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The deadline to submit a nomination is next Friday, May 6. Our Most Influential Business Women program recognizes remarkable women who excel in their careers and are making a big impact in St. Louis communities. The Business Journal will profile 25 women in an exclusive section Aug. 5.

The odds are growing longer on whether Missourians will be able to bet on Kansas City Chiefs games from within the state this year.  And if Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signs a sports wagering bill passed early Friday, the odds of the Chiefs jumping the state line to a new stadium will grow shorter. Wednesday […]

The post Hopes fading for Missouri sports wagering bill to pass this year appeared first on Missouri Independent.

by Jennifer Smith Richards, Chicago Tribune, and Jodi S. Cohen, ProPublica

This story was co-published with the Chicago Tribune.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Illinois’ top education official urged schools to stop working with police to ticket students for misbehavior, hours after an investigation by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune revealed that schools across the state were evading laws designed to prohibit the fining of students.

In a strongly worded plea sent to officials across the state, Illinois ​​State Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala said the costly fines associated with the tickets can be immensely harmful to families, and there’s no evidence they improve students’ behavior. School officials who refer students to police for ticketing have “abdicated their responsibility for student discipline to local law enforcement,” she wrote Thursday, the same day the investigation “The Price Kids Pay” was published.

“If your district/schools are engaging in this practice, I implore you to immediately stop and consider both the cost and the consequences of these fines,” Ayala wrote. She highlighted that sentence in bold type in an 800-word email to superintendents and principals.

The Illinois State Board of Education intends to survey school districts to learn more about their disciplinary practices, Ayala wrote. She also warned that the state board will investigate “noncompliance with state law, where appropriate, and work with lawmakers to close loopholes in state law.”

On Friday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the Tribune-ProPublica report was “something we immediately jumped on” and conversations with legislators were already underway.

“We want to see what exactly is going to be required in order to make sure that this doesn’t happen anywhere in the state of Illinois,” Pritzker said. “I would bet that you’re going to see legislation about this.”

In “The Price Kids Pay,” ProPublica and the Tribune reported that local police are issuing thousands of tickets a year to students for violations of municipal laws, often for misconduct as minor as littering or vaping. Each ticket can come with hundreds of dollars in fines or fees, forcing many families into burdensome payment plans that can eat up paychecks. (Use our interactive database to look up how many and what kinds of tickets have been issued in an Illinois public school or district.)

Failure to pay can have lasting and severe implications. Some communities send debt from school tickets to collection agencies and warn of wage garnishment, liens and loss of driving privileges if the debt is not paid. Other municipalities have used a program available through the state comptroller’s office to deduct money from individuals’ tax refunds and payroll checks.

“The only consequences of the tickets are to impose a financial burden on already struggling families and to make students feel even less cared for, less welcome, and less included at school, which in turn leads to more antisocial and defiant behavior,” Ayala wrote in her letter.

An Illinois law passed in 2015 prohibits schools from using fines to discipline students. Instead, the investigation found, schools have been referring students to police, who then write costly tickets — taking advantage of what Ayala referred to as a “loophole” in the law. Students received more than 11,800 tickets for school misbehavior in the last three school years, reporters found.

Another law, dating to 2019, directly bans schools from reporting truant students to authorities so the students can be ticketed. But the investigation identified about 40 schools or districts that have been referring students to police for truancy.

The investigation found that students were issued tickets most frequently for possession of vaping devices or cannabis, disorderly conduct, fighting and truancy. But police also wrote tickets for such offenses as littering, being disruptive and property damage — for breaking a soap dish in a school bathroom, for example. The investigation focused on high schools but found that children 12 and under also had been ticketed in some K-12 districts.

The investigation examined 199 school districts and identified ticketing of students in 141 of them. To understand the frequency and impact of ticketing in schools, reporters filed 500 Freedom of Information Act requests to districts and police departments and attended more than 50 hearing dates in courts and municipalities across the state.

So many students get ticketed in some cities and towns that students make up the majority of people attending their municipal hearings for ordinance violations. The hearings are usually held during the day, forcing students to miss school. Ayala noted that ticketing students for truancy “may actually worsen student attendance.”

In her letter, Ayala wrote that while some people who did not grow up poor may not understand the impact of a $250 fine, it can force people to choose between paying for groceries, buying gas to get to work or paying the heating bill.

“For the more than 50 percent of our students and families in Illinois who qualify as low-income, paying $250 for a fine means the lights in the house will literally shut off, mom and dad will have no fuel to get to work, or there will be no hot meals on the table,” she wrote. “Even a $40 fine has a tangible impact on the safety, security and wellbeing of an entire family.”

Pritzker said “issuing fines to students who are in our K-12 system is not helpful,” adding, “It doesn’t help, it doesn’t change the behavior, and it just puts families at risk.”

An excerpt from Ayala’s letter.

In guidance issued last month, the state board of education and Attorney General Kwame Raoul urged schools to reevaluate punitive disciplinary policies such as suspensions; the guidance did not address police citations.

The state board also has been working with educators in about a half-dozen school districts this year on more positive behavioral interventions for students. Through the board’s Partnership for Disciplinary Equity in conjunction with several universities, funded with $2 million in federal pandemic relief funds, K-12 educators are learning about restorative justice practices and other techniques that emphasize resolving conflicts with discussion and problem-solving.

​​The legislators behind the 2015 law prohibiting schools from fining students have said they were troubled to learn from the Tribune and ProPublica that police were issuing costly tickets to children at school. The current House speaker, Emanuel “Chris” Welch, who was a sponsor of the legislation, said the General Assembly should revisit the law in light of the investigation’s findings.

Update, April 29, 2022: This story was updated to include statements from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Dan Petrella, Chicago Tribune, contributed reporting.

Jennifer Smith Richards has been a reporter at the Chicago Tribune since 2015. Jennifer’s data-driven investigative work often focuses on schools and disability. Most recently, she uncovered the misuse of seclusion and restraint in Illinois public schools and investigated sexual abuse and assault in Chicago schools. She previously wrote about education for more than a decade at newspapers in Huntington, West Virginia; Utica, New York; Savannah, Georgia; and Columbus, Ohio. She is a member of the ProPublica Distinguished Fellows program.

EDWARDSVILLE – Southern Illinois University Edwardsville students are among the recipients of the 2022 SIU System Distinguished Student Service Awards. Awardees were honored during the SIU System Board of Trustees meeting held Thursday, April 28. During the meeting, Dianah McGreehan, chair of the award selection committee, announced the recipients and shared brief highlights of their outstanding acts of service. Each will receive $100 and an honorary plaque. Winners included: Hailee O’Dell (SIUE undergraduate student) Emily Love (SIUE graduate student) Alison Long (SIU School of Dental Medicine) Aneesh Asokan (School of Pharmacy) Tristan Workman (SIUC undergraduate student) Anna Wilcoxen (SIUC graduate student) Barra Madden (School of Medicine) Morgan Wiggins (School of Law) O’Dell is a junior studying elementary education and psychology in the School of Education, Health and Human Behavior (SEHHB). She is the immediate past president of SIUE

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ST. CHARLES, Mo.- Eight victims of human trafficking were rescued Thursday night in St. Charles. One person was arrested. The St. Charles City Police Department, Missouri State Highway Patrol, Missouri Attorney General’s Office, and a multitude of other local, state, and federal agencies worked on "Operation Enduring Shield." The attorney general's office offered the victims [...]

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Missourians can apply for elk and bear hunting permits during the month of May. The Missouri Department of Conservation is offering five permits to hunt bull elk in Missouri this fall. One permit will go to an area landowner and the other four permits will go to the general public. 400 [...]

Red Hot Chili Peppers' headlining performance at the New Orleans Jazz Fest this weekend will be a "celebration" of late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins. "We're going to play our…

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Take a load off and take in the views on a relaxing daytime cruise that shows St. Louis from the river that built it. Narrated

The post St. Louis Riverfront Cruise appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

Immerse yourself in Van Gogh’s artwork like you’ve never seen it before.  Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience will be in St. Louis at the

The post Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

JERSEYVILLE - St. Francis/Holy Ghost Catholic School first through fourth-grade students recently participated in two exciting Sumdog competitions. Sumdog questions are embedded into games, with different games for different learning styles – racing games, cooking games, flying games. Sumdog is all about personalizing the experience for each child. The questions adapt to meet the student where they are while letting them play with friends, a robot, or kids from across the world. “Our students fared exceptionally,” Jennifer M. Gibson, Technology Teacher/Director at St. Francis Holy Ghost Catholic School, said. “Our students answered an additional 28,500 questions each contest. Below are the students who scored first, second and third in their class for each contest.”

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Here is the Wall Street Journal today: Worker Pay and Benefits Grow at Record Pace, Pressuring Inflation Compensation for American workers grew rapidly in the first quarter, as a tight labor market put more money in workers’ pockets while also keeping pressure on inflation. Business and government employers spent 4.5% more on worker costs in ...continue reading "Worker pay and benefits plummet at record pace. Yes: plummet."

GODFREY – The Nature Institute (TNI) is hosting a celebration for one of only two lunar eclipses that can be viewed in the Riverbend area this year. On May 15, 2022, from 7-11:15 p.m., TNI will offer moon-themed games, movies, music, guided hikes, snacks, drinks, a prime eclipse viewing location with telescopes, and binoculars, and more, on the TNI grounds. The eclipse will begin at 8:32 p.m. and will reach totality at 11:11 p.m. Registration for this event is available on the TNI website. The cost will be $10 for TNI members and $12 for non-members. Lauren Scull, Director of Education, and Dave Schiber, Environmental Educator, are excited about this event. “When I saw we would be having a total lunar eclipse this spring and it would be early enough for people to actually see, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to offer a fun, educational event. Not only do you get to see the eclipse, but you will also get to enjoy a view of the Mighty Mississippi River,” says

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Lawmakers in Congress have been promising to tackle rising drug prices for years, but so far there’s been little action. Now, Congress may be running out of time as bigger …

A beloved coffee spot has closed its doors. Maplewood coffee shop Oliver’s Coffee and Flower Bar notified its customers yesterday that they would no longer be operating. “I am so thankful for all of you who have supported us over the years,” the Instagram post read.

When law enforcement officials get caught saying something extremely troublesome at press conferences, the first page of the police playbook is to accuse everyone reporting/retweeting the news of misinterpreting the statements made and/or spreading misinformation. It’s the “my account was hacked” of the Thin Blue Line — a claim no one believes but one that […]

EDWARDSVILLE - A Life-Saving Award was presented to Correctional Officer Michael Wallendorff last week during the monthly Madison County Board Meeting. Major Jeff Connor of the Madison County Sheriff's Office, told the story involved in the award: "In February of 2020, Deputy Wallendorff, performed CPR on an inmate after the inmate was found unresponsive. CPR was performed for approximately six minutes until EMS personnel arrived on scene. "The inmate was transported to a local hospital and made a recovery. Hospital staff advised the inmate survived because of the CPR performed within the jail." Connor continued and said: "We thank Deputy Wallendorf for his service and commend him for this life-saving action! Great job!"

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Authorities identified the man as 50-year-old Robert Lee Miller.

Police said he returned home safely.

Statistics don’t have faces.   While statistics about the number of homeless veterans in the United States are staggering, they do not show the people

The post In the Faces of Patriotism: The Homeless Veterans Project appeared first on Explore St. Louis.