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SUNDAY • APRIL 3 • 2011
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Wakarusa Valley building may stay in use
Windy
Virtual school move a possibility for site High: 78
Low: 46
By Mark Fagan mfagan@ljworld.com
Today’s forecast, page 12A
INSIDE
Coupon value in today’s Journal-World: Over $150 Recruit to announce college choice
Wakarusa Valley School will close at the end of this school year, but it may not remain closed for long. Less than a week after members of the Lawrence school board voted to close the elementary school just southeast of Clinton Lake — a move expected to save the district $487,000 a year — administrators now are busy compiling options that could
reopen the building for different uses. The leading contender: Relocate the Lawrence Virtual School from its current home at the former Centennial School, south of Lawrence High School, to the 50year-old building on 10 acres at 1104 E. 1000 Road. Such a move would give Wakarusa Valley a tenant that would be paying for operations out of a different operational Please see SCHOOL, page 2A
Mike Yoder/Journal-World Photo
THE LAWRENCE SCHOOL BOARD VOTED to close Wakarusa Valley School, southeast of Clinton Lake, at the end of the current school year, a move projected to save the district nearly $500,000 annually. But the district may continue to use the building for other uses, such as Lawrence Virtual School.
This pony’s rarin’ to go
Basketball recruit Ben McLemore is expected to announce what college he has chosen to play for today. Though he’s deciding between Kansas and Missouri, most everybody believes KU has won out over MU. Page 1B PULSE
Read Across Lawrence focuses on Harper Lee Lawrence Public Library’s Read Across Lawrence initiative returns Thursday with a month dedicated to Harper Lee’s classic novel “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Theatre Lawrence also will perform a stage adaptation. Page 1C
By Scott Rothschild srothschild@ljworld.com
AFGHANISTAN
Envoy recounts U.N. worker deaths Fearing for their lives, three U.N. workers hoped to escape the mob of Afghan protesters angry over the burning of a Quran by a Florida church. Hope wasn’t enough. They were hunted down and brutally slain, among seven killed when protesters stormed their U.N. compound Friday. Page 8A
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QUOTABLE
I don’t know this dude, but I was like, ‘I’m going to just hold your hand.’” — Shawna Malvini Redden, a 28-year-old doctoral student at Arizona State University, who was aboard Southwest Flight 812 Friday when part of the fuselage ruptured, leaving a hole a few feet long in the roof of the passenger cabin and forcing the plane into an emergency landing at a military base in Yuma, Ariz. Page 7A
COMING MONDAY A former Kansas University professor is, well, bananas about bananas.
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Rare 1966 Mustang found in garage off Four Wheel Drive By Chad Lawhorn clawhorn@ljworld.com
Technically, it is a 1966 Shelby GT350 Fastback with an original stoplight red paint job and a high performance motor designed by the father of the American muscle car movement. But in reality, this car is much more: It’s the type of machine that car buffs thought existed only in bar room babbling or in the grimy gossip of a gearhead garage. “This is why car guys are forever chasing cars,” said Richard Sevenoaks, owner of Tulsa-based Leake Auction Co., which specializes
in selling classic autos. “If some guy says he has a Corvette out in the field, you have to go look at it. You are always looking for the Holy Grail, but for most guys it never pans out.” Maybe fields aren’t the place to look. How about the garage of a Lawrence apartment complex? One off Four Wheel Drive, no less. “I don’t think this car has seen the sunlight for 26 years,” said Peter Pratt, a Houston attorney who took possession of the apartment complex and its garage as part of a lawsuit involving a $600,000 ruling by a Texas court against one-time Lawrence residents Rex and Gail Youngquist.
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KANSAS UNIVERSITY
INDEX Arts & Entertainment 1C-6C Books 3C Classified 7B-12B Deaths 2A Events listings 12A, 2B Horoscope 11B Movies 5A Opinion 11A Puzzles 11B, 4C Sports 1B-6B, 12B Vol.153/No.93 52 pages
Energy smart: The Journal-World makes the most of renewable resources. www.b-e-f.org
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Budget battle awaits in wrap-up session
Research center studies focus on quality of life By Andy Hyland ahyland@ljworld.com
Knowledge developed here is helping premature babies feed themselves, parents detect autism earlier and researchers discover why older people’s speech differs from young people’s. This is life at Kansas University’s largest research center, the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies. The institute is concerned with just what it sounds like it might be, human development from birth to death, across the human life span. That effort brings 150 scientists together from 20 academic disciplines, and they’re all focused on research that’s “translational,” which is a fancy science word meaning it can be applied to socie-
tal needs, said John Colombo, the institute’s director. It’s not the kind of research that gets talked about every day, said Susan Kemper, a KU distinguished professor of psychology and member of the institute. “It’s easy to sell curing cancer. And it might be easy to sell building better airplanes,” she said. “I think it’s unfortunate that so much of this public dialogue has the emphasis on jobs and job creation.” The basic science behind these innovations can improve people’s lives, too, she said. And the institute also creates a lot of jobs in its own right with millions in grant funding supporting all kinds of full-time positions. Please see INSTITUTE, page 2A
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It was in January when Pratt got an email from the property manager of his newly acquired complex. There was a garage full of junk — actually the “debris of life” is how the property manager described it. Old skis. Junk tools. The type of stuff you would expect to find in that corner of the basement you never visit. Beneath it all was this car. A quick check of its outdated license plate and its VIN confirmed that the car belonged to Gail Youngquist. A Texas court had appointed Pratt as the receiver of Please see MUSTANG, page 6A
T O P E K A — Before going on break, Kansas legislators passed numerous bills that will affect Kansans in numerous ways, from how fast they can drive to new requirements on voting. But the one thing legislators didn’t finish was putting together a state budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The session will reconvene April 27, and spending proposals will be front and center. State revenues, which have tanked the past several years, continue to perform below projections. An updated revenue forecast will be done April 15, LEGISLATURE and legislators will use those numbers when negotiating differences between appropriations bills passed by the House and Senate. Entering the session, legislators faced an estimated $500 million revenue shortfall for the next fiscal year. At this point, both chambers’ plans are in the $14 billion range, with $6 billion of that coming from taxpayers. But there are significant differences between how the Senate would fund state government and how the House would. Concerning the largest portion of state funding — public schools — the Senate would cut base state aid per pupil by $226, while the House proposes a deeper cut of $250 per student. Either cut would reduce base state aid to its lowest level in a decade. But while base state aid falls, costs to renovate the Capitol continue to go up. The latest price tag is $340 million, which is triple some early estimates. The Senate budget bill includes $55 million in new bonds for the renovation, $22 million of which would fund repairs to the building’s leaky roof and dome. Here are some of the major issues the Legislature approved during the first part of the session or will continue to work on:
Kansas Public Employees Retirement System High-level negotiations will continue on addressing the state pension system’s long-term funding problems. Th e Ho u s e h a s pa ss e d a 401(k)-style plan for new public employees, while the Senate Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo has approved a plan that would KANSAS UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER STEVEN require workers and the state BARLOW is a co-developer of the NTrainer System, to pay more into the system. which is equipped with a pacifier and is designed The Senate plan also sets up a to synthesize the sucking sensation to help prema- study commission to make recture babies with difficulties feeding. Barlow is one ommendations to the Legislaof 150 scientists from more than 20 academic ture. departments contributing research to KU’s Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies. Please see LEGISLATURE, page 2A