(Red Oak, Iowa) – Sheriff’s officials in Montgomery County report a man from Webster County was arrested Tuesday afternoon on two moving violations and a warrant for a Sex Offender Registry Violation. Authorities say 54-year-old Charles Andrew Richard Learned, of Fort Dodge, was arrested at around 1:25-p.m., Tuesday, in the 1600 block of Highway 71. Learned was charged with Speeding and Driving While Barred. He was also arrested on the Webster County warrant for Failure to Register as a Sex Offender/2nd Offense, and Probation Violation.

Learned was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $5,000 bond.

Charles Andrew Richard Learned (Montgomery CO. S/O photo)

(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds is likely to sign legislation that would limit participation in girls sports to students who have female marked on their birth certificate, but she’s withholding a definite answer until the bill reaches her desk.

“I said it’s a fairness issue last year and if it landed on my desk, depending on what it said, I would probably sign it, so I believe it is a fairness issue,” Reynolds says. “I believe if we don’t do something it does start to eliminate girls sports. That was set up for a reason way back when. I don’t know if we’re trying to erase history, once again, but it is a fairness issue.”

Nine other states have enacted laws that prevent transgender athletes who identify as female from competing in girls sports and similar legislation cleared a committee in the Iowa House Monday night. Critics of the bill say it discriminates against transgender girls and amounts to state-sanctioned bullying of kids who are at greater risk of depression and suicide. In April of last year, Reynolds said letting biological males who identify as females compete in volleyball, softball and other girls sports in Iowa is unfair and she repeated that message during a news conference yesterday (Tuesday).

“Girls have dreams and aspirations of earning a scholarship to help pay for college,” Reynolds says. “Girls have dreams and aspirations of one day, you know, competing in the Olympics.”

The bill allows girls to sue if they are harmed directly or indirectly by a school that allows transgender athletes to participate in girls sports. The leader of a national suicide prevention group for transgender youth says the legislation uses L-G-B-T-Q kids as political pawns and will lead to further isolation for a small group of students.

(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds is making another public pitch for her plan to establish 10-thousand state-funded accounts for parents who wish to send their kids to private schools.  “We’ve made a lot of concessions and compromises with the new bill that I put forward this year,” Reynolds says, “but we’re going to continue to work with legislators and listen and do what we can to get it across the finish line.”

The governor’s bill has yet to advance out of a legislative committee, but a Senate panel is likely to debate it this week. A key Republican, though, says the concept is stalled in the House. Reynolds says she’s not giving up. “I feel really good about it,” Reynolds says. “We are having a lot of conversations. We’re talking about what the bill actually does.”

Reynolds held a news conference at a private school in Des Moines to tout her plan for state scholarships to parents like Jessica Cashman, a single mother who’s sending her daughter to St. Theresa’s Catholic school. Cashman says she wants her daughter’s school to align with the values she’s teaching her at home. “The biggest factor is that I want to make sure I lay down a foundation…in my five-year-old child,” Cashman says. “Foundation to me is a love of God, education and country.”

Cashman has received private scholarship money to send her daughter to the school. According to the governor, 56 percent of the state’s budget is being spent on public schools and Reynolds says that’s money well spent for most, but not all families who’d be able to use the state-funded scholarships she hopes to create. “I believe with all my heart that this is going to raise all of our school districts across the state,” Reynolds says. “You know, competition does that.”

Charlotte James, a junior at Dowling Catholic High School in West Des Moines, says when she speaks with friends who don’t attend her school, they often wish for the experiences she’s having at Dowling. “By offering these scholarships to students, there’s more of an opportunity for those who want to push themselves and succeed,” she says.

The governor’s plan calls for depositing about 53-hundred dollars in state money in accounts for low and middle income parents who either move their child from a private to a public school or enroll their child in the kindergarten at a private school.