(Elk Horn, Iowa) – The Exira-Elk Horn/Kimballton School District’s Board of Education will hold their regular, monthly meeting on Monday, Nov. 25th (2024), beginning at 6:30-p.m. Their session takes place in the Exira-EHK Conference Room inside the High School. The meeting agenda can be see below:

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) — Compared to this time last year, traffic deaths in Iowa are now on the decline, and the Iowa State Patrol wants that trend to continue.

So far, there have been 308 traffic fatalities in the state of Iowa. Last year during the week of Thanksgiving, 34 people were either seriously injured or killed in a car crash, and 40 percent of those were not wearing seat belts. The Iowa State Patrol has now come up with a theme to try and help minimize potential accidents from occurring: “S.I.D.E.”

“S, Seat belt; I, Impaired driving; D, Distracted driving; E, Excessive speed,” trooper Jay Kirkpatrick said. “If we can wear our seat belt, if we can slow down, if we can give ourselves more time, if we can take away distractions, whether that be a phone or dogs in the car or animals or kids or whatever. Whatever the distraction is, if we can remove that, we’re gonna save lives.”

Trooper Kirkpatrick also added to avoid using cruise control when it’s snowing or icy to keep your car from spinning out of control. A reminder also, the Iowa Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau (GTSB) is partnering with law enforcement across Iowa to promote road safety during the Thanksgiving holiday season. Now through December 1, drivers can expect to see increased law enforcement on our roads. The State Patrol advises motorists to “Please buckle up, slow down, and drive sober!”

The Iowa Department of Transportation reports road construction is not expected to cause any delays for those heading to Grandma’s house. Brian Worrel, of the Iowa DOT Workzone Operations says construction weather was good this past summer, but was slowed a little by rains this fall. While he expects an uptick in the amount of traffic  volume over the holiday travel period, those construction  zones shouldn’t have any more of an impact than it did over the summer, and they’re hoping to get motorists through those zones as safely as possible.

The DOT provides road information on its Iowa 511 website.

NEW YORK — With the holidays comes festive feasts, and those often feature turkey. However, cooking a whole turkey isn’t the easiest thing in the world, as proven by the popularity of the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line.

Since 1981, turkey company Butterball has offered a hotline for home chefs to call and ask experts for advice as they prepare their turkeys. Over the years, they’ve answered millions of questions and have expanded beyond just a phone line to accepting queries over text, email and social media as well.

According to Butterball, the most common question they receive is when and how to thaw a turkey. This year, the hotline will be open from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 and staffed by more than 50 experts, reachable via call at 1-800-BUTTERBALL or text at 844-877-3456.

They’re even open on Thanksgiving Day, fielding questions from across the country. Butterball shared that last Thanksgiving, the state they received the most calls from was California, and the top city was New York City, followed by Chicago and Nassau, New York.

Check out the maps below to see the 10 cities and states that made the most calls last year.

Millions of Americans will cook and eat turkeys, and many will opt to get frozen turkeys so they can finish their grocery shopping ahead of time. Here are the safest ways to thaw your frozen birds, according to experts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Butterball.

Norman Rockwell, Freedom From Want (1943). Norman Rockwell Museum Collections.

(Des Moines, Iowqa)  – A new committee established by Iowa House Republicans will a conduct “comprehensive review” of Iowa’s higher education system, curriculum and administrative costs, the new chairman says, but the panel is sparking some concerns among students and faculty members. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports Representative Taylor Collins, a Republican from Mediapolis, will lead the new committee announced this week by House Speaker Pat Grassley. Leaders from organizations at state universities said their institutions already have a tremendous impact, and shared concerns that certain changes could hurt students, the universities themselves and the workforce.

Collins said he is grateful to be able to lead the committee in its “holistic review” of Iowa’s higher education system, looking at how colleges and universities handle state dollars and what they’re doing for Iowa’s workforce needs.

Rep. Taylor Collins (left) will chair a new committee on higher education in the Iowa House of Representatives. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

“I think that a review, a comprehensive review, of our higher education system is long overdue,” Collins said. “And it’s important that … these institutions that spend billions of dollars each year, not only Iowa taxpayer dollars but also tuition revenue that is given to them by Iowa students and taxpayers, that they are operating as efficiently as possible, and that they are preparing Iowa’s workforce.”

The committee will also work to ensure that Iowa’s universities are “mission-focused” and that they aren’t using tax dollars without oversight, Collins said.

Iowa’s state universities are overseen by the Board of Regents, with nine members appointed by the governor.