Sioux City School District officials have set a change for the graduation ceremonies for the three public high schools, as they will be held on three separate days.
The commencement events will all be held at the Tyson Events Center, as has been the case for many years. The three ceremonies have been held on the same Saturday recently, which made for a very full day.
Now, they will all begin at 7 p.m., with North High School going first on May 20, West High on May 21, and East High on May 22, according to the district website. No tickets are necessary for members of the public who may wish to attend the graduations.
In other news, a show of solidarity is expected to take place Friday for a western Iowa trucker whose body was found in a field last month.
Mitchel Riesgraf is the Iowa Chairman of CDL Drivers Unlimited. He organized “The Convoy for Truth: A David Schultz Memorial.”
Truckers plan to drive a continuous loop along Highway 20 from Early to Rockwell City for five hours starting at 3 p.m. That’s a roundtrip trek of about 50 miles and is part of the route last taken by Schultz when he disappeared in late November.
“This convoy is to add pressure that people want answers. There's been a lot of rise around this subject and around David Schultz case. We just hope that people actually care about the men and women that serve this country and keep everything supplied so we all can live nice lives," Riesgraf said.
Schulyz disappeared before Thanksgiving, and his remains were found in a field in Sac County five months later, more than a mile from his abandoned semi filled with pigs.
Schultz’s family says a second autopsy is planned after his funeral on Friday morning in his hometown of Wall Lake.
Authorities say a preliminary autopsy indicated no foul play in his death, although final results haven’t been released yet.
In other news, Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit Thursday to block enforcement of a new Iowa law that would let state officials arrest and deport immigrants who are in Iowa after previously being deported or denied entry to the country.
The law is supposed to take effect July first, but the groups are asking a federal court to permanently bar Iowa officials from enforcing it.
The Association of Civil Liberties Union and the American Immigration Council filed the lawsuit on behalf of Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice.
Those groups say the law violates the U.S. Constitution because only the federal government has the authority to enforce immigration laws. They also contend it would allow Iowa immigrants with legal status to be arrested and deported.
The U.S. Department of Justice is also expected to sue the state to block the law from taking effect. Republican Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has said she signed the bill into law because “the Biden Administration refuses to enforce the laws already on the books.”
Additionally, Governor Reynolds has signed a bill into law that would extend postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to one year.
Iowa is one of the last states to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage benefits to up to a year after someone gives birth.
In a statement, Reynolds called the new law a pro-family measure that sets new families on a path to prosperity.
However, the new law lowers Iowa’s income eligibility cutoff for pregnant people to get on Medicaid, from 375 percent of the federal poverty level, down to 215 percent.
Democrats and family policy advocates have criticized this change, because the new income limit means an estimated 1,700 Iowa moms and babies each month will no longer qualify for Medicaid coverage.
