(Radio Iowa) – The Des Moines School Board has chosen a new leader for Iowa’s largest school district. Ian Roberts will take over as superintendent of Des Moines public schools on July 1st. The 52-year-old educator has been superintendent of Millcreek Township schools in Erie, Pennsylvania since 2020. He also has experience leading public schools in St. Louis and Baltimore and charter schools in California and Tennessee. Roberts told reporters his focus will be on the district’s goal to improve outcomes for students. “Every single child who knocks on our doors, families rest assured they will receive a quality education that changes their trajectory for success,” Roberts said.
Roberts is the first black superintendent in Des Moines. About 30 percent of the 30-thousand students in Des Moines schools are Latino and 20 percent are black. Eight of Iowa’s 10 largest school districts have hired new superintendents in the past two years. This past January, the acting superintendent of Sioux City schools was selected for the job permanently and the superintendent for Cedar Rapids, the state’s second largest school district, starts her job July 1st as well. The superintendents of Dubuque, Waterloo and West Des Moines schools started their jobs nearly a year ago.
Davenport, Iowa City and Ankeny hired new superintendents in 2021.
(Greenfield, Iowa) – The Board of Supervisors in Adair County, Wednesday morning (May 17, 2023), approved a few matters on their agenda before receiving a Quarterly Environmental Health update from Jotham Arber, Cass/Adair/Guthrie County Director. The Board approved a liquor license renewal for the Wallace Center of Iowa, a Child Abuse Prevention Grant drawdown, and the appointment of Skylar Rawlings, from Greenfield, as Grand River Township Trustee. They also acknowledged receipt of an Engineer New Field Entrance letter, with regard to a rural driveway in Harrison Township 27.
In his report to the Adair County Supervisors, Jotham Arber said Perc (Percolation) Tests resumed last month. A percolation test is a soil test designed to evaluate the soil’s capacity to accept a subsurface sewage disposal system (septic system). The test has two parts, the soil evaluation and the site evaluation.
The tests take about six-hours to complete. He said also they developed a “Well Book,” for homeowners guide to taking care of their well, for current and new owners, who have wells on their property.
The books will be available free of charge at the Auditor’s Office, well drillers and eventually, realtor’s offices. Jotham Arber said there are 29 well water tests scheduled for this month, in Adair County. The free tests are for arsenic, lead and five other, possible contaminant levels.
And, Jotham said also, there are a lot of septic systems that are coming to the end of their lives in Adair and the three counties covered by the Environmental Health Department. Many systems, he said, are 40-or 50-years old, well past their expected performance use.
And, Adair County Engineer Nick Kauffman presented for Board Chair Jerry Walker’s signature, following Board approval, Right-of-Way Contracts for the following culvert projects:
N29 in Prussia Township
W14 in Jefferson Township
and W11 in Union Township
Kauffman then went on to provide the Board with his weekly report on Adair County Secondary Roads Department Maintenance and Activities. He mentioned they received a letter from a rural resident complimenting road crews on their ditch cleaning efforts. And, he said they received bids for road salt, which were down from last year’s prices, which Kauffman said is unusual.
In construction news, Nick Kauffman reported work on a bridge is expected to begin, Thursday.
The next Adair County Board of Supervisor’s is on Tuesday, May 23rd at 9-a.m.
Abbey Meyer of Cascade, Clayton Ridge’s Jasmine Staebler and Griswold’s Rebekah Topham are the 2023 inductees into the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union’s Track and Field Hall of Fame. The trio will be inducted at noon Saturday at the Co-Ed State Track and Field Meet at Drake Stadium May 20.
Rebekah Topham
Topham had an outstanding career at Griswold from 2012-15. She finished with 11 state titles, four second place finishes, and was a 16-time state medalist. Topham’s specialty was in the distance events, claiming titles in the 1500 all four years. She is just one of five runners to win the 800, 1500 and 3000 in the same meet twice, and one of just two runners to win the 800, 1500, 3000 and 400 Hurdles in the same meet. She is the only female runner to win four state championships in cross country. Topham also left her mark at the Drake Relays, claiming titles in the 1500 and 3000 as a freshman. She competed collegiately at Wichita State, where she won seven indoor Missouri Valley Conference championships with three outdoor titles. She won the Drake relays University-College 1500 in 2016 and 2019, and finished second in the steeplechase in 2018. She ranks second on the Shockers’ all-time list in the indoor 3,000 meters while ranking third in the indoor mile and 5,000 meters.
Abbey Meyer
Meyer ran for Cascade High School from 2011-14 and collected 15 state medals. She accumulated 10 state titles and three second place finishes for the Cougars, all of them in relays. She was a part of Cascade’s 4×200 relay team that won four consecutive titles and anchored the sprint medley team that placed first or second three straight years. Meyer was also a part of Cascade’s 4×400 relay team that placed second or third three straight years. She qualified for the Drake Relays all four years of high school, running in 11 events. An all-state basketball player, Meyer played college basketball at the University of Dubuque.
Staebler ran for Clayton Ridge from 2012-2015. She finished her career with nine titles, four second place finishes and was a 16-time medalist. She won the Class 2A 800 meters three-straight years with one second place finish (.12 seconds behind fellow hall-of-famer Rebekah Topham). Staebler won the 200 and 400 two-straight years, placing second or third twice. During her Drake Relays competition she was one of three athletes to win the 200, 400 and 800 in the same meet and is the
Jasmine Staebler
only runner to do it twice. Staebler went on to star at Iowa State, where she was a four-time All-American. She ran on the distance medley relay team that won the Big 12 indoor title in 2018. She was the Big 12 indoor runner-up in the 800 in 2017 and ‘18, and anchored the second place distance medley relay in 2019. She finished sixth in the NCAA indoor 800 in 2017, and ninth in 2018. She finished eighth in the 800 at the 2016 USA Junior Championships.
(Radio Iowa) – Iowans who happened to be up for sunrise today (Wednesday) got a rare treat. Smoke from wildfires in Alberta, Canada, is filtering high over Iowa and it’s making the sun appear as a golden-reddish-orange ball. Meteorologist Brooke Hagenhoff, at the National Weather Service, says the phenomenon should be visible at sunset tonight, too, and for that matter, the sun and sky may look unusual all day, perhaps longer. “It’s really making kind of that reddish look to the sky. It’s gonna look pretty hazy most of the day,” Hagenhoff says. “Right now, it looks like that hazy sky’s going to hang on at least through tomorrow. We do have a cold front coming through on Thursday with some thunderstorms that may help to push some of it out as we get into the end of the week.”
Iowans who have certain health issues and difficulty breathing should -not- feel any ill affects from the smoke, as it’s far up in the atmosphere, perhaps 20-thousand feet up. Plus, she says, it doesn’t even smell like smoke outside. “In the afternoon, sometimes this time of year, whenever it’s warm, you can get some deeper mixing as the ground kind of warms up. That could start to pull some of it down, but again, just how much is kind of an unknown,” Hagenhoff says. “So just something to use caution. Of course, there are air quality products out there so anyone with concerns would want to check to see what those levels may be.”
Image from NASA Earth Observatory
There are at least 90 wildfires now burning in Canada with more than 20 of them out of control. More than 20-thousand Canadians have been evacuated from their homes because of the fires, and cities like Calgary are under alerts due to poor air quality. Hagenhoff doesn’t anticipate anything similar here and the smoke is so high aloft, it doesn’t even appear on radar over Iowa. The odd-looking sky could persist, though. “Because it’s such a small-scale thing with the fires in Canada, and how that’s going to interact with our systems, and how it gets drug down,” she says, “it’s a little tough to kind of figure out exactly where we’ll be with any kind of length into the future past a couple days.”
The federal government runs a website called simply, AirNow, and it’s focused on fires and smoke. The site includes a color-coded map through which you can zoom in on individual Iowa counties to check on air quality.
The changing of the guard will continue from the fall to the winter sports season at Exira-EHK. It was announced last month that Drew Buckholdt will take over for Tom Petersen as the head football coach for the Spartans, now it has been announced that Tony Santisteban will take over as head boys basketball coach from Doug Newton. The Exira-EHK School Board approved Santisteban’s hiring at their meeting on Tuesday night.
Newton has led the Spartans program for over 20 years and has been in the district for 31 years. Newton leaves with a record of 335-194 during his tenure. He led the Spartans to a state tournament appearance in 2011, a team that Santisteban was a senior on. Santisteban has been an assistant with Newton for a strong number of those seasons after playing under him and graduating in 2011. He led the Spartans with 12 points and 3.2 rebounds per game during that state tournament season.
The Spartans are coming off a 19-5 season in 2022-23 that ended with a loss to West Harrison in the substate semifinals.
(Elk Horn, Iowa) – A public hearing on a proposed 2022-23 Budget Amendment for the Exira-EHK School District took place during the Board of Education meeting, Tuesday night. Superintendent Trevor
Miller said his philosophy is to “Not build-in a lot of fluff” when it comes to the budget.
In other business, the Exira-EHK Board approved an amended agreement with the Green Hills AEA for a School-Based Interventionist.
The Board also approved a District Career and Academic Planning (DCAP) Plan, as well as an English Language Arts (Reading) Curriculum, through Amplify.
(Elk Horn, Iowa) – The Exira-EHK and Audubon Community School District Boards of Education have approved Athletic sharing agreements between the districts. Exira-EHK Superintendent Trevor Miller said it’s great both boards worked together and their respective A-D’s came up with the idea.
He said both boards are unanimous on it, and understand that times are changing and they have to be proactive. The agreement will continue to have Audubon host boys and girls wrestling and they will now host girls track. Exira-EHK will be the host school for girls basketball and girls golf.
The Exira-EHK Board also acted to approve several personnel matters, including:
(Iowa DNR News, 5/17/23) – Despite a rainy cold closing weekend across much of state, Iowa’s wild turkey hunters reported harvesting more than 14,800 birds through the mandatory registration system, an increase of nearly 3,000 versus the 2022 harvest. Officials with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources report Iowa’s spring turkey seasons began April 7 with the youth season and ended on May 14. Hunters purchased nearly 54,500 spring turkey tags, an increase of 2,000 licenses from 2022.
Turkey production has been good across most of the state the past two years and these two-year-old birds were likely a good portion of the harvest, said Jim Coffey, forest wildlife biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “The two-year-old birds are the most likely to gobble and the most likely to move,” he said. “When we combine birds willing to move, pretty good weather during the season and the great passion our turkey hunters have for the resource, we get a harvest for the record books.”
While the hunting season may be done for 2023, Iowans can help the DNR with its annual turkey production estimates by reporting all the turkeys seen during the months of July and August. This annual survey is designed to predict the overall production of wild turkeys that will be available for the 2024 season. The DNR will have a link to the survey on its website before it begins on July 1, where Iowans seeing wild turkeys are asked to provide the date and county in which the turkey(s) was seen, if it was an adult female or adult male (males have beards on their breast), and whether there are young poults (baby turkeys) present.
Photo courtesy of the Iowa DNR.
Annual production surveys conducted by the DNR are an important component of the species management plans, which includes providing hunting opportunities. Anyone seeing turkeys is encouraged to participate in this online survey.
(Carroll, Iowa/KCCI) — Recently released dashcam and body camera video from Carroll Police officers show a traffic stop in 2021 escalated to the point where an officer pointed as gun at the driver while standing on the hood of the vehcle that was pulled over, but then started to take off.
The incident happened during a normal traffic stop on March 5, 2021. KCCI reports a records check determined Dennis Guider, JR., was wanted on an arrest warrant out of Illinois. He was asked to step out of the vehicle during the traffic stop, but the man apparently panicked and began to pull-away from Carroll Police Officer Patrick McCarty, who was standing in front of the car, jumped onto the hood when he realized Guider wasn’t going to stop.
The vehicle sped away from police with the officer clinging to the car’s roof as speeds picked-up. Audio from the incident revealed McCarty, kneeling on the hood of the car with his gun drawn, yelled at Guider to “Stop the car, man. Stop the car.”
Other squad cars went after Guider while McCarty hung on to the roof. The chase only lasted for about a minute as Guider turned into a gravel lot and drove through a ditch where McCarty lost his grip, fell to the ground, and broke his back.
Guider pleaded guilty in March 2023, two years after the initial chase. During sentencing, Guider’s attorney asked the judge for leniency, arguing McCarty was never trained to step in front of a moving car.
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