(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s numbers are out for July and Iowa Workforce Development director Beth Townsend says things held steady.  “Unemployment remained at three-point-seven percent (3.7%) and our labor force participation also remained the same in July at 67-point four percent (67.4%),” she says. Townsend says there are positives when you look deeper into the numbers. “This was the first month we hadn’t seen an increase in unemployment for a few months, so that was a good sign. We added 18-hundred Iowans to the workforce, another good sign. Not enough to move the needle in terms of the labor force participation rate, but it’s still a good sign to be adding more workers,” Townsend says.

Townsend says there were 11-thousand more people working this July compared to one year ago. “We’ve had some layoffs in the last 12 months, and so the fact that we still have 11-thousand more Iowans with jobs is a good indication that we’re able to absorb and recover from those layoffs,” she says. Manufacturing has been one of the sectors taking loses, but Townsend says there was better news there in July. “We saw an increase in manufacturing jobs in both durable and non-durable goods in July of 600, and that’s the first month that we’ve seen an increase in manufacturing since March,” she says.

Unemployment had gone up one-tenth of a percent in March, April, May and June. The national unemployment rate increased to four-point-two percent in July.

(Radio Iowa) – Every stall in the Horse Barn at this year’s Iowa State Fair has been occupied — and Clydesdale and Percheron draft horses have arrived as their National Shows get underway today (Thursday). Noah Levy is the Horse Barn Superintendent, which means he’s in charge of the two-acre, 12-aisle barn. “It’s about as big as we can get,” Levy says. “It’s about as many horses as we can put in the barn.” Levy started volunteering in the barn in 2017 to help out a friend — and this is his third year as superintendent. “You know, you want friends with boats, you may not want to own your own boat. I do this so I don’t have to own horses,” Levy says. “For me, it’s about the people and the horses are a bonus.” The Horse Barn is a MOSTLY tranquil place.

“The noise you’re going to hear is when one of them is hungry and has decided, even though it’s not technically meal time for them, they want it now and they’ll start banging on the stalls,” Levy said, “and especially with our drafts and you’ve got 2000 pound horses, their banging on the stalls sounds like thunder in this barn.” After the July deadline for entries in this year’s horse shows, there was a wait list. “When they enter for these classes, it’s difficult for us to know how many stalls they’re going to need versus what we had because we run a bunch of different breed shows and they overlap in the barn,” Levy says. “It’s not as simple as, ‘Oh, we’ve got 500 stalls in this barn. Once you sell out 500, you close it.” Levy says the wait list was eliminated, though, by laying out the puzzle pieces differently.

Horse Barn on the Iowa State Fairgounds

“A lot of credit for that goes to the team working on it and also our exhibitors themselves,” Levy says. “We called many of them and asked them: ‘What is the minimum number of stalls you need in order to show at the Iowa State Fair?’ And a lot of our long time exhibitors really came to the plate for us, gave back stalls, so that we could get exhibitors off the wait list so that everybody could get in and we cleared that wait list just a few days, I would say, less than a week before the Fair started.” Levy says all the horse shows are getting more popular based on the number of exhibitors — and the number spectators. There have been standing-room-only crowds for some of this year’s shows.

“If you’re popping in, especially to one of our evening shows with a six-horse hitch running in the ring, you’re generally hooked,” Levy said, “and your generally coming back and you’re bringing more friends with you.” The show ring in the Jacobsen Building on the Fairgrounds opened in 2010. Two years ago, state fair officials ended ticket sales for the Horse Shows and entry is now free. As soon as this year’s Fair is over, phase two of Horse Barn renovations will start. “New stalls on new flooring, new ventilation — that’s a big draw for some exhibitors,” Levy says. “These old barns are wonderful and historic and they’re really cool to walk through, but given their age they’re maybe not as nice to show in anymore, but the Fair has really stepped up and we’re looking at a very expensive renovation of this barn that should be completed before the Fair next year.”

Phase one of the project focused the outside of the building was completed before this year’s Fair. The Horse Barn was built in 1907, with additions in 1909, 1912 and 1929.

(Radio Iowa) – Dozens of Iowa school districts will be starting classes soon without a full roster of full-time teachers and staff. This (Thursday) morning, the state’s “Teach Iowa” website shows public and private K-12 schools have nearly 38-hundred openings for all sorts of positions — coaches, cooks AND teachers. Professor Mark McDermott, associate dean of the University of Iowa’s College of Education, says it’s difficult to generalize and say the state is experiencing a “significant” teacher shortage. McDermott says, “Anytime that there’s a school district that is in need of hiring a particular teacher and hasn’t been able to fill a particular position, for that school and that school district, that is a teacher shortage.”

Iowa has more than half-a-million students enrolled in nearly 330 public districts and over 180 private schools. McDermott says administrators routinely contact him as fall approaches, checking to see if any recent U-I graduates are available to fill teaching positions. “Our job is to try to develop and create not only teachers that will get licensed, but teachers that will be retained in the field,” McDermott says. “We don’t know exactly where our students are going to go and where they’re going to end up teaching, but by doing that, we’re doing our part to help figure out ways to provide quality teachers for all students.”

While elementary school teachers are typically in the most plentiful supply, McDermott says there’s demand for teachers at all grade levels. “Right now, districts are really in need of some special ed teachers,” McDermott says. “Physics teachers are always challenging to find. A lot of school districts are looking for English Language Learner teachers, the ELL-endorsed teachers.” Every school district will handle its teacher shortage differently. McDermott says some will simply not be able to offer all of the courses they’d planned to offer this fall. “Some school districts are looking towards online programs to try to offer opportunities for their students, even if they’re not able to hire a teacher specifically for that area,” McDermott says. “Back when I was teaching high school, one of the things that would happen would be class sizes would increase.”

State education officials say there are more educators in Iowa classrooms today than ever before, with a 10 percent increase in the total number of teachers in the past 12 years.

https://iowa.schoolspring.com/

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Cass County Sheriff’s Office has issued a report on arrests.

• On August 7th, 29-year-old Ismael Alejandro Cerpa Huerta, of Monticello, was arrested on charges that include: Sexual exploitation of a minor; Enticing a minor under the age of 16; Four counts of dissemination and exhibition of obscene material to minors, and Grooming. Huerta was being held in the Cass County Jail.
• On August 9th, 38-year-old Paige Renee Rebarcak, of Walnut, was arrested for OWI – 1st Offense. She was later released on her own recognizance.
• On August 10th, Cass County Sheriff’s Deputies arrested 68-year-old Gary Lynn Kent, of Clarinda, for Possession of a controlled substance, and Possession of drug paraphernalia. Kent was was later released on his own recognizance. And, 30-year-old Christian Monreal Sempek, of Elliott, was arrested August 10th, on a warrant for failure to appear. Sempek was later released on bond.

(Creston, Iowa) – Officials with the Creston Police Department say two men were arrested on separate charges, Wednesday (Aug. 13):

• 40-year-old Jarod James Wilmeth, of Creston, was arrested for Violation of Probation. Wilmeth was being held without bond in the Union County Jail until seen by a Judge.
• 40-year-old John David Foster, of Creston, was arrested Wednesday for Theft in the 5th Degree. Foster was released from the Union County Jail after posting a $300 bond.

MONTICELLO, Iowa (KCRG) – The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported a plane crash near Monticello, Monday. According to the the report, at around 2:49 p.m. Monday, the Jones County Sheriff’s Office received a report of a plane crash in a field south of Monticello. According to the NTSB, the crash involved a 1950’s-era North American T-28B Trojan, registered to East Iowa Air, Inc.

Another plane located the crash in a soybean field. The plane circled the area to alert first responders of the crash location. First responders located the crash shortly after. The pilot, identified as James Rohlf, died as a result of the crash. Rohlf was a member of Trojan Thunder – a team of pilots that perform in air shows all across the country. He was also a flight instructor and was the founder of his own nonprofit called the Aviation Heritage Foundation.

(Photo credit: https://www.warbirdsflyhere.com/t-28d)

After further investigation, authorities say the plane reported engine trouble shortly after leaving the Monticello Regional Airport and was returning to the airport. The pilot reported they were going down in a beanfield a minute later.

(Radio Iowa) – The leader of Lutheran Services in Iowa (LSI) says donations from across the state helped them continue working with around 200 refugees, despite the January loss of federal funding. L-S-I’s director of refugee services, Nick Wuertz, told supporters at the community’s response to the funding cut was immediate and generous.

Donations ranged from ten to 200-thousand dollars. He says organizations all across the country had to make staff layoffs immediately, and but they didn’t have to because of the donations.

L-S-I received donations from almost 600 people.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Waterman won’t be a part of the case surrounding the deadly collapse of a Davenport apartment building in 2023. Three people died in the collapse and one woman had her leg amputated be rescue workers to get her out. A statement from the Iowa Judicial Branch says Justice Waterman decided to step away from the case because his former law firm is involved. The firm represents the City of Davenport and two city officials who are named in the lawsuit.

The Iowa Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in early October.

(Radio Iowa) – It’s going to be a throwback Thursday (today) for the Iowa Lottery at the Iowa State Fair. C-E-O Matt Strawn says they will commemorate the sale of first lottery ticket at the Fair 40 years ago.  “So we’re going to attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the most people simultaneously scratching a lottery ticket,” he says. Strawn says they will try to go well beyond the record. “The current record was set in Poland in 2023 with 550 participants. Of course, at the Iowa Lottery, you know we don’t do anything small, so we’re going to aim for close to two-thousand participants out here at the fairgrounds,” Strawn says.
Each participant will get a free “Scratch, Match & Win” ticket that has a maximum prize of 50 thousand dollars.

“That’s the one that everyone will scratch simultaneously. We’ve got a commemorative gold coin that is going to be used for scratching,” he says. “And then during the course of the event, we have three separate drawings, two drawings for four-thousand dollar cash prize. And then we thought on the 40th anniversary it would be fun to have a 40-thousand dollar cash prize.” The big prize winner will be drawn after the record attempt. Strawn says the Iowa Lottery has come a long way from that very first scratch ticket that cost one dollar. “And that was a ticket that if you bought it at a grocery store convenience store, you could only redeem it at that grocery store at that convenience store where you purchased it,” Strawn says. “So you think about the tremendous evolution of all the lottery’s products, right? There wasn’t a Powerball back then. There wasn’t a Mega Millions. There wasn’t additional scratch tickets.”

Strawn says you can take part in the record attempt, but you need to get there early. “Any Iowan that wants to be a part of this Guinness World Record attempt, I would encourage them to line up no later than 4 o’clock. So the gates are going to open at 4.30 in the Elwell Family Park, which is in the northwest corner of the fairgrounds. And we do have limited capacity,” Strawn says. Scratch tickets have consistently remains the Iowa Lottery’s top selling product throughout the 40 years.

Strawn says the Lottery has raised two-point-five( $2.5) billion dollars for state programs in those four decades.

DES MOINES, Iowa (IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH) – The federal government’s most recent assessment of health-facility inspections indicates Iowa has failed to meet three key standards.

The new report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services indicates the state-run inspection agencies that oversee nursing homes and hospitals around the nation fielded more than 107,000 complaints about health care facilities last year. That’s a 31% increase from 2019, which officials say may have contributed to 38 states failing to meet all of the federal performance standards.

Each year, CMS assesses the performance of the state agencies tasked with enforcing federal regulations concerning health care facilities. The latest data shows that last year, only 14 of the 52 agencies met all of the acceptable thresholds for the annual recertification of nursing homes, according to the CMS State Performance Standards System Findings published last week.

CMS’ report indicates the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing met most of the federal standards related to the inspection process in 2024, but failed to meet the standards in three areas:

— Off-hour inspections at the worst nursing homes: Under CMS guidelines, state agencies are to inspect the worst care facilities in their jurisdiction — the federally designated “special-focus facilities” that have recurring, serious deficiencies in resident care — during off hours to guard against homes altering their routine in anticipation of what should be a surprise visit by inspectors.

— Immediate jeopardy in acute-care settings: To accurately record the seriousness of deficiencies that can cause actual injury or death to residents in acute and continuing-care settings, inspectors must use a CMS-prescribed “immediate jeopardy template” in at least 80% of all cases where immediate jeopardy is cited. The template is used to document the evidence of each issue that places patients at risk.

— Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act violations in acute-care settings: State inspection agencies must initiate, on a timely basis, the intake and investigation of at least 95% of EMTALA immediate-jeopardy complaints tied to acute and continuing-care providers. EMTALA violations often relate to emergency-room patients being discharged without first being stabilized.

The Iowa Capital Dispatch asked the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing on Tuesday for its perspective on the CMS report. As of Wednesday afternoon, the agency had not commented on the report.