Gazette Daily News Podcast, June 14
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Tuesday, June 14.
It’s going to be ridiculously hot Tuesday. According to the National Weather Service it will be sunny and hot in the Cedar Rapids area with a high of 99 degrees. Heat index values with the heavy humidity will rise as high as 106. It will also be breazy, with a south wind of 10 to 15 mph increasing to 15 to 20 mph in the afternoon. Wind gusts could be as high as 30 mph. There will be a 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms late Tuesday night, but otherwise it will be mostly clear, with a low of around 73 degrees.
We have an article with a list of cool off zones in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids on the front page of theGazette.com.
The Cedar Rapids school board Monday postponed a vote on an agreement for school resource officers — also known as police — in schools, with some board members voicing concern that the data presented on the program is incomplete.
In a 6-1 vote, with President David Tominsky opposing, the school board agreed to meet in a work session between now and July 11 to further discuss the school resource officer contract before voting on it in their next scheduled meeting at 5:30 p.m., July 11, at the Educational Leadership and Support Center on Edgewood Rd NW.
While data shows there are racial disparities in the discipline meted out against students in the district, school board members said a survey given out to gauge student and teacher opinions on the officers painted a flawed picture due to an error in the way the survey was distributed. They also were hesitant to pull the officers without proper consideration given the overall concern for school safety lately in the public.
Deficiencies in the University of Iowa Children's Hospital “curtain wall system” at the center of a new lawsuit were observed during construction, left uncorrected, and have become so prevalent that most patient windows — along with many others — pose “life safety issues” if left uncorrected.
“The number and severity of the (insulated glass unit) defects are progressive, with problems continuing to manifest themselves with the passage of time,” according to the lawsuit Iowa’s Board of Regents filed Friday on behalf of UI in Johnson County District Court.
They noted replacing hundreds of damaged windows is the only path forward. The lawsuit has been filed against Iowa City-based Knutson Construction Services Midwest, Inc. and Cupples International, Inc., based in St. Louis.
Specific proactive and reactive steps the university has taken include installing protective film and clips on hundreds of windows that should hold the glass within if the glass units break. Still the threat of falling glass is severe enough that the children’s hospital playground has been closed as a precaution.
Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, Iowa’s Republican U.S. senators, said they are waiting to see the final version of bipartisan legislation containing modest gun control proposals before stating whether they will support it.
The legislation was the result of two weeks of negotiations between a bipartisan group of U.S. senators in response to recent mass shootings in the United States.
But Grassley, who is up for re-election this fall, said he was “encouraged” to see the bipartisan group produce a proposal.
The current proposal would make juvenile records available during background checks whenever someone under the age of 21 buys a gun; ban convicted domestic abusers from being able to buy a gun; and send federal funding to states enacting so-called red flag laws, which attempt to temporarily take guns away from individuals who could be considered potentially violent.
