Gazette Daily News Briefing, September 2
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Friday, September 2.
There will be another sunny and warm day on Friday before temperatures cool off, just a bit, over the weekend. According to the National Weather Service it will be mostly sunny with a high near 90 degrees during the day in the Cedar Rapids area. On Friday night it will be partly cloudy, with a low of around 66 degrees. There will be a 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1 a.m. Saturday.
With Labor Day weekend approaching, Iowans hitting the road should plan ahead and prepare for traffic delays, given that more travelers are expected to take advantage of the final three-day weekend of the summer, despite high gas prices.
AAA predicts this will be the busiest Labor Day travel weekend in three years, reaching pre-pandemic levels similar to Memorial Day and Fourth of July weekends this year, despite inflation, higher airfares and gas prices pinching household budgets.
While gas prices have fallen for 10 consecutive weeks to below an average of $4 a gallon nationwide, prices in Iowa were 50 cents higher on average than last Labor Day.
As of Thursday, the average price of gas across the state was about $3.51 a gallon, down more than $1 from a peak of $4.76 in June and less than the national average of about $3.83 a gallon.
The city of Marion will receive $9.8 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to aid with recovery from the devastating 2020 derecho, Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson announced Thursday.
The Marion Republican said the money will aid the city with ongoing recovery efforts from the August 2020 storm that barreled across a 770-mile swath of the Midwest in 14 hours. It was, at the time, the costliest thunderstorm event in U.S. history and causing an estimated $12.5 billion in inflation-adjusted damages. At least $7.5 billion worth of damage was in Iowa alone, according to state officials.
The $9.8 million awarded will reimburse the city of Marion for debris removal from waterways that was completed following the derecho, said city Finance Director Lianne Cairy.
The $9.8 million will cover 90 percent of the city’s $10.9 million request for aid from FEMA, with the state contributing the remaining 10 percent, Cairy said.
Math and reading scores for America’s 9-year-olds fell dramatically during the first two years of the pandemic, according to a new federal study — offering an early glimpse of the sheer magnitude of the learning setbacks dealt to the nation’s children.
According to reporting from the Associated Press, reading scores saw their largest decrease in 30 years, while math scores had their first decrease in the history of the testing regimen behind the study, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the U.S. Education Department.
In math, the average score for 9-year-old students fell 7 percentage points between 2020 and 2022, according to the study. The average reading score fell 5 points. The study also found that the effects were especially pronounced for unprivileged students and for students of color.
Federal officials say this is the first nationally representative study to compare student achievement before the pandemic and in 2022, when most students had returned to in-person learning. Testing was completed in early 2020, soon before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and then again in early 2022.
