Nikoel Hytrek

The Sioux City Community School District discussed reinstating a mask mandate for all Sioux City school buildings and activities at its Monday evening meeting. Board members showed strong support for doing so. Board Vice President Monique Scarlett moved to reimplement a mask mandate and board member Taylor Goodvin seconded it immediately. However, in order to…

The Sioux City Community School District could be the first Iowa school district to offer rapid COVID-19 testing in its buildings. The only hindrance is approval to use federal emergency funding to buy those tests, according to District Communications Director Leslie Heying Heying said part of the discussion at Monday’s school board meeting will be…

Across Iowa, schools are seeing and reporting rising cases of COVID-19 among their populations. How—and whether—schools notify parents about positive cases is left up to school districts to decide. So far, many are providing those notifications, but most are only giving broad information, like noting when there’s a positive case in a school building or…

A case in federal court has put pre-2015 rules for what waters qualify for protection under the Clean Water Act back into place. For now. Last week a federal judge in Arizona ruled that the Trump Administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule was too flawed to keep in place. The case was brought to Judge Rosemary…

Whitewater kayaking is growing increasingly popular in Iowa as parks dedicated to the recreational activity have started to sprout up. Chuck Ungs, a Linn County conservation education specialist, said the whitewater park in Manchester has been helpful for him during the pandemic. “We were all nervous about getting far from home,” he said. “And so…

A group of parents with children who have disabilities, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit Friday to block and strike down Iowa’s law banning schools from requiring students and faculty to wear masks. The argument in the case is that students with disabilities are blocked from access to an equal education…

Abortion rights are back to being uncertain in America and in Iowa. A majority in the US Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to stop the implementation of a Texas law, known as SB 8, that severely shortens the window during which women can seek abortions and includes broad citizen-enforcement elements that several justices speculated were…

Gov. Kim Reynolds still refuses to step in to make real progress on conquering COVID-19 in Iowa. Reynolds held a press conference Thursday morning to talk about the recent increases in COVID cases in the state, while also refusing to commit to exercising any power other than encouraging people to get vaccinated. “With vaccines widely…

Iowa has been at odds with the federal government about COVID-19 mitigation and Monday that battle ratcheted up again. The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened an investigation into Iowa’s ban on mask mandates. At issue is whether the ban violates the right students with disabilities have to an equal opportunity…

Desperate for more protection from COVID and its Delta variant, some Iowa parents are enrolling their children in vaccine trials in the hopes they’ll be vaccinated as soon as possible. And they’re relieved they did it. “It feels great,” said Leng Vong Reiff of Clive, whose two sons went through a Pfizer trial. “There’s that…