient care at its hospitals across the nation was compromised in the fallout of the cyberattack over the past several weeks. Clinicians working for hospitals in three states described harrowing lapses, including delayed or lost lab results, medication errors, and an absence of routine safety checks via technology to prevent potentially fatal mistakes.Despite a precipitous rise in cyberattacks against the health sector in recent years, a weeks-long disruption of this magnitude is beyond what most health systems are prepared for, said&nbsp;<a href="https://medicine.umich.edu/dept/pharmacy/john-s-clark-pharmd-ms-bcps-fashp">John Clark</a>, an associate chief pharmacy officer at the University of Michigan health system.“I don’t believe that anyone is fully prepared,” he said. Most emergency management plans “are designed around long-term downtimes that are into one, two, or three days.”Ascension in a&nbsp;<a href="https://about.ascension.org/cybersecurity-event">public statement May 9</a>&nbsp;said its care teams were “trained for these kinds of disruptions,” but did not respond to questions in early June about whether it had prepared for longer periods of downtime. Ascension said June 14 it had restored access to electronic health records across its network, but that patient “medical records and other information collected between May 8” and when the service was restored “may be temporarily inaccessible as we work to update the portal with information collected during the system downtime.”Ruckle said he “had no training” for the cyberattack.Back to PaperLisa Watson, an intensive care unit nurse at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis hospital in Wichita, described her own close call. She said she nearly administered the wrong medication to a critically ill patient because she couldn’t scan it as she normally would. “My patient probably would have passed away had I not caught it,” she said.Watson is no stranger to using paper for patients’ medical charts, saying she did so “for probably half of my career,” before electronic health records became ubiquitous in hospitals. What happened after the cyberattack was “by no means the same.”“When we paper-charted, we had systems in place to get those orders to other departments in a timely manner,” she said, “and those have all gone away.”Melissa LaRue, an ICU nurse at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, described a close call with “administering the wrong dosage” of a patient’s blood pressure medication. “Luckily,” she said, it was “triple-checked and remedied before that could happen. But I think the potential for harm is there when you have so much information and paperwork that you have to go through.”Clinicians say their hospitals have relied on slapdash workarounds, using handwritten notes, faxes, sticky notes, and basic computer spreadsheets — many devised on the fly by doctors and nurses — to care for patients.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/7/1719930753692.png" alt="Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph in Wichita, Kansas, one of 140 hospitals the Catholic health system operates nationwide. (Travis Heying/ KFF Health News)" />
 <figcaption>Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph in Wichita, Kansas, one of 140 hospitals the Catholic health system operates nationwide. (Travis Heying/ KFF Health News)</figcaption>
 </figure>More than a dozen other nurses and doctors, some of them without union protections, at Ascension hospitals in Michigan recounted situations in which they say patient care was compromised. Those clinicians spoke on the condition that they not be named for fear of retaliation by their employer.An Ascension hospital emergency room doctor in Detroit said a man on the city’s east side was given a dangerous narcotic intended for another patient because of a paperwork mix-up. As a result, the patient’s breathing slowed to the point that he had to be put on a ventilator. “We intubated him and we sent him to the ICU because he got the wrong medication.”A nurse in a Michigan Ascension hospital ER said a woman with low blood sugar and “altered mental status” went into cardiac arrest and died after staff said they waited four hours for lab results they needed to determine how to treat her, but never received. “If I started having crushing chest pain in the middle of work and thought I was having a big one, I would grab someone to drive me down the street to another hospital,” the same ER nurse said.Similar concerns reportedly led a travel nurse at an Ascension hospital in Indiana to quit. “I just want to warn those patients that are coming to any of the Ascension facilities that there will be delays in care. There is potential for error and for harm,” Justin Neisser&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NofGfUnptfs">told CBS4</a>&nbsp;in Indianapolis in May.Several nurses and doctors at Ascension hospitals said they feared the errors they’ve witnessed since the cyberattack began could threaten their professional licenses. “This is how a RaDonda Vaught happens,” one nurse said, referring to the Tennessee nurse who was convicted of&nbsp;<a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/radonda-vaught-nurse-drug-error-vanderbilt-guilty-verdict/">criminally negligent homicide</a>&nbsp;in 2022 for a fatal drug error.Reporters were not able to review records to verify clinicians’ claims because of privacy laws surrounding patients’ medical information that apply to health care professionals.Ascension declined to answer questions about claims that care has been affected by the ransomware attack. “As we have made clear throughout this cyber attack which has impacted our system and our dedicated clinical providers, caring for our patients is our highest priority,” Sean Fitzpatrick, Ascension’s vice president of external communications, said via email on June 3. “We are confident that our care providers in our hospitals and facilities continue to provide quality medical care.”The federal government requires hospitals to protect patients’ sensitive health data, according to cybersecurity experts. However, there are no federal requirements for hospitals to prevent or prepare for cyberattacks that could compromise their electronic systems.Hospitals: ‘The No.1 Target of Ransomware’“We’ve started to think about these as public health issues and disasters on the scale of earthquakes or hurricanes,” said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-tully-672679102/">Jeff Tully</a>, a co-director of the Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity at the University of California-San Diego. “These types of cybersecurity incidents should be thought of as a matter of when, and not if.”Josh Corman, a cybersecurity expert and advocate, said ransom crews regard hospitals as the perfect prey: “They have terrible security and they’ll pay. So almost immediately, hospitals went to the No. 1 target of ransomware.”In 2023, the health sector experienced the largest share of ransomware attacks of 16 infrastructure sectors considered vital to national security or safety, according to an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2023_IC3Report.pdf">FBI report on internet crimes</a>. In March, the federal Department of Health and Human Services said&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/03/13/hhs-office-civil-rights-issues-letter-opens-investigation-change-healthcare-cyberattack.html">reported large breaches involving ransomware</a>&nbsp;had jumped by 264% over the past five years.A cyberattack this year on Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth Group’s Optum division that processes billions of health care transactions every year,&nbsp;<a href="https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/unitedhealth-change-healthcare-hack-cyber-cybersecurity-ransomware/">crippled the business</a>&nbsp;of providers, pharmacies, and hospitals.In May, UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty&nbsp;<a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/posts/what-we-learned-change-healthcare-cyber-attack">told lawmakers</a>&nbsp;the company paid a $22 million ransom as a result of the Change Healthcare attack — which occurred after hackers accessed a company portal that didn’t have multifactor authentication, a basic cybersecurity tool.The Biden administration in recent months&nbsp;<a href="https://aspr.hhs.gov/cyber/Documents/Health-Care-Sector-Cybersecurity-Dec2023-508.pdf">has pushed</a>&nbsp;to bolster health care cybersecurity standards, but it’s not clear which new measures will be required.In January, HHS&nbsp;<a href="https://aspr.hhs.gov/newsroom/Pages/HHS-Releases-CPGs-and-Gateway-Website-Jan2024.aspx">nudged companies</a>&nbsp;to improve email security, add multifactor authentication, and institute cybersecurity training and testing, among other voluntary measures. The Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services is expected to release new requirements for hospitals, but the scope and timing are unclear. The same is true of an update HHS is expected to make to patient privacy regulations.HHS said the voluntary measures “will inform the creation of new enforceable cybersecurity standards,” department spokesperson Jeff Nesbit said in a statement.“The recent cyberattack at Ascension only underscores the need for everyone in the health care ecosystem to do their part to secure their systems and protect patients,” Nesbit said.Meanwhile, lobbyists for the hospital industry contend cybersecurity mandates or penalties are misplaced and would curtail hospitals’ resources to fend off attacks.Ascension in 2022 was the third-largest hospital chain in the U.S. by number of beds, according to the most recent data from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (Travis Heying/ KFF Health News)<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/7/1719930832970.png" alt="Ascension in 2022 was the third-largest hospital chain in the U.S. by number of beds, according to the most recent data from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (Travis Heying/ KFF Health News)" />
 <figcaption>Ascension in 2022 was the third-largest hospital chain in the U.S. by number of beds, according to the most recent data from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (Travis Heying/ KFF Health News)</figcaption>
 </figure>“Hospitals and health systems are not the primary source of cyber risk exposure facing the health care sector,” the American Hospital Association, the largest lobbying group for U.S. hospitals, said in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aha.org/testimony/2024-04-17-aha-house-statement-fiscal-year-2025-department-health-and-human-services-budget">an April statement</a>&nbsp;prepared for U.S. House lawmakers. Most large&nbsp;<a href="https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf">data breaches</a>&nbsp;that hit hospitals in 2023 originated with third-party “business associates” or other health entities, including CMS itself, the AHA statement said.Hospitals consolidating into large multistate health systems&nbsp;<a href="https://news.utdallas.edu/business-management/hospital-mergers-hacking-2023/">face increased risk</a>&nbsp;of data breaches and ransomware attacks, according to one study. Ascension in 2022 was the third-largest hospital chain in the U.S. by number of beds, according to the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ahrq.gov/chsp/data-resources/compendium.html">most recent data</a>&nbsp;from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.And while cybersecurity regulations can quickly become outdated, they can at least make it clear that if health systems fail to implement basic protections there “should be consequences for that,”&nbsp;<a href="https://ioe.engin.umich.edu/people/bagian-jim/">Jim Bagian</a>, a former director of the National Center for Patient Safety at the Veterans Health Administration, told Michigan Public’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.michiganpublic.org/podcast/stateside/2024-05-22/stateside-podcast-ransomware-attack-at-ascension">Stateside</a>.Patients can pay the price when lapses occur. Those in hospital care face&nbsp;<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4579292">a greater likelihood of death</a>&nbsp;during a cyberattack, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.Workers concerned about patient safety at Ascension hospitals in Michigan have called for the company to make changes.“We implore Ascension to recognize the internal problems that continue to plague its hospitals, both publicly and transparently,” said Dina Carlisle, a nurse and the president of the OPEIU Local 40 union, which represents nurses at Ascension Providence Rochester. At least 125 staff members at that Ascension hospital have&nbsp;<a href="https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/urgent-ascension-providence-rochester-medical-professionals-demand-safety-precautions-in-hospital-amid-cyber-attack">signed a petition</a>&nbsp;asking administrators to temporarily reduce elective surgeries and nonemergency patient admissions, like under the protocols many hospitals adopted early in the covid-19 pandemic.Watson, the Kansas ICU nurse, said in late May that nurses had urged management to bring in more nurses to help manage the workflow. “Everything that we say has fallen on deaf ears,” she said.“It is very hard to be a nurse at Ascension right now,” Watson said in late May. “It is very hard to be a patient at Ascension right now.”This story was originally published by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kff.org/">KFF Health News</a>.

Experts: U.S. hospitals prone to cyberattacks like one that hurt patient care at Ascension 

Officials with Benedictine College are in the early stages of exploring the potential of a new medical school at the college in Atchison.  

Benedictine is continuing the project after dissolving a collaboration with Catholic Healthcare International.  

Chief Business Officer Stan Sluder says over the last two years officials have realized the importance a Catholic medical school is to the culture. 

"And also, the impact it will have on the long-term growth of Benedictine and really for the region," Sluder tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "For Benedictine, for Atchison, and really for all of northeast Kansas and our neighbors." 

The project began in 2022. Sluder says the project began after reading reports about the shortage of doctors in three areas: rural medicine, family practice, and Catholic hospitals. 

"So, we thought, well gosh we're really well positioned in all three of those areas to try to address that need," Sluder explains. "And so, I think our interest started because we saw all the reports of the shortage of doctors coming, really a wave of retirements and not enough doctors to replace them." 

Sluder says they also saw a shortage of doctors choosing to practice in rural areas, choosing metro areas instead, which they hope the medical school will help with. 

Sluder says currently the college is in phase one of creating a medical school, calling it an exploration phase, which is going out and getting support.  

That support would come in the way of partners, it will help us with clinical education, residential placements after graduation, and financial support, Sluder says. "We've got some good partners that have experience in that, and we think we're going to be able to explore whether those partnerships and relationships exist." 

Sluder expects the exploration phase to be done this fall before the college will move into the development phase. 

By MATT PIKE St. Joseph Post Officials with Benedictine College are in the early stages of exploring the potential of a new medical school at the college in Atchison. Benedictine is continuing the project after dissolving a collaboration with Catholic Healthcare International. Chief Business Officer Stan Sluder says over the last two years officials have realized the importance a Catholic medical school is to the culture. "And also, the impact it will have on the long-term growth of Benedictine and really for the region," Sluder tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "For Benedictine, for Atchison, and really for all of northeast Kansas and our neighbors." The project began in 2022. Sluder says the project began after reading reports about the shortage of doctors in three areas: rural medicine, family practice, and Catholic hospitals. "So, we thought, well gosh we're really well positioned in all three of those areas to try to address that need," Sluder explains. "And so, I think our interest started because we saw all the reports of the shortage of doctors coming, really a wave of retirements and not enough doctors to replace them." Sluder says they also saw a shortage of doctors choosing to practice in rural areas, choosing metro areas instead, which they hope the medical school will help with. Sluder says currently the college is in phase one of creating a medical school, calling it an exploration phase, which is going out and getting support. That support would come in the way of partners, it will help us with clinical education, residential placements after graduation, and financial support, Sluder says. "We've got some good partners that have experience in that, and we think we're going to be able to explore whether those partnerships and relationships exist." Sluder expects the exploration phase to be done this fall before the college will move into the development phase.

Benedictine College considers new medical school

A four-year-old Wathena boy is being treated at Children’s Mercy
Hospital after nearly drowning at an Independence Day party in Buchanan County.

Buchanan County Sheriff Bill Puett reports the father and
grandfather of the boy performed CPR after rescuing the boy from the pool.
Emergency workers rushed the boy to Mosaic Life Care. He then was transferred to
Children’s Mercy in Kansas City.

Puett reports his officers responded to the residence on Southwest
36th Road Thursday night shortly before eight o’clock. The boy and
his family were visitors at the party.

This article has been updated since first published to identify the hometown of the victim.

By BRENT MARTINSt. Joseph PostA four-year-old Wathena boy is being treated at Children’s Mercy
Hospital after nearly drowning at an Independence Day party in Buchanan County.Buchanan County Sheriff Bill Puett reports the father and
grandfather of the boy performed CPR after rescuing the boy from the pool.
Emergency workers rushed the boy to Mosaic Life Care. He then was transferred to
Children’s Mercy in Kansas City.Puett reports his officers responded to the residence on Southwest
36th Road Thursday night shortly before eight o’clock. The boy and
his family were visitors at the party.This article has been updated since first published to identify the hometown of the victim.You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.

4-year-old being treated after nearly drowning at Buchanan CO party

Some Missouri day care centers have been forced to shutter as state subsidy payments remain backlogged due to glitches in a new system

BY:&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/author/annaspoerre/">ANNA SPOERRE</a>&nbsp;AND&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/author/cbates/">CLARA BATES</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2022/09/21/missouri-judge-once-again-delays-decision-on-closing-agape-boarding-school/">Missouri Independent</a>

This spring,&nbsp;the state of Missouri owed Kimberly Luong Nichols $5,000 in backlogged payments for children at her Kansas City daycare who were part of a state subsidy program.

For four years, she’s operated a licensed daycare inside her home, where she currently serves 10 children. Luong Nichols stopped drawing a salary last summer to pay for improvements to her center and two new hires, expecting to draw down a salary again this year.&nbsp;

When&nbsp;the full subsidy she was owed stopped arriving, she laid off those staff.

And as they’ve done for the past year, her family of six relies solely on her husband’s $53,000 salary.&nbsp;

They’ve given up little luxuries like going out to dinner and buying fancier shampoo. And they’ve&nbsp;given up&nbsp;bigger luxuries, like vacations.&nbsp;

When bill collectors started calling, her husband considered getting a second job. On several occasions, she considered doing away with the daycare entirely. But she didn’t, not wanting to leave the families — many of whom have children with developmental disabilities, or who are in the foster care system — with the stress of searching for a new day care.&nbsp;

Luong Nichols is among thousands of child care providers across Missouri who rely on a state child care subsidy program to keep their daycares afloat.

The subsidy, part of a federal block grant program that is state-administered, helps cover the cost of serving low-income and foster children.&nbsp;

But since late last year, a&nbsp;series of changes created a major headache for many providers and families, as parents were unable to register their children and providers in the most dire circumstances were left without money to pay their staff.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees the program, has largely blamed a contracted vendor for the months-long backlogs. The system, which launched in December, is still not fully operational.&nbsp;

“ … There have been a number of unforeseen challenges during the transition, which involves loading family and provider data from the existing&nbsp;state systems into the new (Child Care Data System),” Mallory McGowin, a spokesperson with the department of education said in a statement Wednesday. “The (Office of Childhood) is working hard to mitigate these issues and sincerely apologizes to the child care providers and families affected.”

But similar backlogs plagued the system three years ago, as parents struggled to enroll children and providers had to make serious budget cuts.

The latest problems have forced some daycares to close. Others have shifted from serving vulnerable children who qualify for the state subsidy to only admitting families who can afford to pay on their own.&nbsp;

Many providers, like Luong Nichols, have weeks where they’re barely hanging on.&nbsp;&nbsp;

In Missouri, child care providers can be registered to get a government stipend for every child on subsidy, meaning they receive a partial amount of tuition directly from families, and then the government covers the rest after care has been provided.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The child care subsidy is a federal program administered by states through the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Families apply for the state to directly pay a child care provider for part of the cost of care.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Only very low-income families&nbsp;<a href="https://dese.mo.gov/childhood/child-care-subsidy/families" target="_blank">qualify in Missouri,</a>&nbsp;along with foster kids and children with special needs. The maximum income a family can make to qualify is 150% of the federal poverty line, or&nbsp;<a href="https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/poverty-guidelines" target="_blank">$46,800 for a family of four.</a>

The average cost of full-time, center-based care for an infant in Missouri was&nbsp;<a href="https://info.childcareaware.org/hubfs/2022_CC_Afford_Analysis.pdf" target="_blank">$11,059</a>&nbsp;as of 2022, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2024/05/13/child-care-tax-credits-senate-parson-freedom-caucus/">Child Care Aware.&nbsp;</a>

There were about&nbsp;<a href="https://dss.mo.gov/re/oecmmr.htm" target="_blank">21,000 children receiving the state subsidy</a>&nbsp;as of November, the last publicly available state data. The program shifted from being administered by Missouri’s Department of Social Services to the education department in December. McGowin said the current number is closer to 23,000 children.

Roughly 1,800 of Missouri’s 2,800 licensed and license-exempt providers, including school districts, are contracted to take children on subsidy, Pam Thomas, assistant commissioner for Missouri’s Office of Childhood, said at a State Board of Education meeting last month.&nbsp;

“We do continue to struggle a bit with our vendor and meeting what our expectations are for an efficient and effective system and making clear what’s needed,” Thomas told the board. “And quite frankly the vendor is not delivering on those results to what I would say are our expectations as a department.”&nbsp;

The vendor contracted to develop and implement the new system for the subsidy program is World Wide Technology, McGowin said, a large technology services provider headquartered in St. Louis.

Board members expressed concerns with how to move forward as Thomas reassured them that her department was working “around the clock” to urge the vendor to fix the bugs in the system, which spans about nine steps between a family’s application for subsidy and payment to the provider.

“We have to be cautious about how many more changes we add into the system right now,” she said. “ … We can bend it, but we certainly can’t break it, and I think we’re on the verge of that right now.”

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2024/3/1711728770058.jpeg" alt="&nbsp;A series of changes to Missouri's child care subsidy program have created a major headache for day care providers, who say they've been forced to make difficult budget decisions as they wait on money owed to them by the state (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent)." />
 <figcaption>&nbsp;A series of changes to Missouri's child care subsidy program have created a major headache for day care providers, who say they've been forced to make difficult budget decisions as they wait on money owed to them by the state (Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent).</figcaption>
 </figure><h2>Some Missouri day care centers have been forced to shutter as state subsidy payments remain backlogged due to glitches in a new system</h2>BY:&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/author/annaspoerre/">ANNA SPOERRE</a>&nbsp;AND&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/author/cbates/">CLARA BATES</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2022/09/21/missouri-judge-once-again-delays-decision-on-closing-agape-boarding-school/">Missouri Independent</a>This spring,&nbsp;the state of Missouri owed Kimberly Luong Nichols $5,000 in backlogged payments for children at her Kansas City daycare who were part of a state subsidy program.For four years, she’s operated a licensed daycare inside her home, where she currently serves 10 children. Luong Nichols stopped drawing a salary last summer to pay for improvements to her center and two new hires, expecting to draw down a salary again this year.&nbsp;When&nbsp;the full subsidy she was owed stopped arriving, she laid off those staff.And as they’ve done for the past year, her family of six relies solely on her husband’s $53,000 salary.&nbsp;They’ve given up little luxuries like going out to dinner and buying fancier shampoo. And they’ve&nbsp;given up&nbsp;bigger luxuries, like vacations.&nbsp;When bill collectors started calling, her husband considered getting a second job. On several occasions, she considered doing away with the daycare entirely. But she didn’t, not wanting to leave the families — many of whom have children with developmental disabilities, or who are in the foster care system — with the stress of searching for a new day care.&nbsp;Luong Nichols is among thousands of child care providers across Missouri who rely on a state child care subsidy program to keep their daycares afloat.The subsidy, part of a federal block grant program that is state-administered, helps cover the cost of serving low-income and foster children.&nbsp;But since late last year, a&nbsp;series of changes created a major headache for many providers and families, as parents were unable to register their children and providers in the most dire circumstances were left without money to pay their staff.The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees the program, has largely blamed a contracted vendor for the months-long backlogs. The system, which launched in December, is still not fully operational.&nbsp;“ … There have been a number of unforeseen challenges during the transition, which involves loading family and provider data from the existing&nbsp;state systems into the new (Child Care Data System),” Mallory McGowin, a spokesperson with the department of education said in a statement Wednesday. “The (Office of Childhood) is working hard to mitigate these issues and sincerely apologizes to the child care providers and families affected.”But similar backlogs plagued the system three years ago, as parents struggled to enroll children and providers had to make serious budget cuts.The latest problems have forced some daycares to close. Others have shifted from serving vulnerable children who qualify for the state subsidy to only admitting families who can afford to pay on their own.&nbsp;Many providers, like Luong Nichols, have weeks where they’re barely hanging on.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2>Payment backlogs not new</h2>In Missouri, child care providers can be registered to get a government stipend for every child on subsidy, meaning they receive a partial amount of tuition directly from families, and then the government covers the rest after care has been provided.&nbsp;&nbsp;The child care subsidy is a federal program administered by states through the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Families apply for the state to directly pay a child care provider for part of the cost of care.&nbsp;&nbsp;Only very low-income families&nbsp;<a href="https://dese.mo.gov/childhood/child-care-subsidy/families" target="_blank">qualify in Missouri,</a>&nbsp;along with foster kids and children with special needs. The maximum income a family can make to qualify is 150% of the federal poverty line, or&nbsp;<a href="https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/poverty-guidelines" target="_blank">$46,800 for a family of four.</a>The average cost of full-time, center-based care for an infant in Missouri was&nbsp;<a href="https://info.childcareaware.org/hubfs/2022_CC_Afford_Analysis.pdf" target="_blank">$11,059</a>&nbsp;as of 2022, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2024/05/13/child-care-tax-credits-senate-parson-freedom-caucus/">Child Care Aware.&nbsp;</a>There were about&nbsp;<a href="https://dss.mo.gov/re/oecmmr.htm" target="_blank">21,000 children receiving the state subsidy</a>&nbsp;as of November, the last publicly available state data. The program shifted from being administered by Missouri’s Department of Social Services to the education department in December. McGowin said the current number is closer to 23,000 children.Roughly 1,800 of Missouri’s 2,800 licensed and license-exempt providers, including school districts, are contracted to take children on subsidy, Pam Thomas, assistant commissioner for Missouri’s Office of Childhood, said at a State Board of Education meeting last month.&nbsp;“We do continue to struggle a bit with our vendor and meeting what our expectations are for an efficient and effective system and making clear what’s needed,” Thomas told the board. “And quite frankly the vendor is not delivering on those results to what I would say are our expectations as a department.”&nbsp;The vendor contracted to develop and implement the new system for the subsidy program is World Wide Technology, McGowin said, a large technology services provider headquartered in St. Louis.Board members expressed concerns with how to move forward as Thomas reassured them that her department was working “around the clock” to urge the vendor to fix the bugs in the system, which spans about nine steps between a family’s application for subsidy and payment to the provider.“We have to be cautious about how many more changes we add into the system right now,” she said. “ … We can bend it, but we certainly can’t break it, and I think we’re on the verge of that right now.”Yet this isn’t the first time the state’s handling of the subsidy program has caused widespread problems for providers and families.&nbsp;In 2021, the state blamed the COVID-19 pandemic and the rollout of a new system used to track attendance, called KinderConnect, for a&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2021/03/19/emails-show-months-long-backlog-of-payments-to-missouri-child-care-providers/">backlog of thousands of payments.</a>&nbsp;In spring 2023,&nbsp;<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2023/05/03/bureaucratic-hurdles-stymie-missouri-families-seeking-help-affording-child-care/">parents reported waiting several months&nbsp;</a>to be approved for the state assistance, leaving them struggling to juggle work and child care.&nbsp;State Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Democrat from Kansas City, said she was notified of the current spate of issues a few months ago by legislative staff who’d started hearing concerns from constituents.&nbsp;“It feels like way too much time has passed,” Arthur said. “I suspect that child care providers across the state have already closed as a result of these mistakes and it’s totally unacceptable when already providers are struggling. There are already not enough seats available for children who need them.”Asked last month if she was looking at alternative vendors ahead of the current multi-million dollar contract running out in December, Thomas, with the education department, said she wasn’t opposed.&nbsp;However, on Wednesday, McGowin, said the department is not currently planning on finding a new vendor. The subsidy payment issues – 60% of which came from technical issues, according to the state – are expected to be resolved by the end of July.&nbsp;Missouri pays providers for services after they’re performed, rather than in advance. This, coupled with the fact that providers are paid based on attendance rather than enrollment for children in the subsidy program, makes budgeting nearly impossible for providers who take low-income and foster children.“We’re really relying on the state and DESE to really prioritize solving these system challenges so providers can be paid quickly,” said Casey Hanson, director of outreach and engagement at the child advocacy nonprofit Kids Win Missouri.&nbsp;Hanson has spent hundreds of hours with child care providers over the past several years. She knows what’s at stake.“They’re some of the most resilient people,” she said. “They care about children, they care about the future of our state more than almost anyone.”<h2>‘Our own personal pandemic’</h2>Tina Mosley was among the providers who made the difficult decision to stop taking children on subsidy.&nbsp;For 28 years, she has owned and operated Our Daycare and Learning Center in St. Louis, which is licensed for 10 children. It sits in the Normandy school district where the median household income is less than $39,000, and more than 56% of students in public school have SNAP benefits, according to 2021 data from the&nbsp;<a href="https://nces.ed.gov/Programs/Edge/ACSDashboard/2922650" target="_blank">National Center for Education Statistics.</a>Every other provider she knows in the area accepts children on subsidy. And they’re all in the same predicament.“Every one of my colleagues and friends, the state is behind on paying them,” Mosley said. “To the right of me, to the left of me, across the street from me, behind me.”By only taking private paying families, and by ceasing to collect a salary, Mosley said she’s been able to continue employing her two staff, both of whom are young mothers. And while they no longer take children on subsidy, they still service lower income families, she said.&nbsp;As a result, she’s not left waiting on payments from the state. A handful of home and center-based providers she knows in the St. Louis area already closed because of the lag.Several months ago, when most of her children were from the subsidy program, she was helping parents sign up for state benefits as the system transitioned over. She recalls parents sharing screenshots of hold times on the phone with the state surpassing an hour before they had to hang up and return to work, unable to get the immediate help they needed.“Early child care right now, we feel like we’re in our own personal pandemic,” Mosley said.&nbsp;But unlike during the COVID-19 pandemic, when government bodies and communities showed up in stride to keep child care providers in business, Mosley said it feels like most people have now turned their backs.Luong Nichols, in Kansas City, has considered doing what Mosley has done: stop opening her services to families on subsidy.In an April email to a staffer in Arthur’s office, she lamented her situation. The system had two of her kids on subsidy listed as private pay. A glitch wouldn’t let her submit attendance. She hadn’t heard back on her help ticket.&nbsp;“I am due to renew child care subsidy next month and really considering not doing it,” she wrote in an email she shared with The Independent. “Payments are still not correct, they owe me all of February and past corrections. Now we are about to end March and that will be added.”After sending this email, Luong Nichols went on to interview at a local school district. She ultimately turned down the job offer, unable to part with the children in her care, including foster children, kids with behavioral difficulties and low-income children.“I have single moms and foster children that have been kicked out of other daycares or gone through many placements before they landed on my door. And the kids that I take care of, they’re like family.”Instead she continued to spend hours on the phone during nap time begging anyone to make her business whole again. She called the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the governor’s office. She even called the White House.&nbsp;“I’ve had to take on an extra load of work just to fight for something that I’m entitled to,” she said.&nbsp;As of Wednesday, she said her payments were caught up through May. She credited her persistence, and assistance from Arthur’s staff, for speeding up the payment.At the same time, Luong Nichols has seen three area centers and four private daycares shutter. She directs most of the blame at the department of education.“DESE has pushed the industry to the point of no return right now,” she said. ”We’re not going to have enough child care providers in the state of Missouri by the end of this year to take care of subsidy children.” She said it will move to private paying families only.&nbsp;Hanson, with Kids Win Missouri, said there isn’t currently enough data to know the reality of the child care landscape.&nbsp;In response to a Sunshine request submitted by The Independent last month, the education agency said they do not currently track the number of backlogged payment resolution requests.&nbsp;“The reality is, yeah, there are providers that will close,” Hanson said. “That’s why we continue to advocate that we need more state level funding in this space to really maintain a supply.”