The Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office reports an inmate at the jail was assaulted by another inmate today, at around 5:15-a.m. 24-year old Jerrell Scott Tyndall was charged with Assault without intent/causing serious bodily injury. His victim was 51-year old Johnny Joe Tangeman, who was being held in the jail for violation of a no contact order and violation of probation.

A 26-year old woman was arrested a little after 9-p.m. Thursday, in Council Bluffs. Authorities say Ysabel Anne Yrigoyen was arrested for Public Intoxication. Two men were arrested Thursday afternoon following a traffic stop, in Walnut. The Pott. County Sheriff’s Office reports the driver, 36-year old Jason Mitchell Fulk was arrested for Driving While License Suspended or revoked, but not before he put a GMC Yukon in park in a driveway and took off on foot. His son, 21-year old Kolby Austin Fulk was arrested at the residence for Interference with Official Acts.

And, 52-year old Shad Lee McCurley was arrested late Thursday morning in Council Bluffs, on a warrant for Possession of Drug Paraphernalia and Violation of Probation. There were also three persons being held at other jail facilities, who were transported to the Pott. County Jail, Thursday, to address various warrants.

The Taylor County Sheriff’s Office reports Deputies arrested three people on drug charges, following the search of a vehicle in Bedford, Thursday.  Taken into custody for Possession of a Controlled Substance and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, was: 26-year old Skyler Ledford, of St Joseph, Missouri; 26-year old Kaela Page, of Bedford, and 19-year old Trace Matheny, of Clarinda. In addition to the drug charges, Ledford was cited for being in possession of an open container as a passenger in a vehicle. All three subjects were released on a promise to appear in court.

(Radio Iowa) — Whether you’re shopping for clothes for yourself or for your kids heading back to school, Iowans can save a nice chunk of change with this weekend’s annual Sales Tax Holiday. John Fuller, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Revenue, says the taxes will be eliminated on qualifying purchases all day today (Friday) and Saturday.  “Generally, if you can wear it, clothing or footwear that’s under $100 would be tax free,” Fuller says. “Tax in Iowa is 6% and if there’s a local option sales tax, that’s an additional 1%, so it could be 7%.”

Fuller says there are a few restrictions. “Watches, jewelry, Rollerblades, those are not considered clothing by this law,” Fuller says. “The best thing to do for your listeners might be to go to tax.iowa.gov and there’s information more specifically on what is and what is not taxable.” The tax-free “weekend” is only today (Friday) and Saturday and does not apply on Sunday. Fuller says many people ask why Sunday isn’t included. “That would require a law change,” Fuller says. “The Iowa legislature would have to take that up to add an extra day.”

The two-day sales tax holiday has been held in Iowa the first Friday and Saturday of August each year for nearly 20 years.

More info. at https://tax.iowa.gov/iowas-annual-sales-tax-holiday

(Radio Iowa) — The State Board of Education Thursday voted down proposed new rules for using restraints and seclusion rooms for students in a procedural move to allow them to make changes. There are still concerns about how to determine if behavior is serious enough to warrant punishment, how big seclusion rooms should be, and how long it should take to notify parents of the punishment. The board decided to vote down the rules so they can hold some more meeting statewide for input, and then make changes and allow for another public input period before final adoption. The board heard public comments before the vote, including those from Winterset Superintendent Susie Meade of Winterset, who favored keeping things the way they are. “I hear this from all of my colleagues from throughout the state. Folks, this is an epidemic and we need to be providing teachers with tools to support students — not limiting the few resources we have available to assist students when they are struggling to regulate their behaviors, dealing with mental heal…or dealing with the impact of trauma,” Meade says.

Meade says the manual for such issues used to be a half-inch thick and now it is 60 pages long. “What makes me really sad is we have fewer outside resources to support our students than we had 20 years ago — yet many more expectations and regulations,” according to Meade. A-C-L-U lawyer, Daniel Zeno, says his group and others pushed for changes and he wants to see them move forward.”And the reason is because we know this happens to kids in schools in Iowa. And it happens disproportionately to black kids and to kids with disabilities,” Zeno says. “The point of the petition was to reduce the use of the rooms.”  He says the rules don’t take anything away from teachers. “The rules do not completely ban them. They are still allowed to be used — they just are limited. And we think that is a good thing,” Zeno says. “It is a traumatic experience for a kid to be put in what is essentially solitary confinement.”

Zeno had a few suggestions for changes to some of the wording the proposed rules. Department of Ed Deputy Director Dave Tilly says they did their best to improve the rules — but says each district is different and there’s not a single solution. “It depends on the facts of the situation and we’re covering such a wide potential waterfront of behaviors that the challenge is writing rules that in fact address those and but leave to the good judgment of the practitioners, decisions they have to make,” Tilly says. He leads the Division of Learning and Results and says they can go out across the state and hear from more people on the changes. “We’ve already spent two years working on these rules, and I don’t anticipate there will every be a place where we will come where everyone will fully agree,” Tilly says, “but our intent here given the importance of these is to get them right.” Tilly says.

Department of Education lawyer, Nicole Proesch says everyone has worked hard to come up with the revised rules. “It was all respectful, and even though we didn’t come to a complete consensus — as you can see from the public comment — there are people on all sides of the issue. The department really did try to come down to a compromise,” Proesch says.

Proesch says the Board of Education had to take the action it did to be able to revisit the rules and revise them without starting over again. They will now look at moving forward with the changes and the added public input process.