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Coe softball team heads to New Jersey

May 13, 2009 By

The Coe College softball team is headed to New Jersey for an appearance in the NCAA division three softball championship. The Kohawks open the eight-team double elimination tournament on Friday night against Salisbury University.

Coe advanced by winning a regional in Bloomington, Illinois. Coe coach Bob Timmons says they are finsihed iwth finals and that will make things easier now. It is the second time in four years the Kohawks have qualified for the national tournament.

Timmons says they have three seniors who went to the World Series three years ago and have been telling the others how much fun it is.

Timmons says playing in a tough conference has helped prepare his team for national competition. He says the competition will be very strong in the regional. He says the team stepped up in the conference tournament and he expects them to do the same here.

Coe is 38-11 on the season. 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With:

Legislators discuss new standards for deaf interpreters in schools

May 13, 2009 By

Iowa school districts may be facing a problem this fall when it comes to providing interpreters for hearing-impaired students. Some of the interpreters who accompany deaf children in the classroom have failed to meet new state standards and could be losing their jobs.

The interpreters and some parents of the kids made their case to the legislature’s administrative rules review committee today. Mike Van Sant of Sully has a son in sixth grade and a daughter in third grade who have always had the same interpreter in the Lynnville-Sully school district.

“Our two have been with our kids since they started kindergarten or before. Both our children are A and B students, they are thriving, they are excelling, they don’t have any trouble falling behind,” Van Sant says.

But the Van Sants interpreters haven’t met new accreditation standards which go into effect July 1st. The Van Sants parents are unhappy that their children may have to switch interpreters, and the rural district may not even be able to find someone else. Regulators say the standards ensure that all deaf kids get the best possible education.

Kathryn Bauman-Reese of the Deaf Services Commission of Iowa says the state began licensing interpreters in 2005 and temporary license holders were given a two-year grace period in 2007 to get accredited.

Bauman-Reese says,” “Ultimately the commission feels that those who are practicing with a temporary license have had four years to meet those minimum standards. Without a competent interpreter whatever the teacher is teaching won’t get to the student.”

Regulators say research shows that those who score at the new Iowa standard are 40 to 60% accurate in the classroom. They say with results like that they can’t justify accepting a lower score. But interpreters like Penny Bowers who’ve been working in schools for years have found the new standards a hard to meet.

Bowers says, “I live in Pella,Iowa. The distance to get continuing education units is very far and they are expensive. The test itself is $250. I did take my first test last spring.” Bowers fell short of the required score on the test. Bowers says her method of school interpreting isn’t adequately measured by the exam.

But, Bauman-Reese says the new standards assesses numerous classroom approaches. “Would we accept a teacher in the classroom without meeting minimum standards?,” she says,”Would we allow them to practice for four years and beyond that? Basically that’s what we’re talking about.”

A solution may be forthcoming through the intervention of Governor Culver’s legal counsel Jim Larew, who says he will convene a panel of those involved to “interpret the statute in a common sense way without going beyond what the law allows.”

“You’re trying to serve children but do so in a way that doesn’t put vulnerable people in a difficult place when that’s not the intent,” Larew says. Lawmakers say they expect to start hearing from constituents when the July 1st deadline hits if the issue hasn’t been resolved.  

Filed Under: Education Tagged With:

Pottawattamie County finds clues to robberies during funerals

May 13, 2009 By

Authorities in southwest Iowa say they’ve found several clues toward solving a series of home burglaries in the Council Bluffs area where the residents were attending funerals. Pottawattamie County Sheriff Jeff Danker says an alert house-sitter gave authorities the information they needed to make a big leap in the case.

"Somebody pulled into the driveway, came up to the house and asked if there was a pond around there to fish," Sheriff Danker says. "It sounded suspicious to the individual." That person jotted down the license plate number and vehicle description and called the sheriff’s office.

Danker says they ran the plate and quickly located an address for the suspect. When deputies went to talk to the suspect, he wasn’t home, but someone else let deputies inside. While there, the law officers noticed some things seemed out of place.

Danker says, "While they were speaking to him, they noticed some items, we believed they were some items taken in a burglary, so we were able to obtain a search warrant." Deputies seized enough stolen items to fill ten pages — from assorted heirlooms to wedding rings.

They are now looking for a "person of interest" identified as 37-year-old Karl Schmidt. He’s wanted on warrants for failure to appear in court.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

DNR issues reminder to call in manure, chemical spills

May 13, 2009 By

State officials are reminding businesses and farmers they are required by law to tell authorities when there are spills of liquid manure or farm chemicals. Ken Hessenius, supervisor of the Department of Natural Resources’ office in Spencer, is investigating three spills which have occured in his northwest Iowa region in the past 24 hours.

"The concern is timely reporting of the spills," Hessenius says. "There’s some question at this point whether they’ve met the six hour criteria or not." Someone who fails to report a spill within six hours of discovering it may be charged with a misdemeanor. Only one of the three spills Hessenius is investigating was reported within that six-hour time frame.

Hessenius says when he and his staff hear about a spill, they can help take steps to reduce contamination of water, soil and air.

"We want to reemphasize the importance of calling these is as soon as possible after they discover (the spill) or the incident occurs," Hessenius says.

There was an unreported manure spill from a dairy operation west of Rock Valley in Sioux County on Tuesday night. Officials found manure along a five-mile stretch of an unnamed stream that flows into a local pond and tracked the spill back to the Ysselstein Dairy. The second unreported spill was at a Cenex station in Sac City where Hessenius says about a gallon of diesel fuel wound up in a storm sewer.

The only one of the three spills which was reported happened Tuesady when a farmer spraying fertilizer on a farm near Quimby in Cherokee County overturned in a small creek.

The farmer damned up the creek and pumped out the water onto nearby farmland. Hessenius says while the D.N.R. has notified various water systems about the three spills, water appears safe to drink in all three areas.

"We don’t anticipate that any of them will have any effect on any drinking water supply," Hessenius says. Hessenius cautions against wading or boating in any of the three small bodies of water impacted by the three spills, however.

Filed Under: Agriculture, Fires/Accidents/Disasters Tagged With:

Two Powerball tickets with large prizes remain unclaimed

May 13, 2009 By

A couple of valuable Powerball tickets purchased at stores on opposite ends of the state remain unclaimed in Iowa. The tickets, each worth $200,000, were sold at convenience stores in Council Bluffs and Clinton. Iowa Lottery spokesperson Mary Neubauer says the Council Bluffs ticket is for last Saturday’s drawing, while the Clinton ticket is from the drawing on May 6th.

"Most of the time, when you’re talking about prizes of this size, folks come right in and claim the money," Neubauer said. "So, it’s possible that the people who have these tickets don’t even realize that they’re the big winner yet." The people that bought those winning tickets still have plenty of time to claim their prizes.

In Iowa, winners have 365 days from the date of the Powerball drawing in which they won a prize to claim the winnings. The ticket in Council Bluffs was purchased at Eddy’s convenience story at 3434 Nebraska Avenue, while the ticket in Clinton was purchased at Porter’s Convenient 66 at 1512 Lincolnway. Neubauer says a lot of Iowans miss out on collecting cash because they fail to check their lottery tickets.

She says up to a-million-and-a-half dollars goes unclaimed every year in Iowa because the expiration date passes. "Most of the time, however, it’s for small prizes. Three dollars here, five dollars there…it does add up over time to that million-and-a-half dollars," Neubauer said.

The jackpot for tonight’s Powerball drawing is estimated at $129-million.

 

Filed Under: Recreation & Entertainment Tagged With:

Legislature gets involved in CRNA pain management discussion

May 13, 2009 By

A panel of state legislators is wading into a battle between doctors and a group of registered nurses. The Iowa Board of Medicine is proposing that only doctors provide certain pain management treatment for patients.

Today, certified registered nurse anesthetists — C.R.N.A.’s — are providing chronic pain care in 91 of Iowa’s 117 hospitals. But Board of Medicine legal affairs director Kent Nebel says chronic pain care is a rapidly growing field that requires new scrutiny.

"There are far more complex, I would say, dangerous procedures performed now than there were 20 years ago," he says. "…It’s not clear whether the C.R.N.A.’s and other health care providers that are involved in this care, whether that education is keeping up with the technology and the complexity and the danger of the procedures that are being performed." Dr. Richard Rosenquist, director of the "Center for Pain Medicine" at the University of Iowa Medical School, supports the change, too.

"So if you think about who’s going to be performing these procedures, if I sit down with you and say, ‘By the way one the potential risks of this procedure is a stroke, a spinal cord injury, or death,’ you’d like to have somebody who’s really well trained in doing those procedures."

But Jim Carney, a lobbyist for the Iowa Association of Nurse Anesthetists, says if only doctors are allowed to administer certain chronic pain treatments, rural Iowans will suffer because fewer doctors are available in rural areas and it’s certified registered nurse anesthetists who provide the care for chronic pain.

"No matter what the Medical Society says, they are the backbone of anesthesia care in this state," Carney says. Carney questions the rational for the change. "It is an unreasonable, capricious action by the board without any empirical data (or) studies of any kind to support it," Carney says. "There isn’t anything on a quantitative, scientific basis that shows the services performed by C.R.N.A.’s are not safe and efficacious."

Members of the Legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee say they share Carney’s concerns and they’ve asked the Iowa Board of Medicine to submit more documents before implementing any policy change.

Filed Under: Health & Medicine Tagged With:

More rain forecast, along with potential severe weather

May 13, 2009 By

Much of Iowa has been dumped on over the past 24 hours and more rain is expected this afternoon and tonight. National Weather Service meteorologist Mindy Albrecht says a cold front is pushing through the state.

"Along and ahead of that cold front, we have some warm moist air that’s going to contribute to additional chances for showers and thunderstorms throughout the afternoon and early evening hours," Albrecht said.

"We’re looking at a slight to moderate risk across southeast Iowa of severe weather. We could see large hail, damaging winds and maybe an isolated tornado." A Wind Advisory is posted for nearly a dozen counties in northwest Iowa.

Albrecht says wind gusts in that part of the state could hit 50 miles per hour. The greatest threat for severe weather is this evening in southeast Iowa. Dry conditions and temperatures in the 60s should return this weekend.

Albrecht says showers and thunderstorms are expected again on Friday, but no rain’s in the forecast for Saturday or Sunday.

 

Filed Under: Weather
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