(Radio Iowa) – The Logan-Magnolia school district is among 12 statewide to receive federal funding to purchase electric school buses. Superintendent Tom Ridder says they will buy five E-V buses to replace half of the district’s entire fleet to save on fuel. The longest bus route in the western Iowa district is 100 miles – which he says E-V buses will easily cover with charges in between runs.  “We run the morning route, plug it in, and then when that route’s done plug them in at 5:00, 5:30, whenever they get back. And then it will be fully charged for the next day,” Ridder says. He says the buses will sound different –but will look familiar to students and drivers.

“They are regular buses. The only thing different is they don’t have diesel engines. They have battery engines,” he says. Ridder says the buses shouldn’t take any adjustment for drivers.  “All the buses are brand new — all will have seat belts in them. So, the bus drivers I don’t think are going to have a problem with them because it’s like driving a regular school bus,” Ridder says. Ridder says federal rebates will likely cover the full cost of purchasing the buses, but the district must pay to install chargers.

The program was funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed last year. More than 11 million dollars was awarded to Iowa schools to purchase a total of 30 E-V buses. Logan-Magnolia can receive up to two million dollars for the new electric-powered buses.

(reporting by Grant Gerlock, Iowa Public Radio)

(Area News) – Two stories we’re working on getting information about today include a reported shooting incident in Shelby County. Dispatch reports late Monday afternoon said a woman came home to a residence south of Elk Horn and found a man who was shot, but was breathing. Deputies from Shelby and Audubon County, along with rescue crews responded to the scene. Rescue was told to stage their vehicles and crew away from the scene until it could be secured. The Sheriff’s Office says it has concluded its investigation, but is not releasing additional information at this time.

And, Monday night, a domestic situation in Griswold involving a woman, a man and a juvenile, ended with a woman taking a vehicle and leading authorities on a chase that ended with a crash west of town in a field, just east of the Nishnabotna River. The woman was found unconscious in the vehicle. She was transported by Griswold Rescue to a hospital in Omaha. Additional information is currently not available.

(Greenfield, Iowa) – A semi tractor-trailer rollover accident in Adair County is blocking the right lane of travel this morning on Interstate 80 eastbound. The accident occurred at Exit 86 at around 5:17-a.m., according to dispatch reports. Unknown if there are any injuries at this time.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – Sheriff’s Deputies in Montgomery County, assisted by Red Oak Police, were called to the 1700 block of 206th Street in Red Oak, at around 7:20-p.m., Monday, following a report of an alleged assault. Upon arrival and investigation, Deputies arrested 75-year-old Dennis Vanderhoof, for Domestic Abuse Assault/1st offense. The man was transported to the Montgomery County Jail, and held without bond.

(Radio Iowa) – The U-S-D-A is predicting the average corn yield in Iowa this year will be 202 bushels an acre. That’s just a couple of bushels short of last year’s record. Iowa State University ag economist Chad Hart says drought conditions had a mixed impact on yields.

“The western side of the state faced more of those drought problems. As we move over, especially into east central Iowa, we saw some record yields from some producers there,” Hart says, “and so when we add it all up for Iowa, it was actually a pretty good production year.” Commodity prices are strong and the U-S-D-A predicts farm income nationwide will be about five percent higher than in 2021.

“Agriculture’s in a pretty good spot right now. We are seeing good revenues when we look across the board. The challenge is we are starting to see those input costs rising,” Hart says. “…Eventually those costs will catch up to the prices we’re capturing today.” Initial U-S-D-A projections for 2023 suggest Iowa farmers will plant more acres of corn next spring.

“That tells me that USDA is saying farmers are still chasing after the higher prices or higher returns that corn produces,” Hart says, “even though corn is the higher cost crop to produce.” Hart says lingering drought conditions have been a concern for farmers in each of the past two growing seasons and will be again in 2023.

“The longer we’re in this pattern, the most likely we are to see more dramatic impacts on our production,” Hart says, “and do some true economic harm to Iowa agriculture.” Officials in Texas say drought there is causing billions of dollars in losses for cotton farmers. In the American west, drought conditions have persisted for 22 years and ag operations are fighting to maintain access to water.

Click on the map to enlarge

(Logan, Iowa) – Harrison County Emergency Management alert- The city of Logan has issued a boil order until further notice for businesses and residents in the shaded area below.

A boil order is issued when an event has occurred with the potential to adversely affect water quality, or a situation has occurred where there is known degradation of the water quality. DO NOT DRINK WATER WITHOUT BOILING IT FIRST. Bring all water to a rolling boil, let it boil for one minute, and cool before using; or use bottled water. You should use boiled or bottled water for drinking, making ice, washing dishes, brushing teeth and food preparation until you are notified that the advisory has been lifted.

Officials also recommend the following steps:
• Throw away uncooked food or beverages or ice cubes if made
with tap water during the day of the advisory
• Keep boiled water in the refrigerator for drinking
• Do not swallow water while you are showering or bathing
• Provide pets with boiled water after cooling
• Do not use home filtering devices in place of boiling or using
bottled water; Most home water filters will not provide
adequate protection from microorganisms
• Use only boiled water to treat minor injuries
• It is safe to wash clothes without first boiling the water.

Everyone is encouraged to sign up for Everbridge if they have not already done so. Updates will be sent through our mass notification system. The link to do so is:
https://member.everbridge.net/892807736721501/login
Residents are also encouraged to monitor the Harrison County EMA’s Facebook page as updates will be posted online.
https://www.facebook.com/HarrCoEMA

Davenport, IA – Gerald Brian Hoard, age 49 of Bettendorf, Iowa, was sentenced today (Monday) to time-served following his plea of guilty to Attempted Transfer of Obscene Material to a Minor. Hoard went into custody on March 15, 2022. Hoard will serve three years of supervised release including one year at a residential re-entry center.

According to court documents, Hoard used the social media application Grindr, an online dating app, to communicate with an undercover officer posing as a 14-year-old. Hoard sent a picture of his genitals to the purported minor. Hoard agreed to meet the minor at a local store for the purpose of engaging in sexual activities.

U.S. Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement. The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the case. This case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s “Project Safe Childhood” initiative, which was started in 2006 as a nationwide effort to combine law enforcement investigations and prosecutions, community action, and public awareness in order to reduce the incidence of sexual exploitation of children.

For more information about Internet safety education, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc and click on the resources tab.

(Radio Iowa) – With Thanksgiving behind us now, Iowa food pantries are bracing for the winter ahead and a dramatic boost in demand as the year-end holidays near. Matt Unger, C-E-O of the Des Moines Area Religious Council, says while pandemic-era assistance, like extra SNAP benefits and increased unemployment benefits, helped for a while, it didn’t address the underlying problems with food insecurity.

“We have this growth now, and the number of folks that are needing this kind of assistance, and we don’t have the same spotlight on the issue that we did during the pandemic,” Unger says, “so I think there’s the risk that we’ve got some complacency.” So far this month, Unger says DMARC has helped 14-thousand individuals. Zuli Garcia is the founding president of Knock and Drop Iowa, the first-ever Latino food pantry in Des Moines’s metro, which provides culturally-specific foods. Garcia says higher food prices are having an impact and lately, they’ve had to dip into reserves to make sure those in need have enough to take home.

“That’s what our fear is, that we’re going to get to the point where unfortunately, we’re going to have to start turning people away because things are getting expensive, not just out there for everyone, but even for the nonprofits,” Garcia says. “We can’t find the food that’s needed to be able to feed families.” Garcia says for just one day of the pantry being open, Knock and Drop spent 48-hundred dollars on food for 387 families. Officials with the Food Bank of Iowa say they are continuing to see historic need from communities around the state, serving about 150-thousand individuals each month since spring.

(reporting by Catherine Wheeler, Iowa Public Radio)

(Radio Iowa) – A half dozen Iowans who’ve led their public libraries through disasters will be featured in an online discussion tomorrow morning. “The hope is that people watching or listening to the webinar can learn from our disasters instead of having to have their own before they learn those lessons,” says Cedar Rapids Public Library director Dara Schmidt, who’ll be one of the panelists.

Like the city it serves, the Cedar Rapids Public Library has had a recent run of emergencies, starting with flooding in 2016. “(That flood) was smaller than predicted and so we ended up not sustaining damage even though we were closed because we were in the inundation zone and then we had, just like everybody else, the pandemic and then the derecho,” Schmidt says, “and then a couple of months ago we had a fire.”

The fire started in late July in a large light fixture in the lobby of the library in downtown Cedar Rapids. The 200 people inside the library were safely evacuated and the fire was doused in a matter of minutes, but the library was closed for a month — to deal with smoke damage. Schmidt says given that history, she and her staff have developed plans that not only focus on responding the moment a disaster might strike, but how to restore services as quickly as possible.

“With everything that we’ve been through, what we understand is out community needs us and in times of great challenge our community needs us even more,” Schmidt says. “…Maybe our building does have to close, but how can we continue to provide service, even when those terrible things are happening to us?”

For example, Schmidt says this summer the library set up a computer lab in a vacant space across the street from the temporarily closed downtown library. Librarians from Bettendorf, Clinton, Marion, Sioux City and West Des Moines will join Schmidt in tomorrow’s panel discussion about disaster planning.

(Radio Iowa) – The Governor announced today (Monday), that a Mitchellville Elementary School teacher is the 2023 Iowa Teacher of the Year.

Krystal Colbert says she knew from a young age that she wanted to be a teacher. “I had a lot of amazing educators in my own life who helped kind of shape that for me. I remember from a very young age, I had teachers who made me feel valued, and loved and respected,” Colbert says. “And I could really tell that they cared about me as a person, and they cared about my success in the future.”

She says every child learns in a different way, and it’s her job to help them understand that. “I believe that student empowerment is when children are able to be in control of their actions and their learning environment. I think it’s really important to help students set goals and to help them know what steps come in reaching those goals. And I always think that children need to be involved in what they’re learning and how they’re learning it,” Colbert says.

Teacher of the Year, Krystal Colbert. (Dept. of Ed photo)

She says it’s important to have a one-on-one connection with every student, and that helps build a trusting community. “I really take the time to invest in the relationships that I have with my students, as well as their families. I like to keep them connected to what we’re doing in our classroom through weekly emails and newsletters,” she says. “And I think it’s also very vital to stay connected and build those relationships with my colleagues as well.”

Colbert has been teaching for 16 years and says she’s still excited to get up and go to work every day. She’s also happy to take on the challenge of being the teacher of the year. “I am so excited and honored to be the 2023 Iowa Teacher of the Year. And I look forward to being able to travel the state of Iowa, as well as do a little traveling throughout the United States and just be able to meet amazing educators,” she says.

Colbert lives in Altoona and made her comments in a Department of Education video.