WRITER: Josie Heimsoth

Students suing the school district over Gaggle seek court order for district to respond to unanswered KORA requests

In a lawsuit filed over the school district’s use of the monitoring software Gaggle, students are seeking a court ruling for the district to respond to open-records requests about the new ManagedMethods software. The plaintiffs alleged that the Lawrence school district failed to timely and lawfully respond to Kansas Open Records Act requests from The Budget, Lawrence High School’s student newspaper, and ...

Lawrence school board to consider bid for remodeling Free State High School's athletic field press box

Lawrence school board members will consider a construction bid for a remodeling project for Free State High School’s outdoor athletic field press box on Monday. Board members will consider the bid from Mammoth Sports Construction LLC in the amount of $390,500 with a 10% contingency fund up to $39,050, resulting in a total project cost of $429,550. The costs will be paid from the facilities and operations ...

Cardinal Housing Network hosts ribbon-cutting for new apartments for women in recovery and their children

The Cardinal Housing Network has opened its second supportive housing location in Lawrence for women in recovery and their children. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday, Hannah Bolton, founder and program director of the Cardinal Housing Network, told a small crowd that the house’s name was Lil’ Blue and it was managed by her grandfather for over 30 years. The house, 1128 Ohio St., was built in 1896 ...

Douglas County commissioners approve contract for health care plan administrative services from UnitedHealthcare

Douglas County commissioners approved a contract for a new county employee health care plan on Wednesday. The contract is with UnitedHealthcare to provide administrative services for the county’s self-funded employee health care plan, and it would become effective June 1, 2026. The vote was 3-2, with commissioners Erica Anderson and Gene Dorsey opposed. As the Journal-World reported, commissioners ...

Douglas County report highlights financial and housing struggles of single-parent families, calls for increased support

A new report shows that families with a single parent in Douglas County – especially female-headed households – just above the poverty line face financial, housing and mental health struggles. On Wednesday, county commissioners will hear about the findings of the report during a work session centered on the experience of single-female-headed households living at or below the ALICE threshold, which stands ...

Lawrence startups win grants to help get their health and tech innovations to market

Before Yezan Salamoun was a University of Kansas PhD student working to advance a daily oral testosterone therapy, he was a pharmacist. Salamoun’s desire to help others took a new direction when he chose to tackle a complex challenge: creating a method to boost testosterone levels without relying on injections or daily creams. These traditional options can be inconvenient for many patients — whether due to ...