The Journal (KLC)

The proposed pedestrian bridge over Rock Road is projected to cost around $5.5 million. This includes $3.5 million for the bridge and $2 million for the supporting walls. The reference of $18 million refers to the prospective budget of two phases of the Redbud Trail improvement.

Editor’s note: This story was produced by KMUW as part of “Beyond Words: Wichita’s Reading Crisis,” a new initiative by the Wichita Journalism Collaborative exploring adult literacy in the Wichita area. Imagine you work in a meatpacking plant and operate heavy machinery. But the safety labels on those machines look like gibberish. Your chances of getting injured are suddenly much higher. Hector Martinez, director of adult education for the Kansas Board of Regents, saw that play out in Garden City.

Editor’s note: This story is being re-published with permission from The Wichita Eagle through the Wichita Journalism Collaborative. Services are scarce for Wichita adults who have low literacy. While there are services for children who struggle to learn in school, adults who are unable to read either find ways around it or fall through the cracks. Nearly 20% of adults in Sedgwick County test at a Level 1 literacy or below.

Editor’s note: This story is being republished from Flatland, the nonprofit newsroom at Kansas City PBS. Pleasant Valley Fire Department Chief Robert Stinson pulled his flatbed pickup up to a largely empty airport hangar in New York a decade ago. Since 2002, it had been the grim reliquary of curated pieces of the World Trade Center, leveled during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

After months of uncertainty regarding its financial sustainability, Second Light, Wichita’s primary homeless shelter, has received a $5 million boost in funding in the form of a one-time grant from the city’s Stabilization Reserve. The homeless-resources campus had been expected to run out of money this fall, a point of tension that was spotlighted in the weeks leading up to a failed sales-tax referendum in March that would have allocated some money to the shelter.

If a Kansan U.S. Senate seat is vacated, the governor may appoint a replacement to serve until the next general election. While the Kansas governor was previously allowed to appoint any qualified successor, SB 105 — which was enacted in April 2025 — requires a legislative committee to prepare a slate of three candidates from the same party as the predecessor for the governor to choose from.

Editor’s note: This solutions journalism article is part of a series of stories called “Feeding Solutions” about efforts to address hunger and health issues in Kansas. Inside a blond brick fourplex wedged next to a winding street in a working-class neighborhood of south Wichita lies a portal to the future.

Discontent brewed in Emporia for weeks before an arrest was made. A string of factory closures and layoffs had rocked the close-knit community, and a proposal to rezone 1,000 acres for a data center development had heightened tensions even further. At the July 22 meeting to vote on the rezoning, the mood was tense. Residents had spent weeks voicing concerns about the project, while commissioners had begun receiving what residents described as credible death threats.

Overview: Quentin BlueHorse, a Rosebud Sioux, doesn’t view indigenous history as just a tragedy. He doesn’t dwell on his anger. Indigenous cultures, thousands of years old, still breathe in this prairie expanse called Kansas, as America itself marks 250 years, an infant by comparison. Maybe the continent’s youngest occupants could learn from elders hailing from some of the planet’s oldest cultures about longevity. Their survival came at a terrible price.

Residents of Wichita’s largest homeless encampment are frustrated. After years of living cloistered from the public in woods just north of Chapin Park, more than 80 people soon will be evicted by the city from an encampment that’s come to be home for them. Chapin’s residents told The Journal this month that they are stressed and angry over what they perceive as bureaucratic disorganization and a lack of communication.