(Radio Iowa) – An education center in central Iowa is taking steps toward becoming a year-round attraction. Living History Farms spokesperson Elizabeth Sedrel says they are building a Cultivation Center to replace the visitors center and give them more space. “New climate controlled year round exhibit space, some administrative offices and some new accessible amenities like a mother’s room, a family restroom and an adult changing station,” she says. “At the same time, we’re going to be renovating our current visitor center into a dedicated Learning Center for school groups for our classes and our day camp.” The farms were built in Urbandale back in 1970 to preserve some of Iowa’s early agriculture history.

“We have three working farm sites representing the indigenous Ioway in 1700, a pioneer family in 1850, and a farm family in the year 1900, We also have a recreated 1876 town of Walnut Hill,” Sedrel says. There are interactive activities at the farms. “At many of the sites they will meet historic interpreters who can explain what they’re doing and how people lived and work the land at that time,” she says. They recently broke ground to get the project underway. “Happily it does not interfere with guests touring the town or any of the farm sites. Once that building is done then we’ll be able to renovate the current visitor center, and we expect to hold a ribbon cutting for the whole new thing including a new picnic pavilion in 2026,” Sedrel says.

They’ve been raising six-point-two million dollars for the project, and Sedrel says they have hit 85 percent of that goal.

(Radio Iowa) – Officials with the Iowa chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association say they’re thrilled with the announcement of a highly-accurate blood test for the disease that’s now much closer to being widely available. Lauren Livingston, spokeswoman for the association in Iowa, says it would mean a significant shift to simpler, more accurate detection and diagnosis, potentially eliminating current methods that are expensive, invasive, and not always accessible.  “Having a blood test that is around 90% accurate to help identify Alzheimer’s disease is a huge breakthrough,” Livingston says. “We’re just so excited to hopefully, in the near future, see this test be available at the doctor’s office.”

The blood tests, once they’re confirmed and F-D-A-approved, could enhance recruitment for Alzheimer’s clinical trials and slash wait times for Alzheimer’s disease assessments, and treatments to slow the progress of the disease. “It would be so much more accessible for people to be able to get a blood test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease,” Livingston says, “versus right now, you can do a memory screening, but often you aren’t able to get an official diagnosis unless you have a test, like a PET scan, which is not available in a lot of rural areas in the state and it also can be very expensive.” The report was released Monday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, underway in Philadelphia.

The research suggests the blood test could revolutionize the accuracy of diagnosis and provide a cleaner, quicker path to research participation and treatment.  “In Iowa this year, in the legislature, there was a bill that was passed that ensures that all Iowa-funded health insurance does have to cover biomarker testing, like this blood test,” Livingston says, “so it would be covered by Iowa health insurance, so that’s very exciting, too.”

Alzheimer’s is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States. In Iowa, more than 62,000 people have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or dementia, and there are nearly 100,000 family and friends caring for their loved ones with the disease.

(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds says Iowa’s state-funded Education Savings Accounts for private school students are part of an education revolution happening across the country.  “(It’s) one of the proudest things I’ve done as governor to really work with the legislature and get that done,” Reynolds says, “and the impact that is going to have on our kids.”

Reynolds made her comments at the annual convention of the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, a conservative think thank that proposes bills for state legislatures. ALEC C-E-O Linda B. Nelson was on stage with Reynolds to discuss what Nelson calls universal education freedom. “You hear this word coming out of Silicon Valley — disrupting. ‘We’re going disrupt this, we’re going to disrupt that.’ I keep thinking the education system needs to be disrupted,” Nelson said. Reynolds replied: “Oh, very much so.” Nelson continued: “And universal (education) freedom is that disruption.”

Reynolds is now co-chair of the “Education Freedom Alliance,” an American Legislative Exchange Council effort to get state-funded education savings accounts set up in 25 states by 2025. Reynolds says an important part of the effort is advertising — like the radio and T-V ads that ran in Iowa back in 2023 before the Iowa legislature passed her proposal. “To really again provide cover for our lawmakers that are working hard,” Reynolds said, “…but you just stay strong, have the resolve to follow it through.”

After two years of failing to get enough Republicans in the legislature to back the concept, Governor Reynolds campaigned against Republican lawmakers who opposed her bill in 2022. “I didn’t take it lightly. I thought about it for a long time before I did it and I was not willing to give up on it,” Reynolds said. “I felt that strongly about it.”

Reynolds influence led to the defeat of four Republicans in G-O-P primaries in 2022 and school choice was her top priority as Reynolds won reelection that November with 58 percent of the vote. “Literally what we did really was we put education freedom on the ballot and I am telling you Iowans responded in a really strong way by large majorities,” Reynolds said.

The governor says her nearly 20 percent margin of victory in 2022 prompted her to abandon the more limited school choice proposals she’d made before. “I was sitting there thinking: ‘Where do we start?’ We started here and…I thought: ‘You know what? We’re going to go for it,'” Reynolds said. “‘We’re not going to get another opportunity like this.'”

The governor’s “Students First Act” was the first bill the Iowa legislature passed in 2023. Over 30-thousand private school students in Iowa have qualified for Education Savings Accounts this year. When fully implemented next fall, Iowa will be among eight states where all private school students are eligible for state funding to cover tuition and other expenses.

(UPDATED by Radio Iowa) – Union Pacific crews are cleaning up the site of a train derailment in Carroll County. A U-P spokesman says about 36 cars derailed last (Monday) night, some two miles east of Glidden. No injuries are reported and an investigation into the incident is underway. Rural Glidden resident Connie Bock says she and her husband have lived about a quarter-mile from the tracks for more than 40 years, so they’re used to hearing all different kinds of train noise, but this was something else entirely.

“We were just watching the Olympics and usually we’ve got a lot of semis and water trailers going by for spring. They make a lot of noise, but this noise kept going and getting louder and then we could feel it in the house,” Bock says. “I decided to go out and look and I came running in and I said, ‘Should I call the police? The train has derailed.'” Bock says the noise of the derailment persisted, lasting for over a minute.

Photo by the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office

“Our dogs started barking and they usually don’t bother with the trains too much,” she says, “but they barked at this.” The derailed cars were not carrying any hazardous materials, but that was not immediately apparent to the Bocks, so they were concerned. The focus now for Union Pacific is to get the mainline operational as quickly as possible. It is not clear how long that may take, but U-P typically has blocked lines up and running within a few days.

Atlantic, IA – The Southwest Iowa Housing Trust Fund (SWIHTF), a non-profit administered by Southwest Iowa Planning Council (SWIPCO), was recently awarded a $125,000 grant from the Iowa West Foundation for 2024, to be used for housing repairs. Officials says SWIPCO was able to leverage the grant funds along with other grant monies, to complete wide ranging housing repairs across the region.

As an example, projects completed in the past year have included a bathroom remodel and plumbing fix, new air conditioning unit and installation, and a foundation repair, just to name a few. Sixteen projects were completed in 2023 with Iowa West funds and SWIPCO has completed or is finishing 44 home repair projects from 2023 funding. The repairs are completed for income qualified recipients and can address both long term and urgent needs.

SWIPCO Community Development Director Erin Hudson described the importance of the funding, saying “Iowa West Foundation grants make immediate differences. They are owner centered, so SWIPCO places the needs of the homeowner first and foremost. We work with the homeowner and contractors to assure everything works out to everyone’s satisfaction. Iowa West Foundation monies assist SWIPCO to help in home repairs that we may not otherwise be able to accomplish.”

Photos of the completed bathroom project and of the resident; Cynthia Samuel in the updated room. (Photos & info. courtesy SWIPCO Communications Coordinator Chris Parks)

The mission of the Iowa West Foundation is to improve lives and strengthen communities for current and future generations. Partnerships with local casinos Ameristar, Harrah’s, and Horseshoe make it possible for the Foundation to continuously award outcome-focused grants in southwest Iowa communities. Fees from gaming and income from Foundation investments provide funding for programs and projects that benefit the residents of 14 counties in southwest Iowa.

SWIPCO is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.

(Radio Iowa) – The wet spring is expected to impact the pheasant population in some areas of the state, but D-N-R wildlife biologist Todd Bogenshutz says Iowa’s quail should be okay. “I’m getting pretty positive reports on quail and so it could be that our quail numbers will go up,” he says. “I mean you know we’re on the northern fringe of the range so winter really affects our quail numbers probably more than anything and it was a pretty mild winter.”

Bogenschutz says that’s due in part to their background. “You know quail actually are native to the state and so they’re more adapted to our climate here than peasants,” Bogenschutz says.

bobwhite quail

He’ll find out more about both quail and pheasants during the annual roadside counts in August.

(Radio Iowa) – Vice President Kamala Harris is making an Iowa law that took effect this (Monday) morning part of her campaign against former President Donald Trump. “Today Iowa put in place a Trump abortion ban, which makes Iowa the 22nd state in our country to have a Trump abortion ban,” Harris said in a campaign video, “and this ban is going to take effect before many women even know they’re pregnant.” Iowa’s law bans abortion after fetal activity can be detected, which is around the sixth week of a pregnancy.

“One in three women of reproductive age in America lives in a state with a Trump abortion ban,” Harris said, “so what we need to do is vote ’cause I’m going to tell you something, when I am president of the United States, I will sign into law the protections for reproductive freedom.”

Trump held a rally in Minnesota on Saturday and called Harris “an absolute radical on abortion.” Trump appointed three of the six U-S Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v Wade in 2022 and Trump has said the ruling leaves it up to states to decide abortion policy.

For the past 40 years, the G-O-P’s national platform had called for federal restrictions on abortion, but Trump’s campaign led development of the party platform for 2024 that says the abortion issue should be left to the states.