Nikoel Hytrek

In a special school board meeting held Monday, the Johnston Community School District removed the mask requirement for all ages and grade levels in a 4-3 vote. Among the four who voted to remove the requirement were new board members Deb Davis, Clint Evans and Derek Tidball. Board Vice President Alicia Clevenger also voted yes.…

Amid a growing teacher shortage in Iowa, attacks on teachers’ abilities to teach are driving more away from Iowa schools. Neal Patel, a science teacher in the Johnston Community School District, announced at a committee meeting last Thursday that he plans to resign at the end of the school year. He cited the toxic environment…

At a regularly scheduled school board meeting for Urbandale Community Schools, students, teachers and parents took the podium to defend books in the school’s library. “Parents do have the right and responsibility to monitor what their children watches or reads, but not to make decisions for all students and parents,” said Miriam Woods, a former…

Maybe you’ve heard about the recent push to investigate and remove books from school libraries in Iowa. If you don’t have much time to dig into the details, here’s a quick guide to the big points of focus, what’s happening, and why. Click the links for more from the initial stories. What’s Happened Across the…

Roads, bridges, broadband, and sidewalks: That’s just a taste of what Iowa mayors are excited to see come to their cities with the passage of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill. Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act last Monday after it passed the House of Representatives last week. Iowa will get about $5 billion…

At a school board committee meeting in Johnston Thursday night, Iowa Sen. Jake Chapman said there should be criminal charges against teachers who allow children to read books he believes are obscene. He later followed up in a Facebook post saying he would prepare legislation for the upcoming session that would allow felony charges to…

If you listen to the students, they will tell you they are fed up with adults. More specifically, with parents or other community members making spectacles and sparking controversies at school board meetings. While mask mandates remain contentious, the focus has shifted toward books in high school libraries such as Waukee’s Northwest High School. People…

You’ve likely seen the outrage videos and news coverage spreading around Iowa social media in recent weeks: LGBTQ characters—and specifically LGBTQ sex—in books that are available in Iowa high school libraries. Parents and members of the public have shown up at school board meetings to read sexually explicit passages from the books and insist the…

Long-standing efforts to pass an infrastructure bill and make some legislative progress have produced results. On Friday the House of Representatives passed the bipartisan infrastructure plan (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act). Rep. Cindy Axne was the only member of the House from Iowa that voted in support of it. Included in the infrastructure bill are…

A nearly year-long debate over diversity in the Ames public schools came to a head yesterday in the school board election, and the three candidates who championed inclusion were victorious. Amy Erica Smith led with 20.77% of the vote, Kelly Winfrey followed with 19.52%, and Brett Becker had 17.4%, according to unofficial results. The fight…