The top two positions on the Sioux City School Board will be held for the next year by the same two board members as for the year just completed.
In a Monday meeting, the board members voted to continue having Jan George as board president and Treyla Lee as vice president. George said he wants to lead the board towards solid oversight of the Sioux City School District as employees aim to work collaboratively to educate 14,500 students.
As with the prior board meeting in early November, some community members used the meeting’s public forum portion to take issue with recent comments by board member Dan Greenwell, plus also Bob Michaelson.
Also in the meeting, the board members decided that 15 electric school buses will be added to the fleet that transports students. Those buses will cost $5.9 million from Hoglund Bus Company, of Minnesota.
To charge those buses, the board accepted the bid of $340,600 for 15 electric bus charging stations. A grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will nearly pay the full cost for the buses, which have a range of about 130 miles once charged.
*Additionally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has denied the request of Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds to send monthly boxes of food to low-income children over the summer instead of sending them money for food through the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer program.
A USDA official told the state that doesn’t fit the legal guidelines for using Summer EBT funding.
Anti-hunger advocates are now asking Reynolds to join Summer EBT for 2025. It would send $120 per child to low-income families to buy groceries. The funding would benefit an estimated 240,000 Iowa kids.
Reynolds says she’ll continue to push her food box proposal after President-Elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
The Iowa Hunger Coalition is asking Iowans to call the governor’s office to advocate for Summer EBT before the January first deadline to notify the USDA. Iowa Hunger Coalition Chairman Luke Elzinga says he’d be surprised Reynolds proposal gets approved, since the state is asking to waive 29 separate pieces of federal code.
*Political pollster Ann Selzer says she is still studying why her poll showed Kamala Harris leading in Iowa in the race for president before Donald Trump won the state by 13 points.
Selzer became known for outlier polls that turned out to be accurate, such as when her poll predicted strong support for Barack Obama in the 2008 Iowa Caucuses.
Selzer said she objects to President-Elect Trump and other high-ranking Republicans claiming without evidence that she tilted the results in the Democratic candidate’s favor.
Selzer said the poll was based on the same method that accurately showed Trump leading among Iowa voters in both 2016 and 2020.
“There was no reason to make an adjustment because my method, I think, had always been sort of the superstar behind my ability to let my data show me what the future electorate was going to look like,” Seltzer said.
After the election, Selzer announced she will no longer conduct the Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, which gave her the reputation as one of the most accurate pollsters in the country.
Selzer says what she calls a “spectacular miss” in 2024 may have sped up the timing of the announcement, but she had been planning for years to leave political polling.
*In other news, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has announced new mandatory annual training for state employees.
Noem added that piece through an executive order Monday, in the wake of fake titling schemes by former state employees in the Department of Motor Vehicles that was unearthed by the Attorney General.
Those titles were allegedly used to secure loans.
In a release, the governor's office said the trainings will center on public trust, internal controls, conflict of interest and a service-oriented mindset.
Noem said, “We are taking enhanced measures to strengthen the fortitude of our financial infrastructure and make sure that we are taking care of taxpayer dollars. And we will guarantee that state employees are responsible stewards for the people that they serve.”
A legislative panel recently approved subpoenas to compel the leaders of the departments of revenue and motor vehicles to testify about new internal controls to detect fraud.
