The Act would require that public and charter schools have anti-bullying policies and that those policies meet certain requirements. It would restrict the use of “zero-tolerance” provisions that would punish a victim acting in self-defense, and require that administrators considering punishments consider a statement from any student who engaged in self-defense.
The bill specifies that a school employee or volunteer who intervenes in an incident of bullying or other violence is immune from liability when following certain procedures, and that a district or charter school is immune to civil liability for disciplinary actions if following specified procedures.
The bill would also extend school districts’ efforts to counsel and educate victims of bullying to those students who engage in bullying. That provision was added by Marshfield Representative John Black (R), the sponsor of House Bill 2630, which has been paired with HB 1715.
Regarding investigations, the legislation would shorten the time in which a district employee who witnesses a bullying incident must report it from two days to one, and require that the report be in writing.
Results of investigations would have to be presented to all involved students and include a description of any interventions, initiatives, techniques, or disciplines. In cases in which an investigation finds that bullying occurred the parents of the instigator must be notified. If the finding is that the incident rose to the level of 2nd degree harassment, law enforcement would be notified, or in cases involving a student younger than 11, the state Children’s Division would be notified.
For more than four decades, two Missouri families have been among an untold number who are going through the anguish of not knowing what happened to a loved one who simply vanished. Backers of a proposal coming before a House committee this week say its passage could be the key to immediate answers in those cases and many more, not just in Missouri but nationwide.
53-year-old Geneva Verneal Adams usually didn’t go out at night, and she didn’t drink, but she loved to dance, so on July 14, 1976, she asked her daughter to go out with her. Lonely after her first husband had died and a second marriage ended in divorce, she was smiling big when she left, hoping to have a fun night out.
Her daughter decided to call it a night early, but Adams was enjoying dancing with a man she’d met at the Artesian Lounge in Herculaneum and opted to stay. Adams left the bar with him around 1 the next morning. What happened to her after that has never been known.
Crump, who was 17 when his mother went missing, has never given up looking. Many years and many disappointments later, a police officer – the son of one of the original detectives on his mother’s case – gave him another glimmer of hope. He had learned of a body that had been found just weeks after his mother disappeared and in the same general area, went unidentified, and was buried not far away in Illinois. Many of its characteristics matched those of his mother, and it was going to be exhumed to see if this was Geneva.
When the grave was opened, it was empty.
Some 90 miles away and three years after Geneva disappeared, 19-year-old Cheryl Anne Scherer called home from her job at a small self-service gas station in Scott City. She talked to her mother about what would be served for dinner that night and some sewing Scherer planned to do when she got home. Authorities can account for all but ten minutes of what went on after that phone call, and in that ten-minute window, something happened to Scherer and her family never heard from her again.
Cheryl Scherer in 1977, and an age-progressed photo of how she might appear today.
More than 14 years passed before Diane Scherer-Morris accepted that her sister might never come.
Both of these are families holding on to hope, and both of them could stand another chance of finally getting closure through the passage of House Bill 1716.
Both are asking lawmakers to give them that chance.
HB 1716 would require that all law enforcement agencies in Missouri participate in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, better known as NamUs. It is a nationwide database of cases of missing persons and unidentified human remains. Each case entry might include physical descriptions or DNA evidence, or both.
That database was launched in 2007. The more data is entered, the more open cases of unidentified bodies and missing persons can be advanced and even solved, and more families like those of Geneva Adams and Cheryl Scherer can finally get answers.
Many law enforcement agencies, however, still don’t enter their information on such cases into that database. Only 12 states require that the agencies within their borders participate. By proposing HB 1716, Representative Tricia Byrnes (R-Wentzville) wants to bring Missouri into the fold.
Getting all Missouri agencies to participate in NamUs would not only lead to answers in this state but anywhere in the U.S. Data in the System has resulted in connections that span multiple states, such as when a body found in 1982 in Arizona was just three years ago identified as that of a teen who disappeared from St. Louis in 1981. That case remains unsolved, but her family was “awestruck” to finally know what happened.
Cheryl Scherer’s brother, Anthony, said he is more than ready for his family to also get an answer. For these long decades, he has considered the numerous theories that have been proposed about what happened, including that Cheryl was a victim of notorious serial killers Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas, who authorities say were operating in the region at the time.
Steve Crump wants this bill to pass so that other families might be spared the years and years of pain he experienced. He still thinks his answer could be found with the body that was supposed to be in that Illinois grave.
Geneva Adams’ case is a perfect example of why more agencies need to get active with NamUs, according to Courtney Nelson, Board Member and Advocate of the Missouri Persons Support Center.
She said if the System had been in place in 1976, authorities might have sooner made the connection between that body and Adams’ disappearance. Instead, it wasn’t made until 2018, and poor documentation appears to have led to digging up the wrong grave.
Nelson is one among those who brought the idea to Rep. Byrnes. She said passing HB 1716 would send a message to families like those of Geneva Adams and Cheryl Scherer, that law enforcement still cares and hasn’t forgotten.
HB 1716 will be the subject of a hearing by the House Committee on Emerging Issues, on Wednesday at 4:00. The hearing can be watched live through the House website, but Rep. Byrnes is calling on those concerned with missing persons to come and testify or submit testimony online.
HB 1716 would also require additional training for law enforcement on unidentified and missing persons cases; require that fingerprints from unidentified remains be submitted to the Highway Patrol and that a dental examination must be performed on remains; and that an unidentified person record in NamUs be created within 30 days of the discovery of such remains.
Memorials for fallen veterans, police officers, and firefighters, and for those missing in action, will no longer be paid for by the families of those individuals, under legislation that became law this year.
LCPL Jared Schmitz (Photo courtesy of Mark Schmitz)
It’s called the “FA Paul Akers, Junior, and LCPL Jared Schmitz Memorial Sign Funding Act,” and it stemmed from the efforts to memorialize those two men, both of whom died while serving their country. When legislators learned that their families were billed for the signs honoring them, they proposed the language that would have those costs paid for by the Department of Transportation.
Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, of St. Charles, was among 13 U.S. Service Members and more than 100 others killed in a suicide bombing at a Kabul airport during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. His family wanted to honor him with signs to designate an overpass on I-70 in Wentzville as a memorial bridge bearing his name.
His father, Mark Schmitz, said the family got a bill for those signs.
Schmitz, who lives in Byrnes’ district, said he supported her legislation not so much due to his family’s experience (donations covered their $3,200 cost in a matter of hours after an online fundraising effort was launched).
Representative Tricia Byrnes (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Mayhew’s experience with the issue began with an effort to honor Fireman Apprentice Paul Akers, Junior, who was killed in the January, 1969 explosion and fire on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, CVAN-65, off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. Akers was also from Crocker.
The family of LCPL Schmitz isn’t finished honoring him. His father said they are now working to raise money for a series of 100-acre recreational retreat camps, one in each state, for veterans and their families to use for free. Each will have 13 available houses, one for each of the U.S. service people killed in the attack in which his son died.
Advocates who deal with veteran suicide and mental health issues say one of the best outlets for veterans, especially those who have experienced combat, is other veterans.
Byrnes and Mayhew sponsored identical bills. When Byrnes’ version, House Bill 882, came to a House vote, it passed 153-0. The language later became law as part of Senate Bills 139 and 127.
A House committee has heard from dozens of Missourians that it could help secure relief for families that have suffered for decades due to radioactive contamination throughout the St. Louis region.
Representatives Tricia Byrnes (at podium) and Richard West (behind her) are joined by dozens of St. Louis region residents ahead of a committee hearing about their resolutions dealing with radioactive contamination left in that region by work related to the Manhattan Project. (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Nuclear weapons development and testing there in the 1940s and ‘50s contributed to the U.S. having the atomic bombs used in World War II. That work, also known as “The Manhattan Project,” also eventually led to the dumping of nuclear waste near Lambert airport which contaminated soil, Coldwater Creek, and the Creek’s floodplain.
Residents who live or have lived, or whose families have lived, in the affected region, testified for more than four hours Tuesday night about House Concurrent Resolutions 21 and 22, which would trigger an investigation by state agencies into whether those residents could be eligible for federal relief funds in programs that already exist to compensate those harmed by nuclear testing.
The Committee on General Laws heard story after story of cancer clusters; high concentrations of extremely rare diagnoses; and of mental, physical, and financial suffering that has impacted multiple generations.
The sponsor of HCR 21 is Tricia Byrnes (R-Wentzville), whose son was diagnosed at age 15 with thymoma, a form of cancer typically caused by the use of radiation or chemotherapy to treat a different cancer. Some experts have told her that his may be the only case in history of thymoma being a patient’s primary diagnosis.
It was his diagnosis that led to her investigating the issue of contamination in the St. Louis region, and eventually to filing HCR 21.
Representative Richard West (R-Wentzville), who sponsors HCR 22, said he began learning about the situation after his mother was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He learned that one cause of that form of cancer is contaminated water, and he knew that among the sites tested for radioactive contamination were wells like those on his parents’ property.
One of those who testified Tuesday was Christen Commuso, the Community Outreach Specialist with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. Commuso also lived in St. Ann until the age of 7, and often played in Coldwater Creek. She is among those diagnosed with cancer at an early age, as well as other diagnoses. Among other procedures she has undergone, she has had her gallbladder and left adrenal gland removed, and had to have a total hysterectomy.
She told lawmakers that the emotional and physical tolls on her and her family have been massive, and the cost at times is so great that she is forced to skip appointments or tests.
Representatives Richard West and Tricia Byrnes (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Karen Nickel grew up in Hazelwood and played in a park on the bank of Coldwater Creek, and the Creek flooded other local playgrounds and backed into her parents’ basement.
She and other residents explained that the impacts of this contamination go beyond any one individual. Some families spend decades trying to keep more than one of their members alive. The radiation can also cause mutations that put future generations at risk, even when there had been no history of such diseases in those families prior to the contamination.
Thomas Whelan taught for 30 years at Francis Howell High School, a school that was within walking distance of a uranium processing facility. He and several others said that as that site was cleaned up students were exposed to particulate matter and other contaminants.
The families of fallen veterans, police officers, and firefighters, and of those missing in action, would no longer have to foot the bill for highway or bridge memorial signs honoring those loved ones under a bill approved by a House committee.
Representative Tricia Byrnes (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Byrnes joined Mayhew in proposing this change in response to the effort to honor Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, a Wentzville native, who was one of 13 U.S. military members who died in a 2021 bombing at an airport in Kabul, in Afghanistan. She learned that when Corporal Schmitz’s family wanted to have a section of highway named for him they received an invoice from the Department of Transportation for more than $3,000.
Schmitz said he talked to the families of the other 12 personnel who died at the same time as his son. None of them had to pay the cost of having a memorial sign placed in honor of their loved on, on a highway in their respective states.
The Department of Transportation did not oppose the legislation but offered information on how the system currently operates. Chief Safety and Operations Manager Becky Allmeroth said the Department has to consider other signage.
Representative Don Mayhew (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
The committee voted unanimously in favor of the bills, House Bill 882 (Byrnes) and 518 (Mayhew), advancing them to another committee for consideration.
