(Radio Iowa) Governor Kim Reynolds has named an eastern Iowa native who’s been a leader in the national school choice movement to be the next director of the Iowa Department of Education.

Chad Aldis is a 1990 graduate of Clinton High School. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he worked for Florida legislators, then as an administrator in the Florida Department of Education. Aldis then moved to Ohio and was executive director of School Choice Ohio for nearly four years. For the past nine-and-a-half years, he’s been with a national think tank that advocates for charter schools and the kind of state funded savings accounts for private school expenses that Iowa’s governor recently signed into law.

Governor Reynolds says this is a pivotal time for Iowa’s education system and Aldis will help lead reform efforts. Aldis says he shares the governor’s vision and will focus on ensuring all students leave high school with the knowledge and skills to prepare them for college or a career.

Aldis earned a degree in economics from the University of Mississippi and a law degree from Florida State University. Aldis is replacing Ann Lebo who announced recently she was resigning as Iowa Department of Education director after nearly three years in the position. His first day on the job is March 15th.

(Radio Iowa) After a nearly two and a half hour debate, the Iowa House has given final approval to a bill that would ban Iowa doctors and therapists from providing gender transition care to minors. All Senate Republicans voted for the bill Tuesday night and on Wednesday, 58 of the 64 Republicans in the House backed it. Republican Representative Steven Holt of Denison says there are grave doubts about having children undergo these life-altering procedures.

Holt says children are unable to give informed consent to these kind of procedures.

Representative Jeff Shipley of Fairfield, a Republican who voted for the bill, says the expectation should be health not harm.

Five Republicans and all House Democrats voted against the bill. Representative Ross Wilburn, a Democrat from Ames, told his colleagues he’s the father of a son who completed his gender transition at the age of 21.

Representative Chad Ingels of Randalia was one of the Republicans who voted against the bill says choosing to focus on one extremely small group in the state with this and other bills is not what the majority of Iowans want.

Representative Brian Lohse (LOH-see) of Bondurant, another Republican opponent of the bill, says parents should be free to make these decisions for their kids.

A similar law passed in Arkansas in 2021 was immediately challenged in court and has never taken effect as the case has not been resolved.

(Radio Iowa) – The 38-hundred nurses and other healthcare professionals at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics have overwhelmingly approved a new contract. They are members of S-E-I-U Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa and had reached a tentative agreement the last week of February.

Information from S-E-I-U says the contract includes a six percent increase across the board for existing employees and three percent each year.