Four Iowa nursing homes, including one in Sioux City and one in Sergeant Bluff, have been added to the federal list of the nation’s worst care facilities, according to the Sioux City Journal. They are Westwood Specialty Care in Sioux City and Embassy Rehab and Care Center in Sgt. Bluff.
The homes are eligible for inclusion on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ national list of Special-Focus Facilities. They join six other Iowa care facilities already deemed eligible for inclusion on the periodic list of nursing homes that have recurring quality-of-care problems.
Sioux City and four other Iowa public school districts have been named in a federal lawsuit. The suit challenges a state law placing restrictions on LGBTQ+ students and school materials, reports the Sioux City Journal.
School districts in Sioux City, Iowa City, Urbandale, Waterloo and West Des Moines are named as plaintiffs.
Superintendents and school boards from each district are also named as acting in their official capacities. Sioux City superintendent Rod Earleywine and all seven current school board members -- Dan Greenwell, Lance Ehmcke, Jan George, Treyla Lee, John Meyers, Bob Michaelson and Earl Miller -- were named as defendants.
Ehmcke, Lee, Meyers and Miller just took their oaths of office Monday, following their election in the Nov. 7 general election.
An unidentified Sioux City North student, listed as James Doe, is one of seven students who are plaintiffs in the suit.
Iowa Senate File 496, known by critics as the "don't say gay" law, prohibits the instruction of gender identity and sexual orientation through sixth grade, prohibits books with descriptions of sex acts and requires parental notification when a K-12 student wants to be referred to by a different pronoun or name in school.
Sioux City Transit System (SCTS) is meeting the needs of visually impaired and blind transit riders by offering bus route schedules in braille. The city announced today that SCTS recently partnered with Braille Coordinator Jerry L Cole Jr. at the Instructional Materials Center (IMC) for the Iowa Department for the Blind to create the bus route schedules in list format using braille.
Schedules are available at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Ground Transportation Center, 509 Nebraska Street.
