Winners

Public education not only is important, it accounts for more than half of the state’s general fund budget each year, which also affects property owners. So it was nice to see that in addition to salary increases for teachers that lawmakers like Rep. Roger Wendt of Sioux City, chairman of the House Education Committee, set allowable growth for the 2008-09 school year at four percent, which translates into an additional $107 million for K-12 state aid and $28 million for property taxes for 2009. At that spending level, the state cost per student will increase $213 from $5,333 to $5,546. Consider it a down payment on the future of this state with some tax relief on the side.

Speaking of investing in public education, it’s good to see the Des Moines School Board provide the public with opportunities to voice their opinions about their children’s education as they help the board shape its strategic planning process through a series of 10 community forums through June 14. The forums allow parents, students, teachers and taxpayers to openly discuss a variety of issues without having to worry about backroom politics or agendas. Afterwards, it’s up to the board to implement some of the best ideas the public offers not only for the betterment of the children and the community, but to start restoring some public faith following a series of questionable policies and bad publicity.

Whether a chaplain has a place in a locker room at a public university — regardless of who is paying for his services — Iowa State University athletic director Jamie Pollard is getting exactly what he wants with his latest publicity stunt: some much-needed national attention to ISU’s struggling football program. First, Pollard cuts off the sales of single-game tickets to the Iowa-ISU rivalry game. Now he’s generating headlines as he and football coach Gene Chizik consider adding a full-time chaplain to the Cyclone football staff. So before you weigh in with your opinion, remember, just the fact that you’re talking about the issue is a victory for Pollard. Generating publicity (meaningful or hollow) might help sell a few season tickets, but if the team doesn’t win games, Pollard’s public relations stunts might garner headlines of another kind.

Losers

Having already lost customers to rival stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, it seems Sears has alienated Des Moines police officers as another group of potential shoppers after a manager of the Sears store at Merle Hay Mall asked two cops (one uniformed, the other not) to leave the store in two separate instances. Apparently the manager felt the officers’ presence deterred the store’s ability to catch shoplifters, saying the cops made the shoplifters nervous. And that’s a bad thing? Let’s see, who does the Sears security team call when they want a shoplifter arrested?

The folks at Sears, however, should be grateful they don’t have to call on Carlisle police officer Matt Koch. The 20-year-old cop was charged by Indianola officials with being a minor in possession of alcohol and being in a business that serves alcohol while under the age of 21. Koch was suspended for four days without pay, pleaded guilty and received a deferred judgment. The Carlisle City Council will address Koch’s status as a city employee at its next meeting June 11.

It’s not very often Iowa makes the top five in anything when it comes to national trends. Unfortunately, that’s the dubious honor — though through no fault of our own — bestowed upon our lovely state when Iowa recently ranked fourth in the nation behind Nebraska, Wisconsin and Kansas in a study charting the probability of tornadic occurrences in the 20 most tornado-prone states during June. The rankings are based on National Weather Service data from 1950 to 2005. According to the study, the average fraction of land area within our borders disturbed by tornadoes during June for that 56-year period is 0.00759 percent. So play the odds and sleep well this month.

It seems our rural cousins are losing ground to we urbanites in the population race. In case you didn’t notice last week (we didn’t) May 23 represented a major demographic shift according to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia: For the first time since humans began tracking such things, the earth’s population has become more urban than rural. Working with United Nations estimates that predict the world will be 51.3 percent urban by 2010, the researchers projected that May 23 was the transition day based on average daily urban and rural population increases from 2005 to 2010. On that day, they estimate, the global urban population of 3,303,992,253 exceeded that of 3,303,866,404 global rural people. Sadly, such news is no surprise to we Iowans who since the farm crisis of the 1980s have already seen shifts in population from rural to urban settings as people move to larger cities to find work. CV

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