Impossible choices. College enrollment. Sternberg Museum. Software delivery.

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

By Mark McCormick

Black parents make expensive choices and answer impossible questions when it comes to educating their children. One such question, “In what ways will you sacrifice your child?” forms the predicate for most every question Black parent will answer. Not if, but how?

Choose the “best” school and leave the child vulnerable not only to the viciousness of children taught to believe in their superiority or send the child to an underfunded public school and sacrifice academic rigor and personal safety.

Nikole Hannah-Jones laid out this challenge in a recent essay about her family’s choice to send her daughter to a public school, only to have her daughter challenge that choice years later. A vulnerable Hannah-Jones pummels herself for that decision, but either choice had harmful consequences for her daughter.

There really wasn’t a “right” decision.

TOPEKA — A modest enrollment reduction of 0.8% this fall among 32 higher education institutions coordinated by the Kansas Board of Regents obscured more significant declines at five technical colleges, a dozen community colleges and two universities.

The six public universities commonly associated with the state Board of Regents reported a 0.7% increase in headcount, while technical colleges shrank 6.8% and community colleges tumbled 1.9%. Washburn University, a municipal university and its technical college in Topeka, scrambled its enrollment statistics through an administrative adjustment but documented 0.6% growth.

TOPEKA — Fort Hays State University president Tisa Mason says the Sternberg Museum of Natural History will close to the public in mid-December because of budget problems.

She said museum faculty and staff would remain this academic year to review collections, determine what must be retained for research and teaching, and collaborate with “appropriate organizations to ensure every specimen is handled responsibly and legally.”

“This is not a decision I make lightly,” the president said Monday. “The Sternberg Museum is woven into the identity of this university and this region.”

TOPEKA — The bill-writing software for the Kansas Legislature that was supposed to be operational months before start of the 2026 legislative session in January remains ill-equipped for implementation.

President Donald Trump is tapping $20 million in Homeland Security funding to pay for TV ads that heavily feature him ahead of the midterm elections, Democrats said Tuesday as the promos critics call propaganda come under bipartisan attack.

A federal grand jury indicted 10 noncitizens for unlawfully voting in Minnesota, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday, highlighting the administration’s effort to keep election security a top issue, in line with President Donald Trump’s longstanding unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.

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