Lawrence

• Lawrence USD 497 Board of Education reached tentative wage agreements with bargaining units to secure pay increases for all staff members. →
• Lawrence USD 497 Board of Education approved $460,000 for roofing at Billy Mills and West and water line repairs at Southwest Middle School. →
• A Lawrence USD 497 needs assessment identified staffing and class sizes as the top barriers to student success on state assessments. →
• Lawrence USD 497 Board of Education hired Meg Clark as principal of Woodlawn and Phillip Mitchell for Liberty Memorial Central. →
• Lawrence USD 497 received a $50,000 Blue Cross Blue Shield grant to open a student-run coffee shop for the Community Connections program. →
• Lawrence USD 497 relocated its summer student meals pickup site from the Youth Sports Complex to the Douglas County fairgrounds. →
• Expect a beautiful sunny day with a high near 87°F, though keep an eye out for southwest wind gusts reaching up to 30 mph.

Correction (May 12, 2026): An earlier version named the incoming principals as Jayci Roberson and Jennifer Schmitt. The district hired Meg Clark for Woodlawn and Phillip Mitchell for Liberty Memorial Central.

🌾 Kansas

• Boeing will invest $1 billion in its Wichita manufacturing hub over three years to upgrade facilities and expand training, CEO Kelly Ortberg announced Monday during his first visit since the company's December acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems. →

• Persistent drought with little measurable moisture since mid-February has stalled Kansas corn and soybean planting, with USDA rating 51% of the state's winter wheat as poor-to-very poor as the Wheat Quality Council's Hard Red Winter Wheat Tour begins Tuesday. →

• Rep. Sharice Davids filed for a fifth term May 11, calling the Kansas legislature's redistricting effort "outrageous" and linking it to a broader Trump-backed push to redraw congressional maps ahead of the midterms. →

• Evergy broke ground on a natural gas plant near Conway Springs in Sumner County that will employ a construction workforce peaking at roughly 800 and is expected to support several dozen permanent jobs when fully operational in 2029. →

• Hedge funds have nearly tripled net bets on soybean oil and shifted to their highest corn net-long positions of the year as the war in Iran drives energy prices higher and raises fears of prolonged supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. →

🇺🇸 US

• President Trump said he intends to suspend the federal gas tax — 18.3 cents per gallon on gasoline — to ease pump prices that have risen during the ongoing war with Iran, though any suspension requires congressional approval. →

• Kevin Warsh is expected to be confirmed by the Senate as early as Wednesday as Federal Reserve chair, inheriting a central bank facing 3.5 percent inflation and White House pressure for rate cuts. →

• EBay's board rejected GameStop's unsolicited $56 billion takeover bid, calling the offer "neither credible nor attractive" and citing financing uncertainty and operational risks. →

• Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree, which shipped 5,500 androids last year, applied to list on Shanghai's Star market and is expected to debut in the second half of 2026. →

• DeepSeek said its latest AI model has been optimized to run on Huawei chips, marking a significant shift away from Nvidia as U.S. export controls push Chinese firms toward domestic semiconductors. →

Weather

MAY 12, 1903: TEDDY ROOSEVELT’S TRIP TO SAN FRANCISCO IS CAPTURED ON FILM

President Theodore Roosevelt’s parade visit to San Francisco was recorded by cameraman H.J. Miles, making him one of the first presidents to have an official activity preserved on motion picture film. The short movie, titled “The President’s Carriage,” showed Roosevelt riding in a carriage escorted by the all-Black Ninth U.S. Cavalry Regiment and was later shown in nickelodeons-early, low-cost movie theaters- across America.

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