In today’s hyper-partisan, emotion-fueled political environment, where policy proposals are seemingly presented and defended with facile slogans and tribal appeals, how can any citizen differentiate between the truly good and beneficial ones and those that either...
We need a robust, highly skilled workforce in STEM to support the influx of major infrastructure projects cropping up across the country. The way to fix this is by starting at the high school level.
Rep. Chuck Isenhart (D-Dubuque) can already see the writing on the wall for Iowa’s Area Education Agencies (AEAs), after Thursday’s Iowa House vote to move forward in implementing large-scale changes to the agencies. During the House debate on its amended AEA bill,...
Rep. Molly Buck (D-Ankeny), who is also a teacher, summed up her thoughts on Iowa House Republicans' bill to arm school staff as a way to deter school shootings. “When I think about how my classroom is arranged, if I am carrying a gun and there’s a threat at the door,...
She grew up in Ames and went to the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) in Cedar Falls to become a teacher. But Lydia plans to leave Iowa as soon as she graduates. "Here at UNI, there's so much emphasis in our classes on social-emotional learning and inclusion and...
Stacey Warren was one of the first people on the scene of the Perry High School shooting on Jan. 4, but she’s not a first responder: She’s a social worker for the Heartland Iowa Area Education Association (AEA). “I went to Perry and we were there before 10 a.m. and we...
I love my local public library. Lots of people use our libraries regularly, whether to check out books and movies, use the internet, or make copies of important documents. Iowa’s small-town public libraries are anchor institutions. They make our lives so much richer....
Teachers or school staff members would be allowed to use a personal firearm and the identities of armed staffers would be concealed—per a suggestion from the NRA—under a new bill being considered in the Iowa House. These and other changes were clarified during a...
Iowa House Republicans' solution to prevent more students from being shot in Iowa schools in the wake of Perry is to bring more guns into the schools, which includes arming teachers and other staff members. “The scariest place to be in America, I believe, is in a...
On Jan. 4, a 17-year-old Perry High School student killed one sixth-grader and injured five others before killing himself. In response to school shootings, Siouxland Christian School in Sioux City has decided to train and arm school staff members. However, to the...
