Exam

Amid a national teacher shortage, a wave of teachers’ strikes last spring spotlighted some of the ongoing problems for the teaching profession, such as low pay and limited classroom resources. On top of that, a recent poll found that for the first time since 1969, just over half of American parents don’t want their children to pursue a teaching career.

The Missouri Constitution prohibits teachers from striking, but just because they aren’t speaking out, doesn’t mean schools here don’t face many of those issues. With some of the lowest teacher salaries in the country, recruiting and retaining qualified teachers is a challenge, said Paul Katnik, assistant commissioner for educator quality at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Two weeks ago, the Missouri state Legislature passed House Bill 3, which will create new policies to promote STEM education across the state.

STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and math. According to the Pew Research Center, STEM careers are some of the fastest-growing jobs in the country. Since 1990, employment in STEM occupations has grown 79 percent.

But in Missouri, there’s a supply problem.

Columbia Public Schools and Rock Bridge High School dedicated the renovation of the school’s football stadium last Friday.

The $6.4 million project was paid for with funds from a 2014 voter-approved bond issue and renovated the press box, concession stand, restrooms, bleachers and track. 

KBIA's Mitch Legan was there, and he sent an audio postcard from the Bruins' game against the Lee's Summit West Titans. 

If you’ve visited downtown Columbia recently, you’ve probably seen them.

They’re big and they’re grey, with a white stripe down the front. And they’re not very fast – when they’re really flying, they top out at about 15 mph.

They’re Bird scooters, and they’re popping up in college towns across the U.S.

Uninvited.

The electric rental scooters have been in town for the past three weeks after the company Bird Rides chose Columbia to be part of its “University Pop-Up Tour.”

The University of Missouri conducted a campus climate survey about a year after the resignations of former MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin and former UM System President Tim Wolfe. Faculty, staff and students at the Columbia campus were asked questions about their experiences with discrimination, support from campus administration and overall work and study environment. Nearly ten thousand people responded. The results suggested a lack of institutional support for students and employees, especially hourly staff.

At a town hall held in mid-September to discuss the survey, MU Chancellor Alexander Cartwright said that the sub-par findings were not unexpected.

A Missouri House bill that looked to expand charter school options across the state didn't make it through the Senate in May, but the issue of expanding charter schools in Missouri could return in future legislative sessions.

Right now, charter schools are allowed only in Kansas City, St. Louis, and under limited conditions in other parts of the state. Missouri House Bill 634 aimed to change that. It passed the House, but didn’t make it out of committee and to  a vote before the Missouri Senate adjourned. Legislators are free to pick up the issue again next session.

But what exactly is a charter school? 

  As another harvest season wraps up, Midwest farmers are once again facing low commodity prices amid enormous supplies. And when they recover from the long days bringing in the grain, they will eventually sit down with their books and try to figure out how best to farm again next year.

  The farms that straddle both Missouri’s Interstate 70 — which connects the state’s two most populous cities, Kansas City in the west and St. Louis in the east — beckon migrant workers in search of a better quality of life.

The University Of Missouri System Board Of Curators, along with the campus chancellors and other board members, gathered Wednesday to announce the newly selected university system president – Dr. Mun Choi.

Choi comes from the University of Connecticut where he has served as the provost and executive vice president of the university since 2012. Choi said his career as an academic brings a new perspective to the position of system president. The system’s last two presidents had business backgrounds when they were hired.

Last Friday, the MU Black Studies Department hosted Dr. Marc Lamont Hill to moderate a community conversation and reflection on the race and social justice issues raised by students last fall. Hill is a professor of African American Studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta and host of BET News and VH1 Live.

The evening began with performances from students, including members of the organization Indie Poets and the Legion of Black Collegians Gospel Choir. 

Last Saturday students, alumni and community members gathered to celebrate Homecoming at the University of Missouri. A yearly staple of the celebration is a parade that includes bands, floats, and the familiar "M-I-Z!" "Z-O-U!" chant.

Last year that chant was used to drown out the voices of a group of African-American protestors, Concerned Student 1950. That student group was protesting a lack of response to racist incidents on campus. Their protests eventually led to the resignation of then UM System President Tim Wolfe. 

Chantelle DosRemedios was pregnant with her second child when she and her husband both lost their jobs in Rhode Island. Like millions of others, she depended on a federal program designed to aid in early childhood development to keep her children fed.

Moms and kids who qualify can participate in a federal program called Women, Infants and Children, or WIC. The program provides nutritious food packages and other benefits to some eight million moms and young kids nationwide.

Lincoln University celebrated its 150th anniversary last weekend, and current students and alumni from across the country came together to commemorate the milestone. The homecoming week included the annual coronation of Mister and Miss Lincoln University, the National Panhellenic Step Show, the Homecoming Parade and the LU 150th Birthday Extravaganza.

The theme for this historic homecoming week was #NeverForget1866, which denotes the founding year of the historically black university in Jefferson City. Shortly after the end of the Civil War, members of the 62nd United States Colored Infantry decided to establish an educational institution known today as Lincoln University.

Blues in the Schools celebrated its’ 10th anniversary Saturday, Oct. 1, with a performance in the Stephen’s Lake Park Amphitheatre.

The program aims to raise funds to grow awareness of the arts in mid-Missouri. The program’s resident visual artist, Terry Sutton, helped Grant Elementary students from kindergarten to the fifth grade create a mural called “The Blues Tree” at Central Bank of Boone County. It depicts what the last 10 years of the program. The artwork displays early Missouri artists of classical, jazz, and ragtime music like Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, “Lady Day” Billie Holiday, and T.J. Wheeler, who runs the program.

One year after Payton Head, former University of Missouri student body president, shared his experience of being called a racial slur on the MU campus on Facebook , leadership from the University of Missouri System and MU held a press conference to review the progress of the last year that began with student protests calling for systemic action against racism.

There’s a class at the University of Missouri that everyone has to take. It’s called Exposition and Argument, but students and teachers usually strip it down to its “numerical name:” English 1000.

Donna Strickland, Director of Rhetoric and Composition, says that class is an environment that isn’t found many other places on campus.

“I mean these small classes where people can have these intimate conversations,” Strickland said.

It was mid-afternoon and the athletes of the Magic City Olympians had just taken the court minutes after wolfing down their brown-bag lunches. Coach Jim Thornton stood on the sidelines, shouting tips to his athletes during their first game of the state-level Special Olympics competition. Many of the athletes spent the morning bowling at Fort Leonard Wood, and the exhaustion was starting to show on their faces.

The University of Missouri system approved a list of qualifications it is looking for in the next UM System President during the two day Board of Curators meeting on April 14 and 15 in Rolla. 

To create this list, the Presidential Search Committee held four public listening sessions at each of the UM System’s campuses. The April 6 session in Columbia took place after forums in Rolla and UMSL, but before the session at UMKC.  During the Columbia meeting, the Presidential Search Committee discussed what experiences, traits and qualities the next system president should have.

Past graduates of the Missouri School of Journalism came together to talk with students, other journalists and aspiring writers about the process of writing during the first ever “Words Matter Writing Conference.” The conference took place from April 11 to April 15 and featured topics from magazine writing to freelance journalism.

The speakers at this conference recently had their stories published in Words Matter: Writing to Make a Difference, an anthology consisting of journalistic pieces and memoirs all from graduates of the Missouri School of Journalism. Mary Kay Blakely, one of the two editors of the book along with Amanda Dahling, got the idea for the anthology after she kept receiving pieces of writing from former students.

On April 5, Columbia voters will have their say on two measures that would impact Columbia Public School District’s finances.

During the upcoming municipal election, Columbia residents will decide whether to pass an operational tax levy increase and a $30 million dollar bond proposal for the Columbia Public School District. 

Columbia Public Schools spokesperson Michelle Baumstark said the levy increase and bond proposal are two very different things.

The Missouri School of Journalism invited Nikole Hannah-Jones, an award winning journalist, to come to campus last month and spend the day with journalism students. The visit culminated in a talk for journalism students called “Covering racial injustice in the age of Black Lives Matter.”

When Hannah-Jones came to MU, she talked to students, faculty and staff in the journalism school about how to cover issues of race. She also talked about how she practices a blend of data-driven and narrative journalism.

When Liam Theberge, a senior at Hickman High School, heard that the Columbia Board of Education was going to be talking about adding gender identity and gender expression to the District’s nondiscrimination policy last September, he knew he had to be at that meeting. “It was a really big and important topic for me, and I think a lot of incoming students and even current students needed to have their voice there,” Theberge said.

  In late January, Missouri House Rep. Kip Kendrick filed his first bill of this year’s state legislative session. Kendrick’s bill, the Student Debt Relief Act, would give Missouri college graduates the ability to refinance any student loans after graduation.

“Currently there are zero options to refinance student loans in the state of Missouri. So it’s about providing graduates and individuals working an option to be able to refinance and to lower rates, but then also to really make sure that the repayment issue is addressed,” Kendrick said.

The topics of diversity, inclusion and respect were the main ideas of and open session on February 5, although the University of Missouri’s Board of Curators discussed various topics related to the UM system during a series of meetings over the course of two days.

Large donations from alumni and supporters have become a major source of funding for universities.

Just in the last month the University Of Missouri School Of Music received a $10 million donation from Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield, while the University Of Missouri School Of Journalism received a $1 million donation on April 24.

But there’s a lot that goes into landing a major gift like these. Most of the time, it starts with a phone call.

Large donations from alumni and supporters have become a major source of funding for universities. Just in the last month the University of Missouri School of Music received a $10 million donation from Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield, while the University of Missouri School of Journalism received a $1 million donation from Timothy Blair on April 24.

KBIA’s Abigail Coursen tells us about how a multi-million dollar donation to the University of Missouri comes to be.

Lincoln University in Jefferson City has entered into a partnership with the program Project SEARCH, which secures competitive employment for people with disabilities by partnering with several Missouri-based organizations to provide real-world opportunities for high school students. Throughout the school year, students work three internships that place them in various departments on campus.

Lincoln University in Jefferson City has entered a partnership with Project SEARCH which gives high school students with disabilities job training. KBIA’s Brady Finn takes you inside the school to figure out what jobs these students are working and what impact the program is making.  

The use of technology in classrooms is quickly becoming the new normal in education. At the beginning of this year the Columbia Public School District began issuing mini iPads to Battle High School students and to fifth graders at Mill Creek Elementary, through a program called “one-to-one.”

But with these advancements comes the question: how do parents, and even teachers who may not be familiar with modern tools, make sure students are using them to their fullest potential?