Bishop Heelan High School held its 2024 graduating class ceremony on Sunday, and the three public Sioux City high schools will now hold their commencements over the next three days.
Sioux City Community School District officials decided this year to move away from the tradition of holding all three commencements on the same day, as has been done since 2016.
All three will be held each evening at 7 p.m. at the Tyson Events Center, with North High School on Monday, West HIgh on Tuesday, and East High on Wednesday.
There were 120 students who graduated from Heelan, and the valedictorian was Renae Callaghan.
In other news, the wife of a Woodbury County elected official who was convicted of 52 counts of voter fraud has reported to prison.
Kim Phoung Taylor has reported to a federal facility in Waseca, Minnesota, according to a court filing last week by Taylor’s lawyer. That move comes as Taylor is still working to appeal her sentencing, which was announced on April 1 after her November conviction after a jury trial in Sioux City at the Federal Courthouse.
She is the wife of Woodbury County Board of Supervisors member Jeremy Taylor. Prosecutors said she pursued unlawful means to help her husband, who ran for two electoral positions as a Republican candidate in 2020.
The jury ruled Kim Taylor had illegally filled out election documents and ballots for members of the Vietnamese community, who had limited ability to read and understand English.
She was sentenced to a rare split sentence, with four months in prison, followed by four months home confinement, and followed by two years of supervised release.
Although three of the four other members of the Board of Supervisors have said Jeremy Taylor should resign, he remains on the board and plans to finish out his four-year term through December. County Board Chairman Matthew Ung has noted it is still possible for Taylor to be federally indicted related to the fraud.
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has recently finalized minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes.
The new rule requires nursing homes to provide about three and a half hours of nursing care per resident per day. It also requires them to have a registered nurse on duty at all times.
The new requirements will be phased in over the next five years.
John Hale is a consultant and advocate for older Iowans based in Ankeny. Hale applauds the new rule, saying the next step is to find ways to recruit more health care workers into nursing homes, including improved pay and benefits.
Brent Willett is the president and CEO of the Iowa Health Care Association, which represents the majority of Iowa’s nursing homes.
Willett says many nursing homes can’t meet the requirement, and that the federal government needs to allocate more resources to help address chronic staffing challenges.
In opening remarks of the 2024 Iowa legislative session, Republican leaders acknowledged nursing home staffing shortages. However, no legislation regarding that issue was passed over the four months that followed.
Additionally, nearly two-thirds of South Dakotans said Gov. Kristi Noem damaged her credibility in her recent book rollout, and nearly half said they have an unfavorable view of the second-term Republican. That’s according to a poll of 500 registered voters co-sponsored by South Dakota News Watch.
As for Noem’s bid to become former President Donald Trump’s vice-presidential nominee in 2024, nearly 60 percent of South Dakotans said she should not be chosen, including 55 percent of polled Republicans saying that.
The governor's favorability based on personal popularity was at 39 percent, down 13 points from a similar poll conducted in October 2020. Nearly half of respondents, or 48 percent, said they had an unfavorable opinion of Noem, which is double the number from 2020.
Nearly 6 in 10 of statewide poll respondents (58%) said they felt Noem’s shooting of an unruly family dog was not justified, compared to 38% who said it was justified. Among female respondents, 65% said the shooting was not justified, compared to 50% of males.
“No Going Back,” her second book, was published May 7.
Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy conducted the random survey May 10-13, several days after the governor cut short her book publicity tour and returned to South Dakota.
