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Gov. Reynolds Announces $1.5M Grant Program to Improve Work-Based Learning

DES MOINES – Governor Kim Reynolds today announced the availability of up to $1.5 million in funding for programs that provide opportunities for high school students to explore their future careers.

The Statewide Intermediary Work-based Learning Grant program will help students experience one-on-one contact with potential employers and help them make informed decisions about postsecondary education and careers. The new grant is open to Iowa educational organizations, community colleges, nonprofit organizations, and local workforce development boards, as well as any other entity with the capacity to provide students sustained interactions with industry or community professionals in a real worksite environment.

The goal of the grant is to encourage the creation and development of a range of work-based learning programs including internships, job shadowing experiences, apprenticeable occupations, or other workplace learning opportunities in targeted industries. Work-based learning programs increase awareness of career opportunities in local communities for students and help employers build relationships with potential future employees.

“We understand that by investing in our kids, we are investing in our future,” Gov. Reynolds said. “Work-based learning helps show students that opportunities exist beyond just a four-year degree. By connecting high school students with local businesses for work-based learning opportunities, Iowa is providing students with the best environment for them to succeed.”

Grant funding may be used for expenses related to the successful implementation of a work-based learning program, including staff salary and benefits, transportation, materials and supplies, or other related expenses. Applicants are required to match at least 25 percent of the grant funds received using public funds, private donations, or in-kind contributions.

“Iowa continues to need more workers, and one of the most important steps we can take toward meeting that need is to ensure that students realize they don’t have to leave the state for the kind of careers they want,” said Beth Townsend, Director of Iowa Workforce Development. “These grants will support programs that show students many of the available possibilities.”

Visit this link for more information on the grant, including application documents. Applications for funding will be accepted on www.IowaGrants.gov from today through 11:59 a.m. on June 2nd.

Interested applicants will be able to ask questions during a webinar scheduled on May 11 from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Visit this link to register.

This May the Fourth, Carrie Fisher gets Walk of Fame star

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Carrie Fisher is receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a May the Fourth tribute to one of the “Star Wars” franchise’s most beloved figures.

On Thursday, Fisher — who died in 2016 — joins “Star Wars” co-stars Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill on the Hollywood tourist attraction that recognizes luminaries from film, television, music and other entertainment industries. The trio’s stars are all located on the 6,800 block of Hollywood Boulevard, near where the original film debuted in 1977.

Fisher played Leia Organa, who over six films morphed from a princess to a general leading the forces of good in its fight against oppressive regimes aiming to control a galaxy far, far away. Billie Lourd will be accepting the star on behalf of her mother.

Fans have long campaigned for her to receive a Walk of Fame star. The honor comes on May the Fourth, essentially an official holiday for Star Wars fans that’s a play on a line that Fisher said often in the films, “May the Force be with you.”

Devotees worldwide celebrate with a variety of tributes, while retailers hold special sales on Star Wars merchandise.

The induction ceremony will be held at 11:30 a.m. Pacific and livestreamed by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Fisher will be given the 2,754th star on the Walk of Fame. Ford received his star in 2003 and Hamill was honored in 2018.

Walk of Fame stars are given to performers who are nominated and a $75,000 fee is now required to create the star and maintain it.

Central College Commencement Set for May 13

PELLA, IA — The Central College Commencement ceremony will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 13, 2023, at Ron and Joyce Schipper Stadium. Commencement will take place outside, rain or shine.

Heather Burr Isaacson, a 1997 Central graduate and director of programs for the nonprofit By Degrees Foundation, will address the Class of 2023 graduates. She has dedicated her work to helping students graduate from high school and prepare for higher education.

Commencement will be livestreamed on the Central Dutch Network.

The stadium opens at 12:30 p.m. Guest seating in the stadium will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Guests are welcome to sit in the bleachers or may bring chairs and blankets and sit on the field or on the grass around the stadium. In addition, a limited number of folding chairs will be available for those unable to bring seating. Guests with limited mobility may use the golf cart shuttles, which will run from the parking lot to the stadium gate entrance.

In the case of inclement weather, alert information will be available at central.edufacebook.com/CentralCollege or on KNIA-KRLS 92.1. If severe weather arises during the ceremony, we will delay the program until the weather passes. If it appears that the severe weather will be prolonged, the ceremony will be moved inside the fieldhouse and will be scaled back.

Secretary Naig Announces Funding for 16 Urban Water Quality Projects; Oskaloosa, Montezuma Among Awardees

DES MOINES – Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig announced that the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship will partner in 16 urban water quality projects across the state by investing nearly $2.8 million. The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, utilizing the state’s Water Quality Initiative (WQI) and funding from the Conservation Infrastructure Program (CIP), will provide cost-share grants that cover up to 50 percent of the total cost of each project. The overall cost of the 16 projects is expected to be approximately $14.6 million, which includes $2.8 million from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and $11.8 million from local sources.

“Whether you live in an urban, suburban or rural area, all Iowans have an important role in protecting and improving our state’s water quality,” said Secretary Naig. “As we accelerate our statewide water quality efforts and work collaboratively with local partners, these urban cost-share grants help to leverage significant water quality investment by communities of all sizes.”

The Department provides financial and technical assistance to the communities and organizations implementing these urban water quality practices. To receive state funding, the urban water quality projects must include education and outreach components and involve local partners. These community-based projects raise awareness about new stormwater management methods and encourage others to adopt similar infrastructure-based practices to improve water quality. These urban conservation projects include water quality practices like bioretention cells, bioswales, native plantings, permeable pavers, rain gardens, soil quality restoration, and wetlands among many other proven practices.

This grant announcement coincides with Soil and Water Conservation Week, which Governor Kim Reynolds has proclaimed will be recognized from April 30 through May 7 in Iowa.

Montezuma
American Legion Post 169 Urban Conservation Project
Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship Grant: $23,480
To better capture and filter stormwater, the American Legion Post 169 is incorporating bioretention cells, soil quality restoration and an enhanced rain garden into their new building site in Montezuma. The Poweshiek Soil and Water Conservation District is assisting Post 169 with the implementation of this project, which includes the first urban conservation practices to be installed in the city.

Oskaloosa
Promoting Stormwater Management Practices in Mahaska County
Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship Grant: $12,558
A bioretention cell, rain garden and rain barrel will be installed at the Mahaska County USDA Service Center by the Mahaska Soil and Water Conservation District. This site will demonstrate these practices to other businesses and homeowners in the City of Oskaloosa and Mahaska County.

The complete list of projects and communities is available here.

‘Godfather of AI’ leaves Google, warns of tech’s dangers

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sounding alarms about artificial intelligence has become a popular pastime in the ChatGPT era, taken up by high-profile figures as varied as industrialist Elon Musk, leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky and the 99-year-old retired statesman Henry Kissinger.

But it’s the concerns of insiders in the AI research community that are attracting particular attention. A pioneering researcher and the so-called “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton quit his role at Google so he could more freely speak about the dangers of the technology he helped create.

Over his decades-long career, Hinton’s pioneering work on deep learning and neural networks helped lay the foundation for much of the AI technology we see today.

There has been a spasm of AI introductions in recent months. San Francisco-based startup OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed company behind ChatGPT, rolled out its latest artificial intelligence model, GPT-4, in March. Other tech giants have invested in competing tools — including Google’s “Bard.”

Some of the dangers of AI chatbots are “quite scary,” Hinton told the BBC. “Right now, they’re not more intelligent than us, as far as I can tell. But I think they soon may be.”

In an interview with MIT Technology Review, Hinton also pointed to “bad actors” that may use AI in ways that could have detrimental impacts on society — such as manipulating elections or instigating violence.

Hinton, 75, says he retired from Google so that he could speak openly about the potential risks as someone who no longer works for the tech giant.

“I want to talk about AI safety issues without having to worry about how it interacts with Google’s business,” he told MIT Technology Review. “As long as I’m paid by Google, I can’t do that.”

Since announcing his departure, Hinton has maintained that Google has “acted very responsibly” regarding AI. He told MIT Technology Review that there’s also “a lot of good things about Google” that he would want to talk about — but those comments would be “much more credible if I’m not at Google anymore.”

Google confirmed that Hinton had retired from his role after 10 years overseeing the Google Research team in Toronto.

Hinton declined further comment Tuesday but said he would talk more about it at a conference Wednesday.

At the heart of the debate on the state of AI is whether the primary dangers are in the future or present. On one side are hypothetical scenarios of existential risk caused by computers that supersede human intelligence. On the other are concerns about automated technology that’s already getting widely deployed by businesses and governments and can cause real-world harms.

“For good or for not, what the chatbot moment has done is made AI a national conversation and an international conversation that doesn’t only include AI experts and developers,” said Alondra Nelson, who until February led the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and its push to craft guidelines around the responsible use of AI tools.

“AI is no longer abstract, and we have this kind of opening, I think, to have a new conversation about what we want a democratic future and a non-exploitative future with technology to look like,” Nelson said in an interview last month.

A number of AI researchers have long expressed concerns about racial, gender and other forms of bias in AI systems, including text-based large language models that are trained on huge troves of human writing and can amplify discrimination that exists in society.

“We need to take a step back and really think about whose needs are being put front and center in the discussion about risks,” said Sarah Myers West, managing director of the nonprofit AI Now Institute. “The harms that are being enacted by AI systems today are really not evenly distributed. It’s very much exacerbating existing patterns of inequality.”

Hinton was one of three AI pioneers who in 2019 won the Turing Award, an honor that has become known as tech industry’s version of the Nobel Prize. The other two winners, Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun, have also expressed concerns about the future of AI.

Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal, signed a petition in late March calling for tech companies to agree to a 6-month pause on developing powerful AI systems, while LeCun, a top AI scientist at Facebook parent Meta, has taken a more optimistic approach.

House makes changes in Senate bill on teen jobs, work hours

By O. Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa)

The Iowa House has voted to make changes in a Senate bill that expands the hours teenagers may work and the types of jobs they may perform. Sixteen and 17 year olds would be able to sell or serve alcohol in a restaurant, but not a bar — and the House voted to require that two adults be present. If the kitchen is closed and food service has stopped, teenagers would have to stop serving alcohol.

Republican Representative Dave Deyoe of Nevada said the overall package provides reasonable work opportunities for teenagers. “Here are some of the things that are the benefits for employment for young people…less poverty, money for future education, less delinquent behavior, experience in the workplace and access to role models,” Deyoe said during Tuesday’s debate.

House Democratic Leader Jennifer Konfrst thanked Republicans for accepting some of the ideas House Democrats proposed. “This is how it’s supposed to work,” Konfrst said. “The bill is better than the Senate’s…doesn’t make it great, but it makes it better and it makes it better for Iowans.”

But Konfrst and other House Democrats still voted against the bill, citing concerns about having teenagers engaged in some jobs and being too tired for school.

The House-passed bill specifies that 14 and 15 year olds cannot be eligible for state waivers to work at certain occupations, but Deyoe said it will let 16 and 17 year olds be involved in work-based learning programs.

“I learned welding, I learned electrical wiring — I learned all that stuff in shop when I was in high school, but a lot of the high schools can’t afford to maintain (the equipment),” Deyoe told reporters. “…It costs thousands and thousands of dollars to buy the equipment and they’ve got to continue to buy new stuff all the time to keep it updated.”

The bill says teenagers cannot work in meatpacking plants or in the mining industry. Deyoe is optimistic the Senate will approve House adjustments in the bill and send it to the governor.

OHS Hosting Senior Career Ready Recognition Event

OSKALOOSA — Oskaloosa High School announced their 4th annual Senior Career Ready Recognition Event. This event  recognizes Oskaloosa High School seniors who have made the choice to pursue a post-secondary education in a career field rather than the classroom, or have completed a certification while in high school to enter a post-secondary career.

OHS would like to recognize these students at the event, which includes a picture and signing day with parents, business partners, and military services in celebration of our students and their career choice.

Signing day will take place at the high school in the 21st Century classroom on Tuesday,  May 9 from 12:15-1:15. Light snacks and beverages will be provided.

Please RSVP to Kristen Bandy at bandyk@oskycsd.org by Friday, May 6th.

Ottumwa City Council Rezones Property for Sports Complex

By Sam Parsons

The Ottumwa City Council met last night and held a public hearing to rezone property near Ottumwa High School for the purpose of moving forward with construction of their new athletic complex. The re-zoned area, located on E. Second Street, is currently a parking lot, but will eventually become the home of the Ottumwa SportsPlex. Ottumwa Community School District superintendent Mike McGrory spoke at the meeting and said he expected the project to go out for bids this summer, with construction potentially beginning as soon as the end of August. The rezoning was approved unanimously by the council.

The next regular council meeting with the city of Ottumwa will be held on May 16.

WCEMA Receives Future Ready Iowa Grant for Internship Inititative

OTTUMWA — Wapello County Emergency Management has been awarded a Future Ready Iowa  2023 Summer Youth Internship Program award in the amount of $98,565 to administer the Supporting Rural EMS through an Internship Initiative on behalf of the Wapello County Board of Supervisors, who have partnered with Davis and Van Buren Counties and the City of Centerville to provide this opportunity for our youth.

Priority will be given  to at-risk youth who meet specific criteria, such as being a first-generation college  student, a high school dropout, a child or parent in a single-parent family, or from an  underrepresented ethnic population, amongst other possible criteria. The Initiative will  provide an opportunity for 16 participants, aged 17-24 from the counties of Appanoose,  Davis, Van Buren, and Wapello to complete a paid internship to become Emergency  Medical Technicians.

There is a desperate need for certified EMS professionals in these  counties as well as statewide and a “grow our own” approach to filling this need will  help find these individuals. During the summer paid internship, participants will take a  state-approved EMT course through Indian Hills Community College, while completing  healthcare exploration, and course lab and clinical hours at area ambulance services,  fire-based EMS services, and hospitals. Interns will also receive information on furthering  their education in healthcare, particularly in EMS by continuing to the Paramedic level, as well as soft skills needed to be successful in a job and career.

Look for more  information on the Initiative as well as the application on the website, www.wapelloready.org.

Scott Tjeerdsma Named Next Pella Middle School Principal

PELLA — Pella Community School District is excited to announce the hiring of Scott Tjeerdsma for Pella CSD Middle School Principal. Scott, a long-time staff member at Pella Schools and the current Dean of Students at Pella Middle School, has accepted the role as the leader of Pella Middle School beginning with the 2023-2024 school year. 

Scott is married to Julia Tjeerdsma and has three children, Henry (7th grade), Evelyn (5th grade), and Miles (Kindergarten). Along with serving as the Dean of Students and Athletic Director, Scott has served the Pella Community School District as a math, special education, and fourth grade teacher, along with various coaching positions.  

 

I’m humbled by the opportunity to serve as principal at Pella Middle School. I am eager to continue to work with a fantastic staff and build on the solid foundation established by Mr. Manning.  I look forward to partnering with parents and the Pella community to continue to make Pella Middle School a place where all students can thrive.”

– Scott Tjeerdsma, 

Pella Middle School Principal

“We are very pleased that Scott has accepted this new role as Middle School Principal. Scott has been a critical part of the leadership team at the Middle School building for the last 12 years. We look forward to partnering with him in his new position as the district continues to work with students, staff, and parents to support learning in the Middle School building.”

– Greg Ebeling, 

Superintendent of Pella Schools

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