Posted February 22, 2022in Stray Thoughts
There has been a lot of talk lately about why Iowa’s K-12 school districts need to be more transparent, and more accessible and more accountable, to parents and the rest of the tax-paying people of Iowa. That is the justification offered for a bulging backpack full of bills introduced in
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Posted February 08, 2022in Stray Thoughts
I’m confused, and I have a hunch I am not the only one. Are government mandates a bad thing — or are they good? My confusion comes because I hear what leaders in the Iowa Legislature and Gov. Kim Reynolds have said for months. It certainly seems as if, to
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Posted February 03, 2022in Stray Thoughts
A seat at the table. Iowa Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver provided that succinct explanation last week of what his fellow Republicans are looking to provide to Iowa parents as the state’s K-12 school districts wrestle with a host of controversies. His colleague, Senate president Jake Chapman, set the tone
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Posted January 18, 2022in Stray Thoughts
I stumbled across a statistical tidbit the other day that probably will surprise many people. U.S. Census Bureau figures show that between 1900 and 2000, the state that grew the least in population, on a percentage basis, was Iowa. Read that again. No state had smaller population growth between 1900
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Posted January 10, 2022in Stray Thoughts
Typically, in the days leading up to the start of a new session of the Iowa Legislature, the attention is on lawmakers’ goals and priorities — and on the pledges they make to work together for the good of the people of Iowa. This year, however, Republican leaders who control
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Posted January 03, 2022in Stray Thoughts
Something came out of Colorado last week besides images of the destruction from a rapidly developing wildfire that roared through the area between Denver and Boulder.The fires consumed upwards of 1,000 homes in the suburban subdivisions of the Rockies’ eastern foothills in just a few hours.Besides the stunning devastation, the
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Posted December 27, 2021in Stray Thoughts
Minnesota and its government officials delivered an important lesson recently on how to provide justice — and their lesson should be taken to heart by their neighbors in Iowa.The contrast is jarring between the way government handled the deaths of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minn., and Autumn Steele in
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Posted December 20, 2021in Stray Thoughts
When I walked out the door at the Des Moines Register for the final time on Dec. 12, 2014, there was an unfinished piece of work tucked away in a box of assorted stuff I carried. The folder contained a few dozen newspaper clippings, press releases and notes to myself
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Posted December 13, 2021in Stray Thoughts
The past couple of years have been challenging for Iowa’s 327 public school districts.Parents have become very engaged with their schools — and enraged, too, at times. This has revolved around masks and vaccines, what is being taught or not taught, the content of library books, and an assortment of
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Posted December 09, 2021in Stray Thoughts
The death Sunday of Robert Dole was a potent reminder of what we have lost as a nation. Another member of the Greatest Generation has left us — another of those Depression-era kids who came together to save democracy in the dark days of World War II. The career of
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