(Radio Iowa) – A legislative committee has approved emergency rules that will let Iowa school districts continue to use paraeducators hired to work with individual students as substitute teachers in any classroom. The action was necessary as the governor’s public health emergency proclamation which had allowed paraeducators to be subs during the pandemic expires at midnight. The committee is also proposing legislation directing schools to make a good faith effort to find substitute teachers and ending the policy after this school year is over. Representative Megan Jones, a Republican from Sioux Rapids, is the bill’s sponsor. “We don’t want enterprising folks thinking that we should put less qualified people into a classroom and use a para because we can pay them $12 an hour,” Jones says.

Jones also blasted the Board of Educational Examiners for holding a meeting yesterday (Monday) at 7:30 a.m. to reveal its solution to the problem, as that limited the public’s ability to review the regulations that already have been approved 24 hours later. “This process has been very ugly,” Jones said. “…It makes me sick to think of eliminating all of this public notice.”
The executive director of the Board of Educational Examiners says state officials do not know how many paraeducators are employed in Iowa schools. The board’s emergency rule requires schools to ask for waivers when paraeducators are taken away from their main jobs to substitute teach in another classroom. Emily Piper, of the Iowa Association of School Boards, says that’s important “We do share concerns about this being a permanent soluation,” Piper says. “We don’t think this is the answer, long-term, to our sub shortages.”

Melissa Peterson, a lobbyist for the Iowa State Education Association, says there are paraeducator shortages as well.  “These are folks who provide services to some of our most needy and vulnerable students,” Peterson says. Senator Rob Hogg, a Democrat from Cedar Rapids, blasted the governor for letting her public health emergency expire and creating this dilemma in schools that required this scramble to ensure paraeducators can continue to be assigned to substitute teach tomorrow (Wednesday). “This is the failure of the governor’s office to put us in this position. That has to be said today,” Hogg says. “This was totally foreseeable that something like this would happen.”

Hogg’s wife is the media secretary at a Cedar Rapids school, but she’s also a former paraeducator and Hogg says she’s often been assigned to lead a classroom as a substitute teacher over the past two years.

Sheriff’s officials in Union County report a man from Corning became impatient while waiting on a train, and decided to turn into a parking lot. Due to sun glare on his windshield, Lawrence W. Stedman didn’t see a large rock. His vehicle struck the rock and become “high centered” on the rock. There was no damage to the vehicle or rock. The accident happened at around 4-p.m.

Authorities say Monday evening, 38-year-old Alicia Ellen Lovell, of Creston, was driving a 2022 Toyota Camry southbound on Elm Street near Clark Street, in Creston, when according to Lovell, she fell asleep. When her car struck a curb, the woman over-corrected and accelerated into a stop light and power pole. There were no injuries or citations. Damage to the car was estimated at $7,500. The poles sustained an estimated $2,000 damage each.

(Radio Iowa) – An invasive moth that can eat away the leaves of trees has so far been held in check in Iowa. The D-N-R’s Tivon Feeley, monitors the gypsy moth — which is now known as the spongy month. “We’ve caught a few captures statewide this past year, but they are pretty low in number, and mainly in northeast Iowa. If we look back over the years, we’ve had to do some controls to kind of keep those populations at bay — and those have been very successful,” according to Feeley.

He is the D-N-R’s forest health program leader, and says there’s a concern about the population of spongy moths in Wisconsin and Illinois. “What we’re looking at here is how to keep those from spreading over and how to slow that spread down. And that’s what we work on. So we do trap and monitor where they are at,” he says.”We use a technique called mating disruption to prevent them from spreading as quickly. And that’s when you go out to the forest and spray the scent of the female — the pheromone out into the forest — and then they can’t find each other to mate.”

He says they can quickly impact trees. “The caterpillars defoliate trees — they prefer oaks — but there are over 300 species of trees that they will feed off of. The months lay their eggs –hence the name spongy, they look a little spongy — on just about everything from underneath your tire on your R-V, to your boats, you name it,” Feeley says. He says you can help prevent their spread by looking for their eggs if you are in other states. Feeley says they have traps set up to keep an eye on the spongy moth movement. He says they have some 18-hundred delta traps that look like green and orange triangles in nine northeast Iowa counties “It has the scent of the females inside, and when the moth flies by, the male moth gets stuck in there. And that helps us monitor their populations,” Feeley says.

He says Iowa doesn’t have any spongy moth treatments set for this year, but there is one across the river in Wisconsin.

The Creston (IA) Police Department reports 34-year-old Amanda Lea Thompson, of Creston, was arrested Monday night at her residence. Thompson was charged with Domestic Abuse Assault with a Dangerous Weapon. She was transported to the Union County Jail and then onto the Adams County Jail. She was being held without bond pending an appearance before the magistrate.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – There’s some good news with regard to COVID-19 data in Iowa. Officials with Iowa Department of Public Health, Monday, said on the COVID-19 dashboard, the numbers continue their retreat from the last several weeks. In fact, every key metric has improved in the last week. IDPH reports 8,370 positive virus tests in the last seven days, down from 10,032 on Friday. The state’s 14-day positivity rate has dropped from 13.9% to 12.4%.

The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 has fallen precipitously, down from 587 on Friday to 463, the lowest total in 2022. Of those hospitalized with COVID-19, 53,7% are unvaccinated, while 67.4% of those listed in intensive care with the virus are unvaccinated. Of those hospitalized with COVID-19, 47% had a primary diagnosis, while 53% were hospitalized for another reason, but tested positive. The number of long-term care facilities reporting an outbreak in Iowa dropped from 114 to 106.

There have been 4,886,063 vaccine doses administered in Iowa, with 71.5% of those 18 and older fully vaccinated and 76.2% of those 12 and older with at least one dose. The Iowa Department of Public Health is no longer providing three weekly updates on the COVID-19 dashboard. The state will instead offer weekly data updates.