News Briefs: Catch up on school and local news

A group of SM East students played and spoke at the annual Prairie Village Jazz Festival on Sept. 6 in Harmon Park. Among the festival’s lineup was The Blue Knights — SM East’s top jazz band.

The Blue Knights is one of two jazz bands at SM East. It’s the elite jazz ensemble composed of primarily upperclassmen, according to seniors Eli Moon and Jack Stratemeier, two members of the Blue Knights jazz ensemble. 

“We've been rehearsing the songs, and we've already established what order we're going to do them,” Moon said. “We get a sound check, make sure all our mics and technology work, get warmed up and then we open the festival and people start to pour in.”

Kansas pageant queen and sophomore Libby Morris spoke at the jazz festival for the third time this year. Morris was first asked to speak at the festival to promote her pageant platform,after winning her first pageant title as Miss Prairie Village in 2022. Since then she has used her platform while working with the Johnson County food, job and housing insecurity efforts.

“I was really eager to talk to [the attendees of the festival] about what my cause was at the time, The Unhoused Crisis,” Morris said. “But I have since then shifted gears to talk more about heart health, and I’m really excited to speak again.”

Morris not only spoke before one of the festival’s biggest acts, but she also ran a booth for her pageant platform. Part of her heart health platform is to train people in CPR, which was available at her booth.

Renovation Sensation, SHARE’s only fundraiser throughout the entire year, is happening on Wednesday, Sept. 17. The event has been going on for nearly 20 years, and features four newly renovated homes in the Prairie Village area. They are open for people to tour and learn about the family’s renovation process. 

Since SHARE is a privately funded program, it holds one fundraiser a year to help cover administrative costs, such as t-shirts and other merchandise and other expenses to keep SHARE running. 

Sheryl Kaplan and Erin Billingsley are the co-coordinators of the SHARE program. They have been working with Renovation Sensation since they took the roles as co-coordinators together 4 years ago. Kaplan and Billingsley have been behind the scenes planning the event for the past 10 months. 

“[The committees] talk to the homeowners and ask if they would be willing to put their houses on the tour,” Kaplan said. “Then there are committees for everything, such as someone goes and interviews the homeowner to say, ‘Hey, tell us about this house. What interesting things can we tell people on the tour?’”

Students also help on the day of the event and volunteer to set up some of the houses with floral arrangements and decorations. Other parent volunteers are part of committees that will be in attendance at the event to stand in certain rooms and tell people about the different features the house has. 

“Erin and I always go and see all the houses, and we just really enjoy doing that and our [SHARE] execs [do too],” Kaplan said. 

Kansas City’s amusement park Worlds of Fun opened its Halloween Haunt on Saturday, Sept. 13. The Halloween Haunt is one of many events to start KC’s spooky season. 

The Haunt, as it’s better known, is open on weekends from Sept. 13 to Nov. 1 this year. The theme park lights up with fog machines and dimmed lighting at night to create a Halloween-like atmosphere. 

There are shows, haunted houses, themed food and drinks and scare zones, areas with designated actors and shows that are meant to jump scare people. The regular rides are also open to ride during the Haunt at night. 

Sophomore Lyla Rozen has had a season pass to the Halloween Haunt for the previous three years, making it her fourth this season. Rozen goes to the Haunt four to five times a season to get her money’s worth of the pass.

“My favorite part is the haunted houses,” Rozen said. “There’s a bunch of different ones, and they all have different themes.”

Worlds of Fun does advertise that the haunt may not be appropriate for young children, as the scare zones and haunted houses can be too frightening. They offer “No Boo” necklaces for young children and people who don’t wish to be jump scared by the actors.

Senior Jordan O’Brien also enjoys going to the Halloween Haunt every year. O'Brien has gone since she was young and at age 8, wore a “No Boo” necklace while walking through the park. 

“I'm not a huge fan of haunted houses, so I just like riding all the rides at night,” O'Brien said.