Stories from Wednesday, October 22, 2014

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Some district-level Missouri school officials have criticized the state school board's plan to quickly hire a new education commissioner, saying the board should first gather input on the position's needs and conduct a national search for qualified candidates...

Note: A photo gallery of the Bernie-Advance district volleyball championship is available at this link: View Photos Here BELL CITY, Mo. - Bernie Mules volleyball coach Erin Hoffman put an increased emphasis on blocking in recent weeks as her program prepared to make a run at its fourth straight district championship...

BLOOMFIELD, Mo. - Pun intended, there was a little bit of a delay between district titles for Bloomfield's Chelsea Delay. The senior last won one as a freshman in 2011 with a Lady Wildcats team that advanced all the way to the MSHSAA Class 2 quarterfinals...

ISIS, civil unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and all manner of things in the news could be motivating people to obtain their conceal/carry permit in Missouri. At least, that is the theory of one area instructor. Eric Hutchison is a retired law enforcement officer and holds a federal firearms license. Hutchison teaches conceal/carry classes and says he is seeing an upswing in the number of people enrolling in his class...

BLOOMFIELD, Mo. -- The Stoddard County Commission requested Building Superintendent William Dowdy to get bids for constructing an outdoor fenced area for the Juvenile Detention Center at their regular meeting recently. New federal regulations mandate an outside area be available to juveniles housed in the Detention Center...

Ben Fainer was just nine and a half years old in 1939 when he and his family were forcibly removed from their home in Bedzin, Poland by Nazi soldiers. Ben, who was big for his age, told the soldiers he was fifteen and a half and thus was put into the group with those capable of working. The elderly and women with small children, such as Ben's mother and three siblings, were placed into other groups and sent to extermination camps...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Missouri could be the first state to enshrine the role of student performance data in teacher evaluations in its state constitution if an initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot gets enough support. The proposal would amend the Missouri Constitution to require a majority of teachers' evaluation scores be based on student performance data, which could include standardized tests. ...