(Guthrie Center, Iowa) – Guthrie County ISU Extension & Outreach received a $2,000 matching grant from the Guthrie County Community Foundation, during the 2022 grant cycle. The funds will be used to assist in closing of the education gap, by providing the three daycare centers in Guthrie County with various educational STEM Kits to give youth a head-start on learning. The centers that received a kit are Little Panther Daycare and Preschool in Panora, Little Chargers Early Learning Center in Guthrie Center, and Exploration and Learning Station in Stuart. Each kit will have various directions for the teachers on how to use the kits with different age groups.

Officials say the goal of the project is to combine literacy with STEM education by encouraging reading books with hands on activities. Since COVID, the largest impacted areas in a youths learning are math and literacy. According to the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Students Progress test from 2021, less than half of the first graders were able to read at their respective grade level.

Mollie Clark, Youth Development Coordinator, & Brooke Ramsey, Asst. Dir. of Little Panther Daycare

Make-do Invent kit supplies

Science Kit supplies

Bee-Bot Coding Kit supplies

Mollie Clark, Youth Development Coordinator, & Sydney Henderson, Director of Little Chargers Early Learning Center. (All photos & information is courtesy the Guthrie County ISU Extension Office)

The kits can incorporate various materials to complement and grow the kit. Mollie Clark, Youth Development Coordinator, says “Each kit has multiple activities within it with ample supplies. We have also compiled an easy-to-use set of directions for the kits so anyone at the daycare should be able to pull out the kit, read through the directions, and implement the activities with the youth.”

The kits consist of a Coding Kit with bee bots and their accessories which are ideal for helping kids understand cause and effect, directional language and early programming. A Make Do Invent Kit with tools to help bring out the engineer in everyone, these are a simple to use, open-ended system of tools for creative cardboard construction. The last kit is a Science Experiment Kit with hands-on activities and projects that cover a wide host of topics, including art, astronomy, clay, geology, and math. Krista Downing, Guthrie County ISU Extension Program Coordinator, says “We want to thank the Guthrie County Community Foundation for awarding us these funds, this project would not have been possible without their support.”

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the Guthrie County ISU Extension office at 641-747-2276.

(Harlan, Iowa) – The Board of Supervisors in Shelby County met Tuesday morning. According to the meeting minutes from Auditor Mark Maxwell, the Board set December 20^th as the date for an auction of the County Farm and Solid waste ground rental. The auction will tentatively take place at the Therkildsen Center, in Harlan.

Shelby County Sheriff Neil Gross reported to the Supervisors that K9 “Corty” was recovering from injuries he suffered injured during a call for service, as he was performing his duties. The dog had to undergo surgery to repair an ACL. He was released from the veterinary hospital on August 29^th and is undergoing therapy along with a well deserved rest. Sheriff Gross reported also, the SRO (School Resource Officer) has been very busy with his duties.

The Supervisors considered and subsequently passed a Resolution to become a Home Base Iowa Initiative County. The resolution explains the Home Base Iowa initiative is an effort to match military veterans with jobs available across Iowa. One of the requirements is that the Board of Supervisors adopt a resolution of support. Residents and businesses are encouraged to take whatever actions are necessary to become and continue to be a Home Base Iowa County and Home Base Iowa Business.

The Shelby County Supervisors approved a resolution fixing the dates for three public hearings on the proposition to amend various sections of the Shelby County Zoning Ordinance for the purpose of regulating and restricting the use of land for the transport of hazardous liquid through a hazardous liquid pipeline. The proposed amendment to the ordinance would establish a general requirement to obtain a conditional use permit for hazardous liquid pipelines that would apply county-wide and that would affect the use of land for such purposes in each zoning area or district in the county.

The Board will meet in the Therkildsen Center in Harlan Oct. 18^th and 25th at 10:00-a.m., and at that same time on November 1^st, to receive public comment on the proposed amendment. The November 1^st comment period will be followed by a vote on passing the proposed amendment as presented.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate and Polk County Elections Director John Chiodo are allowing the public to view the testing that’s done on voting machines. Pate says they want to be sure everyone knows how the process works. “Because there’s a lot of people who don’t know what happens — I mean literally — they’ll fill out paper ballot and then they stick it into the machine and they’re going, where did it go, what did they do?,” Pate says. “And with some of the misinformation and disinformation has been going out, we thought it’d be very well thought through at least to give you the facts.”

Chiodo says “This goes on for many weeks and months preparing for this, it’s just not like I was telling the gentleman earlier, it’s not like we wake up on Election Day and throw everything against a wall and hope it sticks. I mean, we test and test and test and test. So you have that comfort, waking up on election day that things are gonna go right. If you get the doors open, you’re in good shape.”

Polk County Elections Director John Chiodo

Pate says they’re testing different kinds of ballots, because each precinct might have a different ballot for the different offices that are up for election. “This machine is also designed to assist the voter because let’s say for example, they caught a double vote, they actually voted for two people for the same office, the machine will catch that, and we’ll push it back out and alert you there’s a problem. Well, this can be resolved, right while the voters there, we don’t want to spoil their ballot, we don’t want to, we want to make sure your vote gets counted,” Pate says.

Chiodo ran a number of different ballots through a machine as reporters watched.

Pate says the machines are all clean when voting begins on election day. “Meaning there’s no information in here, they have a designated stick that we put in those. They’re sealed so that again, they’re only used this time. And that’s how it works,” Pate says. “That is really a big part of this — because at the end of the night they’ll take the stick out and the ballots and they’re all sealed. And now we have two ways to audit you have stick and you have the physical ballots to go off of.”

Pate says his office will identify a precinct in all the 99 counties that has to be manually audited with a hand count of the ballots for the top office against what the machine’s tabulator says. He says they’ve been doing that for three election cycles and it’s checked out 100 percent in all 99 counties. Chiodo says the machines are not connected to the internet during voting. “The only time that it has any connection whatsoever is at the end of the night when we enable a modem to transfer the results from the point place to here (county election office). And it’s outgoing only. And that’s only live for when they close the machine out — and there safeguards on both ends as far as who can get in who can get out. And it’s only outgoing data,” Chiodo says.

Pate says those numbers are only unofficial results and the numbers reported by the machines are checked against the paper ballots.