Life in the Griswold Community School District is slowly get back to normal, after cases of COVID-19 started popping up after an exposed student attended Prom on April 10th. Superintendent Dave Henrichs…

The latest trio of positives resulted in very few additional quarantines.

He remains hopeful that by the end of this week, nearly all the affected students and staff will be back in the building. During the Board’s meeting last month (March), they voted to require, as of April 5th, masks in school only during the school day, and on district transportation. The rule does not apply to events such as Prom, but Henrichs noted some were taking precautions during the event by wearing their masks. Masks are not required at Graduation, and outside sporting events.

In other business, Superintendent Henrichs say the Board approved a Snow Day make-up plan, which extends the last day of school from Friday May 21st to Tuesday, May 25th. The last day for staff will be May 28th. Additional, mandatory training will take place on the teachers’ own time. If they provide a certificate of training completion to their building Principal, their last day would then be May 27th.

They also approved an HVAC automated system/service contract, and discussed filling Vocal Teacher position. A Superintendent sharing agreement with the Lenox Community School District, and a two-year renewal of a contract with Dave Henrichs, were renewed. His contract includes a $5,000 increase for next school year, a zero raise in year-two, and money set aside for health insurance benefits upon his retirement. The package settlement was 1.9%, which was less than both teacher groups settled for at the two schools (Lenox and Griswold).

The agreement saves each district about $100,000 each year. The Board approved Book Fees for 2021-22, and repair of the Auditorium stage floor, as well as a contract adjustment for the Transportation Director. The Griswold School Board also discussed the possibility of moving to a K-12 Principal, following the resignation of Mr. Billy Hiatt.

The hope is to have formal finalist interviews for the position begin April 28th. The Griswold School Board approved three new hires:

And Henrichs was pleased to announce the District will be receiving $690,000 from the ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) Fund. He said the money does not become available until June 1st, and the previous round of funds must have been spent before then, prior to requesting the additional funding.

Henrichs said his goals are to find ways to meet the needs of kids, and find ways to save the District’s General Funds. They have until Sept. 2023 to use this third round funding. In the first round, they received around $77,000, while the second round delivered over $330,000. Congress set aside approximately $13.2 billion of the $30.75 billion allotted to the Education Stabilization Fund through the CARES Act for the fund. (Learn more, HERE)

Congress set aside approximately $13.2 billion of the $30.75 billion allotted to the Education Stabilization Fund through the CARES Act for the fund. (Learn more, HERE)

Police in Creston, Tuesday afternoon, arrested a man on an assault charge. Authorities say 25-year-old Malik Lambert, of Creston, was taken into custody on a Taylor County warrant for Assault Causing Serious Injury. He was transferred to the custody of Taylor County.

The news at 8:05-a.m. from Ric Hanson.

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The Iowa State Patrol said a man from Dallas Center stole a cruiser Tuesday afternoon and led authorities on a chase that ended in Madison County. State Patrol Trooper Alex Dinkla says 31-year-old Brandon Eugene Doerring, of Dallas Center, is charged with Eluding, OWI, Theft of a Motor Vehicle, and Assault on an Officer.

The pursuit started on Interstate 80 in Dallas County and ended at around 1:45-p.m. in the 1400 block of Tree Line Ct in rural Madison County. Several law enforcement agencies participated in the chase. Doerring who was alone at the time he was apprehended, was transported to the Dallas County Jail and charged with numerous criminal offenses.

Photos via the Madison County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.

The stolen State Patrol vehicle and a Dallas County patrol vehicle sustained moderate to severe damage during the pursuit. There were no injuries were reported. According to Iowa State Patrol Trooper Alex Dinkla, the incident began when a trooper checking on a disabled vehicle on Interstate 80 near Dexter, saw Doerring walking along the roadway. Dinkla said the trooper found drug paraphernalia on Doerring and took him into custody, but the man was somehow able to steal the trooper’s vehicle.

Authorities were investigating how Doerring managed  to take control of the Patrol’s unmarked Dodge Charger. They say Doerring was still handcuffed as he exited the car.

Our broadcast at 7:07-a.m. with News Director Ric Hanson.

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A man from Avoca pulled two people from a fiery crash on Interstate 80 and McPherson Avenue in Council Bluffs,Tuesday morning. Those people are recovering in the hospital. KETV reports Runk Wood was driving to work from Avoca to Lincoln, NE. when he came upon the scene near mile marker 7. Council Bluffs Police say the car was stopped in the middle of the interstate when when it was hit by a truck at around 5:27-a.m., Tuesday.

The impact sent the vehicle across the lanes of traffic before it hit a metal barricade and caught fire. Wood stopped and heard a girl screaming. He pulled the driver to safety first. Then he realized there was someone else in the car, so he rescued that person too. Both the driver and passenger were transported to the University of Nebraska Medical Center for treatment. They were reported to be in critical but stable condition.

Wood suffered from some minor burns during the rescue.

(Radio Iowa) – Preliminary information from the Iowa Department of Public Health shows a 35-percent increase in opioid overdose deaths in 2020 when compared to 2019. The director of the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy, Dale Woolery says the record 212 deaths come despite a lot of work on the issue. “We would like to see the numbers go the other direction and they had for a couple of years. I think the moral of the story as we are looking at various sources of data on the opioid epidemic is that epidemic is still with us,” Woolery says.

Woolery says not all the trends in the fight have been negative. “We have made progress and we do have one of the lower rates of drug overdose deaths in the nation — and we don’t want to rest on that,” Woolery says. He says there’s been a lot done to address the issue. “Some of the progress includes ramping up access to medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction. There’s more access and use of naloxone –which is the opioid overdose reversal or rescue drug,” according to Woolery. “There are fewer prescription opioids being prescribed, and the prescription monitoring program is being used more by health professionals to try and control for the prescription opioid outflow and misuse.”

Woolery says some of the other factors in the increase in death include the mixing of black-market fentanyl into heroin by drug dealers. “So as a user — if you think you are getting heroin or just a little bit of fentanyl, but instead you are getting pure fentanyl or something that is mostly fentanyl — that may not be what you thought. That could be one of the contributing factors to some of the opioid deaths,” he says.Woolery says the pandemic and the isolation it brought on is also a factor. “It’s like a lot of other things with the pandemic — because of the increased isolation that has occurred — there is less opportunity to monitor behavior and to intervene when it is called for,” Woolery says.

The 212 overdose deaths broke the record of 206 deaths set in 2017.

(Radio Iowa) – Starting this summer, there will be a week off designated for family time for Iowa high school athletes, coaches and those involved with music and speech. The week of July 25th is designated as Family Week, so there will be no practices for athletes or participants in music and speech. Tom Keating, executive director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association in Boone, explains the simple idea. “It was important for us to at least impress upon people that we thought family time was important, to be quite honest,” Keating says. “If I had my way, we’d probably go more than a week but you’ve gotta’ start somewhere and this is where we’re starting.”

The state baseball tournament will go on as scheduled during the last week in July at Principal Park in Des Moines. Next year, Keating says the summer baseball and softball seasons will be starting in mid-May. “What that will coincide with is a change in some of our spring sport dates,” he says, “so everything will move back a week and that way, we have that week clear.”

The Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union is cooperating with the boys athletic association in the Family Week program, he says, and the same goes for the Iowa High School Music Association.

(Radio Iowa) – The pandemic found many people dusting off their bicycles that had been sitting in the garage as they looked to get out of the house. Bike Central owner Kevin Richards in Le Mars says the interest is bikes followed along with a bigger pattern. “There was a huge uptick in sales all across the recreation industry, and particularly in bicycles. We are seeing that maintained and I anticipate that as the weather gets nicer we will continue to see an increase in the number of people — at least in inquires or looking to purchase. Or even just doing some repairs on their existing bicycle,” Richards says.

Richards says they took action as they started to see the interest in bicycles going up. “This last fall we were pretty well made aware that bicycles were going to be in short supply. We made the decision to really bring in a lot of service parts that we normally don’t keep on hand, because if we need a service part that we don’t have, we can usually get it within a day,” according to Richards. “Knowing that there would be some supply problems, we started stocking in a supply of repair parts.”

The Bike Central shop owner says the majority of bicycles come from southeast Asia and the global spread of the COVID virus forced plants and shipping to shut down, leading to the lack of supply. Richards says the parts companies are hesitant to ramp up production. “I do know that a lot of the equipment manufacturers — the people who make the shifting and the gearing — have decided to not really increase production because they’re not sure that this isn’t just a bubble in demand in the biking industry,” Richards says. “So we are kind of constrained to what they are going to produce. And I believe from certain conversations that they’ll be certain parts that we won’t’ be able to see until the fourth quarter of 2022.”

He says the types of bikes sold give an indication that a lot of people are just looking to get out of the house and do something. “Most sales are what I would call an active bike geometry. So something that is suitable for trail riding around here, city riding. Obviously we don’t have a lot of mountains,” he says. He says for now they will try to help people fix up the bikes they have available until they can look at a new bike once the supply gets back to normal. Richards says the interest in Le Mars is even higher after it was learned they will be hosting RAGBRAI this year.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa households with more than one vehicle could be ineligible for food stamps if a Senate G-O-P plan inserted in a budget bill becomes law. The plan also calls for a new system to investigate an Iowan’s financial situation to determine if they’re eligible for food assistance or Medicaid coverage. Senator Mark Costello, a Republican from Imogene, says the goal is to more quickly find out who is and who is not eligible for public assistance.

“To help people that need the resources to have them and not waste them on people that are really not eligible and do not need them so much,” Costello says. Tom Chapman, director of the Iowa Catholic Conference, says the proposed asset limit is very low.

“It also says that households with more than one vehicle would be at risk of losing their eligibility for food stamps,” Chapman says. “Just the fact of owning two cars, especially in rural Iowa, doesn’t mean that people don’t need help to get food.” Chapman says that could disqualify one out of every six Iowans who are receiving food assistance today.

Senate Republicans passed a bill earlier this year outlining these income verification plans, but House Republicans didn’t advance it.