Gazette Daily News Briefing, March 9
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Wednesday, March 9.
According to the National Weather Service, it will grow increasingly cloudy over the day on Wednesday in the Cedar Rapids area, with a high near 33 degrees. On Wednesday night it will be mostly cloudy, with a low around 15.
Authorities arrested six teenagers, including a 14-year-old, in a Monday shooting outside a school that killed a 15-year-old boy and seriously wounded two teenage girls, Des Moines police said Tuesday.
According to reporting from the Associated Press, the suspects are each charged with first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder in the Monday afternoon shooting on the grounds of East High School, near Des Moines’ downtown. Police said gunshots fired outside the school came from several shooters from multiple vehicles.
Police identified the 15-year-old killed as Jose David Lopez, of Des Moines. Lopez, who was not a student at the school, was the intended target of the drive-by shooting, police said. The other two shot are females, 16 and 18, who both attend East and were among a group standing with Lopez when they were inadvertently shot.
Another University of Iowa fraternity has been suspended — but this time not by UI officials but by its international headquarters.
Last week, the executive committee of the Sigma Chi International Fraternity suspended its UI chapter for “an indefinite period” due to “accountability issues within the chapter.”
Issues, according to a March 1 letter the headquarters sent the UI chapter, included “events related to hazing within its preparation for brotherhood pledge education program and its members’ disregard for risk management policies put in place by the university and international fraternity.”
The letter didn’t go into detail on the hazing allegations — although the UI Sigma Chi chapter has been in trouble with the campus in every year since at least 2017 for alcohol and conduct violations; non-compliance with the university’s arrest policy; holding prohibited events; or hosting impermissible and illegal tailgates.
After more than an hour of comments Tuesday, a House Appropriations subcommittee split along party lines with Republicans in favor to advance Gov. Kim Reynolds’ school choice bill.
Although many of the comments were more about the merits of private schools and school choice rather than the appropriations in House Study Bill 672, Reynolds’ legislative liaison told the subcommittee that education is the state’s single-largest line item — 56 percent of the $8 billion-plus general fund budget.
For most families, that’s “money well spent,” liaison Molly Severn said, but the governor believes “parents matter … (and) deserve options.”
Reynolds’ proposal would provide scholarships of as much as $5,500 a year to private school students from families with incomes of less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level — presently $110,000 a year for a family of four.
Critics of the proposal say that the scholarships will weaken public education while only helping 10,000 of Iowa’s half a million K-12 students.
Support for this news update was provided by New Pioneer Food Co-op. Celebrating 50 years as Eastern Iowa’s destination for locally and responsibly sourced groceries with stores in Iowa City, Coralville and Cedar Rapids; and online through Co-op Cart at newpi.coop.
