What does it take for military leaders to finally take seriously the epidemic of sexual assault within their ranks?

Apparently, a double-digit increase in assaults and a trio of high-profile sexual misconduct allegations against the very officers charged with preventing the problem.

President Barack Obama told reporters last week that military leaders are angry and ashamed by recent bad news and scandal. But after years of lip service and study, it will take more than apologies to prove they are serious about fixing the self-described “crisis” of sexual assault in the armed forces.

It will take action, such as that proposed in the Military Justice Improvement Act, introduced last week by U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. This legislation would place responsibility for sexual assault investigations and punishment with military prosecutors instead of commanding officers.

The bill would complement ongoing and renewed efforts within the armed forces to increase accountability, improve responses to reported assaults and treatment of victims, and change the culture of excusing or minimizing sexual assault.

A total of 3,374 reports of sexual assault involving service members in fiscal year 2012, according to the Department of Defense, was up from 3,192 reports received the year before. But that increase tells only part of the story.

A separate DOD workplace survey reveals an estimated 26,000 active-duty service members — 12,100 women and 13,900 men — were subjected to unwanted sexual contact in 2012. Those numbers represent about 6 percent of active-duty women and just over 1 percent of active-duty men.

More than two-thirds of the female victims decided not to report the incident to a military authority. Their reasons: They didn’t want anyone to know. They felt uncomfortable making a report. They didn’t think their report would be kept confidential, according to survey responses. Only 10 percent of male victims made reports.

Removing the reporting process from the chain of command would go a long way toward ensuring complaints are handled confidentially and professionally.

Military leaders have more than a crisis in sexual assault on their hands; they have a crisis of confidence.

One that professionalizing the complaint process and protecting victims will help restore.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Two child welfare bills are heading to Gov. Terry Branstad’s desk after this week; I hope for Iowa kids’ sake he signs them.

The first is a differential response bill I wrote about back in March. It would create a dual-track system for responding to reports of possible child abuse or neglect, allowing child protection workers to work cooperatively with families in crisis when kids aren’t in imminent danger.

The way it stands now, if the Iowa Department of Human Services receives a report, they open an investigation and look for a responsible party — the “abuser.”

But often, it’s circumstances, not malice, that are to blame.

HF 415 creates a second option — a “Family Assessment Response” — that engages caregivers cooperatively and helps connect them with the services and resources they need.

This dual response could transform our child welfare and foster care system. Eighty percent of substantiated abuse reports in Iowa are for “denial of critical care,” also known as neglect.

Nearly half the states in the country have implemented some form of dual-track system. They’ve found, overwhelmingly, they’re able to keep more families intact while keeping kids as safe, if not safer, than before.

The second bill headed for Gov. Branstad’s desk would allow county attorneys, who usually represent the Department of Human Services in court cases seeking to declare children in need of assistance or to terminate a parent’s rights, to part ways with the agency when they disagree with DHS recommendations.

In those admittedly rare cases, the Iowa Attorney General’s Office would represent the agency.

The county attorney could stay involved representing the county’s perspective. Yes, it’s a little complicated.

And I’m sympathetic to concerns of folks such as Sen. Liz Mathis, also chief information officer at Four Oaks, who worry that allowing county attorneys to act as “free agents” might lead to inconsistencies, or lead them to disregard the heavy lifting that goes into a case even before it hits the courtroom.

But freeing up county attorneys would be a much-needed check on a system heavily loaded on the side of the state.

County attorneys’ primary responsibility is to their county’s residents, including those DHS-involved parents who too often can feel steamrollered by court proceedings.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen

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How was alleged kidnapper Ariel  Castro able for so long to elude police? Why weren’t the women able to escape years ago? Why didn’t neighbors or relatives suspect the three neighborhood girls were being held captive right under their noses? It seems too fantastic to be believed.

And that’s the answer, or one of the answers, to the question of how predators are able to trap and enslave victims like Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight, and untold numbers of missing girls. Most often these young, often poor, victims, are kidnapped, trafficked and forced into prostitution and other criminal activity.

Data is scarce – in fact, 2013 will be the first year the Federal Bureau of Investigation will collect and publish national trafficking statistics — but it’s believed the United States is experiencing a dramatic increase in domestic child sex trafficking as criminal networks are finding it’s profitable, and relatively risk-free, to serially abuse young runaway or “throwaway” girls.

Even though all states but Wyoming now have anti-trafficking statutes on the books, prosecutions are rare. Law enforcement agencies may be poorly trained in identifying potential victims of trafficking. Even more ignorant are the neighbors and other members of the general public who, most often, are convinced that trafficking is a crime that only happens in other cities, other countries – anywhere but here. So they don’t connect the dots when they see suspicious behavior.

That’s what investigators found just a few years ago, working on Iowa’s first human trafficking case, involving a 13-year-old kidnap victim who was forced to work in prostitution. In that case, police came face-to-face with the victim while responding to a medical call involving another woman. Even though officers interviewed the young victim, she was too drugged and terrified to ask for help. Preoccupied and untrained in the warning signs of trafficking, police didn’t recognize she needed any.

In fact, dozens of people had contact with the victim in that case, but didn’t report any suspicions to police. Why would they have? After all, that sort of thing just doesn’t happen here.

But it does happen here. It happens in Cleveland, in Oakland, in Minneapolis, in Atlanta. It happens in towns whose names you’ve never heard of.

For more information about how to identify and report suspected victims of trafficking, visit http://www.state.gov/j/tip/index.htm

The National Rifle Association’s annual meeting wraps up today in Houston, after having opened Friday before the smoke had even cleared from a Houston airport shootout.

Police say 29-year-old Carnell Moore walked into Bush International Airport on Thursday and fired a pistol into the ceiling. It wasn’t clear as of this writing whether he died by his own hand or from shots fired by federal agents. They found a fully-loaded Smith & Wesson AR-15 in a nearby suitcase. They say a suicide note suggested he had planned to kill others, but changed his mind.

“Here in the last hour, I yield to mercy when this could have turned bad,” Moore is said to have written. “Jehovah found a path to my heart, that love would conquer anger.” He wrote of a monster inside him that was getting stronger; said that while he couldn’t save himself, he could spare others, according to released passages from the note.

There was no early evidence that Moore’s actions were at all related to the conference, expected to draw 70,000 to the one-time capitol of the Republic of Texas.

That didn’t stop conservative talk show host and career conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck — keynote speaker for the conference’s “Stand and Fight” rally — from publicly speculating the man’s apparent public suicide was a big setup to demonize gun owners in order to whittle away at Second Amendment rights.

Beck, obviously clairvoyant, saw no reason to wait for facts to cloud conclusions: Moore was unemployed, depressed, convinced by someone to turn his suicide into a statement.

“If I were a journalist — let me correct that — if I were an honest journalist, I would be looking for these connections. Look for the connections of who this man is and any connection he might have to the uber-Left,” he said during a live broadcast from the George R. Brown Convention Center just hours after the shooting.

“I believe that’s probably — I shouldn’t say that,” Beck qualified. “I believe it is a very good chance that is what happened.”

I guess those ultra-Libs also must have recruited the person who shot and killed Cortez Rucker and another man on that same night in Cleveland. And the 42-year-old man who was shot and killed in Philadelphia. And whoever shot and killed a 48-year-old father who was on his way to work early the next morning just north of Houston. And maybe, even, 5-year-old Kristian Sparks, who shot and killed his 2-year-old sister, Caroline, early in the week while playing with a rifle outside their Kentucky home. I could go on.

Beck is right about one thing: It’s not a coincidence that so many people died looking down the barrel of a gun last week. Or any week.

The NRA’s incomprehensible answer? Stand and fight.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

The Iowa Supreme Court building in Des Moines.

Last week’s state Supreme Court ruling — that both spouses in a lesbian marriage should be listed on a child’s birth certificate — wasn’t just the only legally logical way the court could have come down on the issue, although it is that.

And please don’t write to tell me all about how babies are made. I aced health class back in high school. I’ve got a couple of kids of my own. I’m sure our Supreme Court justices are equally well versed in matters both bird and bee.

Still, they unanimously upheld a lower-court ruling that the state Department of Public Health should not have refused to list Melissa Gartner on the birth certificate back in September 2009 when her wife, Heather, gave birth to their child, thereby denying Melissa the parental rights and responsibilities she signed up for when she and Heather decided to become parents.

The omission meant she couldn’t approve medical treatment for their infant daughter. As the child grew, she wouldn’t be able to enroll her in school or perform those other mundane legal tasks of parenting. And if Melissa and Heather ever got a divorce, Melissa wouldn’t be obligated to support the child she helped bring into the world, if only by saying “yes.”

But what about the “real” father, you ask — the man who actually shares DNA with the child? As far as that goes, not a single thing has changed.

Before the ruling, a child’s birth certificate automatically listed the mother’s husband as the father — a guy who you know, either from health class or watching daytime soaps, isn’t always, biologically, “dad.”

Even when everyone knew for certain the father wasn’t the “father” — when a heterosexual couple became pregnant through artificial insemination — the husband-dad rule still applied.

Upshot is there are any number of us already running around with birth certificates naming parents to whom we are about as biologically related as I am to you. It doesn’t matter, because those names aren’t about DNA. They’re about a promise.

A promise to be rock and anchor, drill sergeant, counselor, teacher, mentor, for 18 years and a lifetime. A promise to be there for the doctor visits, the school conferences, the practices and games. To be there.

Who cares if the people who make that commitment are fulfilling some sort of biological destiny or if they volunteer?

Either way, it’s good.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Want to know more about climate change, but stumped about where to start?

I’d recommend the recently published book “America’s Climate Century: What climate change means for America in the 21st Century and what Americans can do about it,” by Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids.

Hogg has been active in environmental issues for a quarter century; he started working on the book last year. He’ll officially release the book on Monday at the State Capitol, with proceeds from sales at that event going to the non-profit Iowa Interfaith Power & Light.

Saturday, May 4, he’ll be signing copies at Prairie Lights in Iowa City at 2 p.m. and at New Bo Books in Cedar Rapids at 7 p.m. I got my hands on an advance copy last week.

It’s a call to action, but it’s also an evenhanded look at what we do know about climate change — a 120-page overview of the science, politics and potential that will help you get from zero to well-informed in a matter of hours.

Hogg outlines steps that anyone can take beyond “reduce, reuse, recycle.” He suggests we write letters to the newspaper and to our legislators, asking friends to do the same. That we support climate groups and disaster relief and recovery organizations. That we educate ourselves and work to spread accurate information and dispel persistent myths.

Hogg and I talked earlier this month about the misperception out there that tackling climate change would mean giving up our Xboxes and otherwise reverting back to horse-and-buggy days. The truth is, he said, we’ve made far greater sacrifices in this country than the kinds of lifestyle tweaks it would take to reverse the warming trend.

That misunderstanding is one reason Hogg said he thinks climate change deniers have their heels dug so far in, even though the science is irrefutable. The book’s got a nifty eight-page appendix containing responses to common questions raised by these “doubting Thomases,” including many this paper has run in letters to the editor responding to my recent columns.

Take that often-cited 1970s fear that we were entering a new ice age, which deniers use as proof that scientists have a poor grasp of our ever-changing climate.

Or the idea that current warming trends are natural, or caused by solar variation, or that it will be good for us or that we can adapt. Hogg refutes all these skeptics’ arguments and more. If I could make it required reading, I would.

But I’ll have to settle for a strong endorsement.

The science of and solutions to climate change may be complex, but this is not an issue about which we can afford to be ignorant. Climate change is at least as important as the issues — such as fiscal responsibility and the economy — that demand legislators’ near-constant attention.

We owe it to ourselves, our children and all the generations to come to get smarter.

l Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

(Meredith Hines-Dochterman/The Gazette)

It’s like chocolate and peanut butter, love and marriage, Abercrombie and Fitch. It should be, anyway.

If highly qualified teachers have such positive effects on student achievement, and if we’re serious about school equity and tackling achievement gaps between different demographic groups, it only makes sense to make sure highly qualified teachers are hired in schools where more kids are likely to struggle.

But that’s not what happens, as studies show (and what I’ve heard from local educators). More often, you’ll find a district’s teaching all-stars at relatively well-heeled schools.

The teachers who outperform their peers on certification exams, the teachers with more training and experience, all are more likely to be hired at schools with fewer students in poverty — those kids statistically more likely to struggle — and to stay at those desirable posts.

Now a new study suggests less-qualified teachers may be more likely assigned to work with lower-achieving students at the building level, too.

The study, published in this month’s Sociology of Education, a peer-reviewed publication of the American Sociological Association, looked at teacher qualifications and class assignments at one of the country’s largest public school districts.

They found that even within school buildings, teachers with less experience, and those who went to less-competitive colleges, were more likely to be assigned to work with lower-achieving students. Teachers who had more than 10 years experience or who had held leadership positions were much more likely to be assigned to the building’s higher-performing kids.

This was true at every grade level, researchers found, but it was especially pronounced at the middle and high schools.

If the pattern holds true for Iowa schools, we could unwittingly be reinforcing achievement gaps even as we try to erase them; could be encouraging teacher turnover, pushing new educators out before they really learn the business rather than fostering professional growth.

I wouldn’t be the first to point out that research uncovers tendencies, not destinies. These are tendencies school leaders should actively resist.

They can start by reviewing teacher assignments within their own districts. By developing a plan to match highly qualified teachers with lower-performing students and targeting less qualified teachers for extra support.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Law enforcement officers talk at the scene of a police manhunt in Watertown, Massachusetts April 19, 2013, following the shooting of a police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A police officer for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was shot to death on Thursday night at the school's Cambridge campus, touching off a manhunt for a suspect or suspects in a community on edge just days after the Boston Marathon bombing. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (UNITED STATES - Tags: CRIME LAW EDUCATION)

It was impossible to look away Friday, as police scoured Boston for the second suspect in Monday’s marathon bombing.

The city was locked down; time stood still as we tethered ourselves to televisions, refreshed and re-refreshed Web pages, wanting to know the moment there was something — anything — to know. A gripping end to an emotionally exhausting week.

Regardless of whether we’d ever stepped foot in the city, our hearts and souls have been in Beantown from the moment Monday’s bomb blasts filled our computer and TV screens.

It’s only human to feel that way when watching images of such an awful event, as Cynthia Vaske said on this week’s “Insights on Iowa” podcast. To personalize the experience as though we were there.

“We relate,” said Vaske, a social worker and EAP Manager at St. Luke’s hospital. “We feel the grief that they’re going through.” We crave answers.

One Marion man described to me how his wife reacted early Friday when she learned about the alleged bombers: “It really bothered her that people so young could be so filled with hate or rage or whatever that they could kill indiscriminately,” he wrote.

“She asked what had we as a society done to fill others with such anger, and I don’t have good answers for her.” There may well be none.

Still, thanks to cable and Internet news, there’s no limit to how deeply we can immerse ourselves in the search. Here at The Gazette, the network guys even had to ask that we not stream video of the Boston manhunt unless it was necessary for our work. So many of us were watching, we were clogging up the works. I’m sure we weren’t alone.

There’s a danger of taking human empathy too far when we hang on every word, every development, as if our own lives were in the balance.

We run the risk of identifying too much — of letting fear of isolated, extreme and faraway events rule the way we live our lives. Of applying caution too broadly. Of rushing to judgment.

Already on Friday, Sen. Chuck Grassley suggested that Senate immigration reform discussions should shift in the wake of the Boston bombing. Rep. Steve King, characteristically, put the sentiment more strongly. Others will follow, trying to fill our need for answers by dragging out old agendas. They always do.

We’ll be tempted: drawn to the idea of accepting old answers, wrong answers — any answers — in order to resolve these awful events.

We must resist.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Psychologist Bo Pourahmadi talks with an inmate in the O-unit in the mental health unit at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center at Oakdale on Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2012, in Coralville. (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)

A glimmer of hope last week for the ANCHOR Center, and for 6th Judicial District parolees and probationers whose untreated and poorly treated mental health issues have resulted in run-ins with the law.

Senate Democrats finally approved the money to open the groundbreaking Cedar Rapids residential health facility that’s been sitting empty for more than four years.

The bad news: The Senate’s full justice system budget passed on a party-line vote, with Republican senators grumbling about the $560 million price tag. The bill’s chances of passing the House unscathed are slim.

Penny-wise House Republicans should leave untouched proposed funding for the ANCHOR Center and other community-based corrections facilities in Davenport, Des Moines, Ottumwa, Sioux City and Waterloo. Allowing those facilities to operate as intended will save on expensive prison beds and keep communities safer. It’s simple math.

Cutting funding for the ANCHOR Center, specifically, would be more than foolish — it would be shameful.

Fully funded and fully staffed, the ANCHOR Center would directly address the epidemic of Iowans with mental health issues who are being warehoused in prisons because they have trouble managing their illness and can’t find the community support to help.

It would provide structure and stability for two dozen parolees and probationers whose mental health issues place them at high risk for reoffending. It would provide a critical half-step between incarceration and re-entry. It would be the first facility of its kind in the state. It’s desperately needed.

Not long ago, we were told that nearly one-third of Iowa’s prison population, thousands more on probation and parole, had been diagnosed with some form of mental illness. Now officials say that number is nearly half in prison and more than one-fourth of offenders under field supervision — 47 percent and 27 percent, respectively, according to the state Department of Corrections’ FY12 annual report. The trend won’t reverse itself.

There’s not a single state policymaker who would argue we should lock up Iowans with mental illness and throw away the key. They don’t have to.

All they have to do is continue to cut funding for programs such as the ANCHOR Center that could help.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

A farmer works in a field outside of Norway near the intersection of 33rd Avenue and 77th Street in Benton County on Saturday, April 3, 2010. (Julie Koehn/The Gazette)

The earth’s climate is changing. That isn’t a theory. It’s not controversial. It’s a fact.

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found as far back as 2007.

We also know that human activity very likely has been driving that undeniable increase in global average temperature over the past 50 years or so.

More recently, that group, which has been compiling and studying climate change research since 1988, concluded that fossil fuel consumption accounts for the majority of those human-made emissions.

The group’s 2012 report, “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation,” was the culmination of two years of research.

In it, they found statistically significant increases in heavy precipitation events in some regions and expressed “medium confidence” of climate-driven changes in flooding events — partly because there’s not a lot of data. While they found little evidence of increased tornadic and cyclone activities, they did find changes in where those storms are occurring. None of this is controversial or open to any serious type of debate.

Still, my inbox was stuffed with a good number of notes from readers responding to last week’s climate change column with expressions of disbelief.

They called climate change a “hoax.” Referred to some shadowy “global warming cabal.” I asked who they figured was doing the hoaxing, and here’s what I got in response:

“The earth has been warming for many thousands of years, long before I believe man had anything to do with it,” one reader wrote. “We believe differently on the global warming issue based on our individual analyses,” wrote another. They forwarded a column from a Forbes blogger and adjunct economics professor who belittled climate change “alarmists” without providing any scientific specifics backing up his claims. They forwarded a paper by an MIT scientist proposing that generally accepted models overstate the impact of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere.

But there’s no fair fight in playing dueling experts on this issue. As Romney told Obama: You don’t get to bring your own facts here.

All the serious scientific disagreement about climate change is about the details — not if, but when. Not whether, but how much. Not should we, but how should we work to mitigate our effect on our environment.

“I understand people might wish it was junk science or wish they could just ignore it,” Sen. Rob Hogg (D-Cedar Rapids) told me this week. “All I can say is this has been probably the most thoroughly studied scientific issue of our time.”

So why are we so reluctant to admit it? Maybe because scientific conclusions have been such a long time in coming. Hogg, who gives frequent talks about climate change as part of a grass roots group called Iowa Climate Advocates, thinks it’s also got to do with the way we think about our place in the world.

Throughout human history, nature’s always been bigger than us. A given. The framework we live in. It can be hard to believe we can affect it on such a large scale.

But we can. We are. That’s irrefutable.

“It’s a reality. It’s happening,” said Hogg. “It’s a huge threat and we just have to deal with it.”

And by “we,” Hogg means we. This might be a global issue, but it’s an Iowa issue, too.

First, we need to think carefully about how we’ll plan for future extreme weather events, biological changes and other likely effects of our changing climate.

Second, and equally important, we need to push for big, collective changes that will mitigate our impact on the atmosphere and help reverse the warming trend.

That’s where we should be focusing our attention; that’s what we need to discuss.

There is no more debating climate change. The question now is: What are we going to do about it?

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen @sourcemedia.net

Then-University of Iowa Head Coach Steve Alford prowls the sideline in the quarterfinal round of the Big Ten Tournament March 10, 2006 at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, IN.

It’s never too late to say you’re sorry.

Especially if you’re a public figure who tried to play detective, judge and jury when one of your guys was accused of sexual assault: publicly and privately trying to pressure a young female victim to drop the issue, proclaiming the accused’s innocence to anyone who would listen.

Especially if you’re Steve Alford.

Alford’s apology  for his knee-jerk defense of then-University of Iowa basketball player Pierre Pierce, accused of sexually assaulting another UI student in fall, 2002, is a watershed moment. It may have come a decade too late for that victim and this community, but it was a much-needed signal that that kind of dismissiveness and insensitivity, while never right, simply won’t be tolerated in collegiate athletics today.

The former UI basketball coach already had dodged questions about the Pierce case for more than a decade, so it’s no surprise his first instinct was to duck when it came up at a news conference announcing his new position with UCLA:

“Well, that was an instance that happened years ago at the University of Iowa,” he told reporters. “I did everything that I was supposed to do at the University of Iowa in that situation. I followed everything that I was told to do.”

His bland excuse generated considerable backlash from sports journalists and fans. It’s that heat, not a crisis of conscience, that probably deserves the credit for Alford’s about-face. That’s fine with me.

Because Alford’s apology says less about the man or the infamous UI incident than it does about how public perceptions have changed.

Did Alford actually write these words: “I instinctively and mistakenly came to his defense before knowing all the facts.” Or these: “This was inappropriate, insensitive and hurtful, especially to the young female victim involved, and I apologize for that.” Or even these: “I have learned and grown from that experience and now understand that such proclamations can contribute to an atmosphere in which similar crimes go unreported and victims are not taken seriously.”

It doesn’t matter. The real take-away here is that today, even someone like Alford understands — or will be made to understand — they can’t get by excusing or ignoring the fact that sexual assault is a serious problem on our college campuses.

Alford’s apology was a long time coming. Still, I’m glad it did.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

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REGENTS TRANSPARENCY: The state Board of Regents’ new transparency task force got off to a strong start last week. The task force is charged with recommending best practices for responding to public information requests and making public information more readily available. Task force member Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Cedar Falls, said he wants to include regents’ decision-making processes in the group’s review; Regents President Craig Lang agreed.

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LOST, NOT STOLEN: Cashew the tortoise, missing from the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque, was found last week. Museum officials initially thought the animal had been stolen, but it turns out Cashew crawled behind a wall. A review of enclosures and procedures should prevent future “great escapes.”

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VAUDT RESIGNS: We can’t blame State Auditor David Vaudt for pursuing a great career opportunity, but we’ll be sorry to see him go when he resigns in May. Vaudt has been aggressive and effective in his efforts to investigate financial improprieties by governmental entities and safeguard taxpayer funds. Vaudt also has done important work pushing state elected officials and lawmakers to adopt responsible budgeting practices.

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ANOTHER SEQUESTRATION ISSUE: Sequestration cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers budget may further delay Cedar Rapids’ flood protection efforts, according to a Gazette report. Local leaders are keeping up the fight, but more delay is putting this critical project in jeopardy.

A student works on an assignment in a "flipped" classroom at Prairie Point School in Cedar Rapids in April 2013. (image taken from KCRG-TV9 video)

When legislators struggle just to pass modest education reform proposals, transforming our public school system can seem an impossible goal. And it would be if we asked lawmakers to devise a perfect plan to remake every Iowa school into a lean, mean, 21st Century learning machine.

That plan doesn’t exist, for starters. More important, it’s the wrong approach.

Smart experts already are developing new ways of teaching that fit the needs and strengths of Iowa students. Legislators’ role is to make room for those good ideas, whenever possible, and to get out of the way when they can’t.

A recent Gazette article about algebra teachers in the College Community School District provides a perfect example. There, teachers are making more efficient use of class time by flip-flopping the traditional routine of lecture and take-home assignments. Students watch taped lectures at home and work on assignments during class. Teachers are there to offer one-on-one assistance; students can work together, rather than struggle through problems alone.

The flip-flop gives students more support in class and more flexibility in learning the material at home. Students can watch videos again, or even watch a different teacher’s explanation, until they understand the lesson. The idea came from teachers who heard about peers using “Flipped Classrooms” at other schools.

Today’s editorial provides another example: Competency-based education, which holds students responsible for mastering core concepts, not just for sitting in a classroom chair. In competency-based classrooms, teachers clearly outline what students need to know in order to pass the course. Students must demonstrate they understand the concepts — all of them — before moving on.

No more copying homework or cramming for tests. No more accepting a “D” on one test or assignment, hoping to do better on the next one. No more sitting around, daydreaming, waiting for classmates to catch up.

Last spring, I talked with students and teachers at Solon High School, where a handful of teachers were experimenting with the approach. “It really makes students own their own learning,” Solon High School Principal Nathan Wear told me back then. Students said they were more motivated; that class seemed more relevant.

It’s ideas such as these that will truly transform our schools.

They’ll come from classrooms, they’ll spread the same way a cute cat video does on YouTube — legislators don’t need to make it happen. They can’t.

“For (our parents) it was a mechanical process they had to learn … but it’s a different society now. We need to connect things,” a Solon student told me a year ago. She was talking about her competency-based classroom, but she might as well have been talking about system-wide approaches to reform.

Legislators should remember her words as they head into conference to hash out a bill. Our schools don’t need them to provide all the answers; they need resources and room so new ideas can thrive.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

The Wapsipinicon River trickles over the dam at Independence on Friday, Oct. 5, 2012. The river was flowing at a rate of 4.8 cubic feet per second on Friday morning, barely one hundredth of its normal flow in early October. The river was at its fourth-lowest flow for that date in the 80 years that records have been kept at that guage. (Orlan Love/The Gazette)

Why do we journalists do such a crummy job of covering climate change?

It’s complicated and technical, a sweeping, slow-moving issue. Not the stuff of sound bytes or short paragraphs, it can be hard to explain.

It’s not a head turner, like a fire or a scandal. It’s not local, except that it’s happening everywhere. Even here in Eastern Iowa, where years of record-breaking flooding have been followed by years of exceptional drought, the near-universally agreed upon cause of our weird weather has been paid little mind.

The Gazette’s recent archives show its guest writers who have written most of what we’ve published about the issue. I’m no exception. Although I’ve been personally concerned, I considered it an issue for a local columnist only after a public shaming by a prominent scholar.

In his talk on the University of Iowa campus last week, Columbia School of Journalism professor Todd Gitlin listed climate change as one of the top three examples of journalists failing to “connect the dots” in covering news.

Content analysis from Media Matters shows that even as extreme weather events have increased in recent years, broadcast coverage of climate change has plummeted. The big Sunday morning news shows spent more than an hour discussing climate change in 2009, the group’s analysis showed, but only 21 minutes in 2010. In 2011, they spent nine. Evening news coverage of climate change fell by 72 percent in those same years.

Here and now, the pattern holds. Just last week, yet another study was released linking global warming with extreme precipitation events. The Kinnick Stadium visitors locker room generated more ink.

If greenhouse gasses continue to climb the way they have been, we’re looking at a 20 percent to 30 percent increase in the heaviest rainfalls by the end of this century, according to researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and North Carolina State University. But the big debate here is whether college football players find the color pink to be calming or demeaning.

We can’t continue to drop the ball like this — You or me or the people we elect to handle this type of big, collective concern.

It’s not even much a matter of connecting the dots. They’re connected; the picture is clear.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Exterior view of the Captiol in Des Moines, Iowa, Tuesday Jan. 31, 2012. (Steve Pope/Freelance)

“Parties find common ground at Statehouse” was the above-the-fold announcement in Friday’s Gazette. It’s not a great day for democracy when legislative cooperation on minor items merits a banner headline.

Never mind that we’re still gridlocked on the big stuff like Medicaid expansion, property tax relief and education reform. Legislators seemed to be relieved to tell reporter James Lynch they’d been able to move anything along with bipartisan support.

“This week has been the most bipartisan week I’ve seen in three years,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, D-Des Moines, told Lynch.

It’s a blue-moon event when elected officials are able to get work done these days, seemingly at every level of government.

Over in Washington, Sen. Chuck Grassley, unhappy with what’s already on the table, has announced he’s writing his own gun control bill, thank you very much. Back in Linn County, the bell has rung on what must be the 900th round of the bald feud between county supervisors and Auditor Joel Miller. And down here in Johnson County, even civilians are getting into the spirit, with a handful of county residents pledging to plant a hog confinement next to a proposed rural subdivision that they don’t like.

What a perfect metaphor for today’s scorched-earth, my-way-or-the-highway political scene, where it’s not enough anymore to threaten to take the ball and go home if the game isn’t going your way — you have to threaten to burn down the whole field. Spray it with liquid manure. Poison the well. Describe it how you like: It stinks. And it goes against the whole purpose of having elected, decision-making bodies in the first place.

You want to get your way all the time? Run for office in North Korea. Here, you have to compromise. That’s not weakness or failure, it’s life in a diverse society. It’s how this big, messy experiment moves forward.

I think former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson said it best when he told the L.A. Times last week: “Let me tell you something, pal: If you are a legislator and you can’t learn to compromise an issue without compromising yourself, get out of the business.”

But the rest of us have a responsibility here, too. At the end of the day, it’s voters who set the tone. We’ve got to call this gladiator mentality what it is: unproductive. Undemocratic. Ridiculous.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

While state legislators tried to craft meaningful revisions to state anti-bullying laws last week, a small group of conservative Christian pastors and their supporters dragged out a tired drum.

For the second consecutive year, the Family Leader went banging on about the Governors Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth — an 8-year-old annual anti-bullying event.

Again, they tried to spin the Iowa Safe Schools conference (slogan: Protect Kids. Stop Bullies) into some kind of recruitment tool for Sodom and Gomorrah. Again, they held a news conference trying to shame Gov. Terry Branstad into asking organizers to remove the word “governor” from the name.

Last year, Branstad brushed them off — a move that seemed gracious at the time. The group’s repeat request called for a more forceful response, not the tepid explanation his spokesman Tim Albrecht offered last week.

“It is our understanding that this is a private conference,” Albrecht told a reporter, adding that it was former Gov. Tom Vilsack who lent his title to the cause. His sidestep made meaningless Branstad’s repeat refusal to ask Iowa Safe Schools to strike the word “governor” from the conference name. But it does provide a perfect case study showing why it’s so hard to eradicate bullying even though nearly everyone agrees that it’s wrong.

Branstad, a grown man with a politician’s thick skin, passed up a chance to show he’s willing to stand up for Iowa’s kids when it matters. He ducked rather than draw fire from name-callers. How can he expect kids to do any better?

Legislators can tinker as much as they want with the law, trying to put into practice ideas from the governor’s (yes, this governor’s) anti-bullying summit held last fall. They can hold parents responsible for kids’ bullying behavior or give schools the power to enforce standards off school property. They can train teachers from here to the moon and back. It won’t matter all that much. Because at the end of the day, we won’t beat bullying until everyone holds the line against intolerance. Not on paper, but in fact.

Branstad messed up last week by failing to stand against bullying. But it’s not too late for him to do the right thing.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

The weather may be warmer, but last week’s Sunshine Week came and went with a fraction of the attention paid to a single temperate day. Sunshine Week is a time to trumpet the importance of transparency in government. But this year, that trumpet was hard to hear.

There were some highlights that I should mention:

The city of Iowa City and Johnson County received “Sunny Awards” from a national group for making public information easily available on their websites.

The Sunshine Review, a national non-profit promoting government transparency, also honored Davenport, Scott County, the Sioux City Community School District and West Des Moines Community Schools.

The Iowa Board of Regents last week named the members of a new Transparency Task Force, which will advise them about best practices for making information accessible and handling public information requests.

The Des Moines Register ran an interesting series about how Iowa’s 2-year-old “shall issue” concealed-weapons permit law is panning out.

It took months for that newspaper to collect and analyze copies of denied applications for permits to carry weapons. Two county sheriffs said they’d destroyed the public documents — one said because he didn’t need the record and another because he said he didn’t want to “be responsible” for it, according to the Register’s account.

I hope there were other Sunshiney items worth mentioning. If you know of one, please drop me a line.

Of course, it’s not as if journalists wait until mid-March to peek into the dusty halls of government. Good reporters use their (and your) rights under the Freedom of Information Act all the time. Earlier this year, Gazette sports reporter Scott Dochterman used the right to public information to take a closer look at the University of Iowa Athletics Department’s books.

That same month, Gazette reporter Gregg Hennigan sifted through hundreds of emails between Iowa City school district and area city officials just to find out if there had been any behind-the-scenes dealings in crafting the district’s contentious diversity policy. The answer: Not really, at least as far as the record shows.

Collecting and analyzing those public records took a lot of time, but it was hardly a fool’s errand. It’s just as important to know, and to note it, when public bodies handle the public’s business responsibly and openly as it is when they don’t.

Sunshine Week isn’t about playing gotcha. It’s a reminder that it’s not enough to gripe about “those clowns” in — take your pick — the courthouse, the county administration building, the legislature or on Capitol Hill. We’ve got rights and responsibilities as citizens in an open society. We’ve got to pay attention.

Public business should be conducted in the light of day — that idea’s fundamental to the very structure of this nation. We have to play our part.

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Leave it to the U.S. Census to tell us what we already sort of figured: Iowa’s rural areas are declining and our cities are on the rise.

According to the bureau’s latest population estimates, 65 of our 99 counties lost population between 2011 and 2012.

More than half of Iowa counties recorded more deaths than births in the last two years, according to state data center figures.

Take Poweshiek County, just a couple clicks west of here, where 423 babies were born between April 1, 2010, and July 1, 2012, and 494 county residents passed away.

On the domestic front, 116 more Poweshiek County residents moved out of the county than in during that two-year window.

What little growth the county did have came from people moving in from other countries — a net increase of 13 people, to be exact.

That’s par for the state, experts told reporters this week when the numbers came out. Iowa’s population bumps tend to be from babies born here or international immigration.

So you’ve got to wonder what those 13 new Poweshiekans thought when they picked up the Montezuma Record on Thursday and read an article, titled “Who Gets the Big Bucks,” noting how many odd-sounding names there were among high-earning employees at the University of Iowa.

Lots of names from Asia and the Near East, the author noted. Not so many Smiths and Joneses. And this observation: “there are eleven Ahmeds to only 30 Browns.”

“Hyphenated, unspellable and oriental names may get you the big bucks,” the story reportedly continued. I’m taking all this from news accounts — and boy, are there plenty — the Record’s not online.

Still, enough copies of the printed paper somehow managed to appear for every legislator in the state House of Representatives last week, if reports are to be believed.

Let’s leave aside the question of what might be a proper ratio of Ahmeds to Browns in any given situation; the Record’s wording was more than dumb.

It’s a willful ignorance that pretends to make distinctions between true Iowans and invaders with funny names.

He had the list in front of him — there are a lot of Iowans named Ahmed, a lot of Iowan Nguyens and Sukoviches. They’re making important contributions.

If we’re lucky, there will be many more to come.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

The Iowa Department of Human Services office in Anamosa. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette)

State legislators soon will have a chance to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to family values. A House bill passed committee last week that would keep more Iowa families together while keeping children safe.

Eight of every 10 substantiated reports of child maltreatment in Iowa are cases of “denial of critical care” — a catchall category that can include medical neglect, failure to provide adequate food or shelter or other care necessary to the child’s health and well being.

Passing HF 415 will help keep kids from being unnecessarily removed from their families, and make sure caregivers won’t be labeled child abusers when they’re really just struggling to provide resources for their families, the bipartisan bill’s co-sponsor, Assistant Majority Leader Rep. Joel Fry (R-Osceola), told me this week.

The way the law is now, when the Department of Human Services receives a report of possible child abuse or neglect, they open an investigation. HF 415 would create a second option, a “Family Assessment Response,” when a child is not in imminent danger.

Under that second track, child protection workers would work cooperatively with families, connecting them with services and resources to better provide for the child. This dual-track system is commonly called “differential response” and it’s used in about half the states in the country.

“Under differential response, you don’t come into the system as a suspect,” as expert Joel Rosch, Senior Research Scholar and Policy Liaison for the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University, has said. Or, as Fry, a foster dad and a social worker, put it to me last week: “We’re setting them up to be successful.”

For nearly a year now, at legislators’ request, an Iowa work group has been studying the idea, and its findings are nothing but positive:

It found that not only did FARs keep children as safe as traditional approaches do, they reduced foster care placements and re-referrals for child abuse and neglect, especially among poor and minority families. It found that FARs created a greater community understanding of families’ needs, and communities stepped up — helping families access housing, food, transportation and other resources.

Families and child protection workers said they liked the collaborative family assessment response approach. It costs about the same as a traditional investigative approaches. There really is no downside.

And the benefits to keeping more Iowa kids safe at home are incalculable: For the children, their families and our communities as a whole.

Foster care can be a lifesaving intervention, but removing a child from his or her family is a traumatic event that can echo for generations. It should be a last resort.

By passing HF 415, legislators have a chance to show their concern for children and their respect for Iowa families.

They have a chance to make a change that will improve the lives of children now, and for generations to come.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

You might not know the name Lori Bears. She wasn’t a politician or a captain of industry. She wasn’t a celebrity. She never clamored for attention for herself. But when she passed away this week at age 50, Iowa City lost a citizen whose contributions easily match those prominent locals whose names top council agendas, public buildings or fancy letterheads.

Among many of Lori’s contributions, she served on the Arc of Johnson County’s board of directors, the Johnson County Mental Health/Developmental Disabilities Planning Council and the Iowa Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Commission. She was a dedicated Democrat — first, last and always at Johnson County central committee meetings and events. In a single year (1998, to be exact), Lori’s unflagging advocacy earned her an Iowa City Human Rights Commission honor and Arc of Johnson County’s Bill Sackter Citizenship Award.

But it wasn’t her resume that made Lori stand out, it was her generosity. Her sense of humor. Her refusal to give up.

Lori knew full well she sometimes had to fight harder than most in order to be taken seriously. Like the time she stepped forward to serve on Iowa City’s Housing and Community Development Commission and then-mayor Naomi Novick wanted to pass, saying the work “would be very difficult” for Lori, who had an intellectual disability. A lot of people were outraged by that, but Lori took it in stride, remembers her longtime friend David Leshtz.

That doesn’t mean she walked away — Lori filed a complaint with the state Civil Rights Commission. She wanted council members to know they’d messed up in thinking her disability was a liability.

“I want them to be better educated,” she told reporters. “I want them to have a better attitude.” She ended up serving on that commission, and serving it well.

Lori had a nose for sniffing out ignorance and a knack for exposing prejudices.

“She was ready for action and she wanted to do something about it,” as Leshtz remembers.

She was quiet, kind and funny, and she had a spine of iron. She held this town accountable. She might never have been famous, but she’ll certainly be missed.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Pat Jitramontree (right), 17, adjusts the tassel of fellow graduate Jamie Grant, 18, both of Iowa City, at the West High School graduation ceremony Friday, May 28, 2004 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City.

Nine out of every 10 students who walked into Iowa’s public high schools in 2008 walked out last spring as graduates, according to figures released last week by the State Department of Education.

The state’s 2012 four-year graduation rate — 89.26 percent, to be exact — was up nearly a percentage point over the year before, when Iowa already led the country in overall graduation rates. That’s good news.

But another figure got lost in all of the back slapping last week: The stubborn gap between Iowa’s high-performing and lower-performing subgroups.

Because while 91 percent of the Class of 2012’s Caucasian kids graduated on time, only 77 percent of Hispanic kids, 74 percent of black kids and 73 percent of American Indian kids did.

The four-year graduation rate for English language learners was 74 percent. For students with disabilities, it was 74 percent. Only 80 percent of students of low socioeconomic status graduated with their class. In fact, at least one group lists Iowa among one of the worst states in the country when it comes to graduation rates for black male students, specifically.

Iowa’s “conspicuously large” gap between graduation rates for black and white male students was recently highlighted in the 2012 Schott Foundation for Public Education’s “Urgency of Now” report. The group is concerned with educational equity and that gap earned Iowa a ranking of 48 — better only than New York and the District of Columbia — on their list.

The Schott Foundation crunches graduation numbers a little differently than the Iowa DOE — which uses a system of unique identifiers to track high school kids who switch schools before graduation. The data in their most recent report is from the 2009-10 school year — old news compared with the state DOE figures released last week.

But look back at the state’s graduation figures from the same year, and the gap looks about the same. Why does the gap persist? That should be the headline.

There is no one reason, but there are some institutional factors we know are in play here in Iowa as they are across the country. The Schott Foundation calls it “pushout and lockout”: Students of color are more likely to face harsher punishments for misbehavior, to be “pushed out” of classrooms by suspension or expulsion.

They also are more likely to be “locked out” of schools with more resources — from student-centered learning programs and early childhood education, from advanced placement courses and programs for gifted children.

Those are dynamics we can change. We owe it to our students.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Dan Kehl, CEO of Riverside Casino (at podium), announces a $4 million bid to build a water park with bowling alley and event space on the property that was recently announced as the desired location for a casino during a press conference on Friday, March 1, 2013, in Cedar Rapids. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

It’s like our own little version of Clash of the Titans, a battle of “rich people vs. rich people,” as at least one person quipped when they heard Friday’s offer.

Riverside Casino owner Dan Kehl’s announcement — that he would build a $30 million riverfront water park and event center in Cedar Rapids if Linn County voters shut down Tuesday’s casino vote — had us mere mortals buzzing.

Which would we rather have, a water park or casino? KCRG-TV9 asked people to weigh in on Twitter. Responses were mixed. Some thought a water park would bring more visitors, others thought a casino would make more money. Some liked the family friendliness of Kehl’s idea. Others weren’t convinced.

I’m not a Linn County voter and I don’t have strong feelings about casinos. Anyway, as Just Say No Casino spokesman Todd Henderson said last week during our Insights on Iowa podcast, Tuesday’s vote isn’t a referendum on gaming, it’s a vote about a specific proposal. I don’t have a horse in that race. But Kehl does. He estimates a Cedar Rapids casino would eat about 30 percent of his business. Hence, the generous offer.

Already in the lead-up to Tuesday’s election, we’ve listened to grand promises and dire predictions about what will happen if voters say yes, knowing full well the reality will fall somewhere in between. We’ve had the push polls and character attacks we’ve come to expect in any election with stakes higher than choosing a high school homecoming court.

We’ve been bombarded by TV ads bankrolled by moneyed interests and featuring “regular folks” trying to persuade us to their cause. Heck, Kehl already sank more than a half-million dollars into the Just Say No campaign — we hardly raised an eyebrow.

Friday, we were introduced to a new campaign tactic — the thinly veiled bribe. We’ll find out soon enough how many voters are buying.

And I can’t help but wonder what voters would have said if they’d been asked in the first place what the city should do with that bit of land down on First Street NW. If they’d had a chance to weigh in on the idea of a casino — any casino — not just one group’s proposal.

We hear a lot these days about governments picking winners and losers. I guess it’s voters’ turn.

To an outside observer with nothing at stake, Tuesday’s vote is looking less and less like a referendum, and more like choosing sides.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

In last Sunday’s column, I talked about the frustrating lack of resources for The ANCHOR Center, a groundbreaking residential facility that would directly address the problem of inmates with mental illness in our state’s prisons. In the third edition of The Gazette opinion staff’s Insights on Iowa podcast, launched this week, you can hear more about The ANCHOR Center and treatment courts from 6th Judicial District Department of Correctional Services director Gary Hinzman:

Correctional officer Tom Bradfield monitors inmates in the mental health unit at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center at Oakdale on Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2012, in Coralville. (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)

More than 30 percent of the inmates in Iowa’s prisons have some form of serious mental illness. Many thousands more are on probation or parole. Last month, State Department of Corrections Medical Director Dr. Harbans Deol called corrections “the largest mental health institute in Iowa.”

But only a fraction of those offenders are what we would consider true lawbreakers. Most are Iowans who have fallen through the cracks.

“Most times, what we’re seeing is that people with mental health issues don’t wish to be criminals, they just do things that make them criminals,” Gary Hinzman, director of the 6th Judicial District Department of Correctional Services, told me this week. “If you can correct the mental health issues, you can often set them back on a path to good citizenship.”

So why has a groundbreaking DOC residential mental health facility been standing empty for four years? Where’s the $2.3 million it would take to staff it? Not in Gov. Terry Branstad’s proposed fiscal 2014-15 budget. It’s becoming an all-too familiar omission.

The ANCHOR Center was built to house 26 of the 6th District’s parolees and probationers whose criminal activity is rooted in mental health issues, and to provide outpatient services for 150 more. It would have been — still would be — the first facility of its kind in Iowa.

But its opening was delayed when funding went dry in early 2009, in the thick of the recession. Back then, Hinzman was hopeful that it was just a temporary setback. “I think we just have to ride out the current financial crisis,” he told me then. Fast forward four years, and funding for those residential beds still hasn’t come through. Today, only outpatient services are being run from the ANCHOR Center.

“We’re really missing a component where we might be able to bring somebody in from the community when we see that they’re really coming out of structure and stabilize them for a period of time, make sure they’re safe and the community’s safe,” Hinzman said.

PUBLIC SAFETY

Funding the ANCHOR Center’s beds would stabilize two dozen of the district’s most high-needs parolees and probationers with mental health issues, the ones who pose the greatest potential threat to our community. It would fill a now-empty space between supervision and incarceration, providing structure and helping facilitate their successful re-entry to the community.

“I think it would have a pretty good impact on recidivism, and I think it would have a greater impact on public safety,” Hinzman said. If only the people holding the purse strings would listen.

When Gov. Branstad visited with The Gazette about a month ago, he was glad to talk about the reduction in prison counts under his watch. The Board of Parole’s aggressive approach helped reduce the state’s prison population by about 800 inmates from fiscal 2011 to 2012 — a nearly 24 percent increase in the number of parolees. Branstad expects another increase this year.

“That’s the equivalent of a whole new prison that they’ve reduced,” Branstad said in our meeting. He praised community corrections as an important step between prison and the street. But when asked about funding unused and underused community corrections facilities such as the ANCHOR Center, Branstad was much more eager to point the finger backward at his predecessor than to talk about the future.

“The big problem is they made budget decisions without knowing, without having the money to operate it,” he told us. “We don’t operate that way. We just don’t.”

Branstad’s right to crow about reducing the burden on our still-overcrowded prisons, and $2 million is nothing to be spent lightly.

CRITICAL SERVICE

But it’s pound-foolish to let the ANCHOR Center languish while our prisons fill up with offenders whose criminal behavior is a symptom, not the problem.

It should go without saying, most people with mental health issues don’t pose any danger to society. But it’s irresponsible not to follow through on funding when we’re so close to adding a critical service to help keep our communities safe from those who do. One only has to look back at tragic incidents in Parkersburg and near Sigourney to know the worst that can happen.

The Department of Corrections isn’t supposed to be in the mental health business, but there’s no denying the current reality.

State leaders need to face reality and give the DOC the tools it needs.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Food waits to be purchased in the Melrose Dining Room at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013 in Iowa City. (Brian Ray/The Gazette)

I’m biased, I’ll admit it, but I won’t let that stop me from pointing out a couple recent examples of the power of good journalism.

It’s high time for a little good news about the news.

So much of what we hear these days about “The Media” is negative — the term itself can seem a slur.

It’s true, the industry’s earned a fair share of the criticism as it’s struggled with very public and often-ugly crises of identity and liquidity; trying to figure out what professional journalism even looks like in this information age.

But while more than a few of us have been tempted to add “NSFW” to our headlines in order to get a little Web attention, two of Gazette reporter Erin Jordan’s investigations provide perfect case studies in how good journalism leads to meaningful real-world changes. That, my friends, is what journalism is all about.

Back in 2011, Erin wrote a series of stories about pregnant inmates in Iowa prisons — an admittedly small population. She talked with one Iowa inmate, serving time for non-violent offenses, who said that while she wasn’t restrained during labor or immediately after, she had been regularly restrained throughout her pregnancy and again as soon as a day after giving birth.

Shortly after, the Department of Corrections began reviewing its policy on restraining pregnant inmates. The revised policy, which took effect last month, explicitly prohibits corrections officials from using restraints on inmates who are 22 weeks or farther along in their pregnancies, unless they pose an immediate security risk.

More recently, Erin looked into how much food was being wasted at The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. She found the hospital threw away $181,000 worth of prepared food last year, alone. Quickly, hospital officials announced changes to reduce that waste, including cooking in smaller batches, donating some extras to a local non-profit and composting the rest.

Before Erin’s investigations, few of us had ever considered how best to balance inmate health and public safety. Few of us had wondered with any seriousness about where cafeteria food goes at the end of the day. Her stories shed light into those dark corners.

She’s not alone, I’m lucky to work with a lot of talented journalists. I  know too many more who now are looking for work.

Important work.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Buying a new car? Check the manufacturer’s suggested retail price.

Want your kitchen remodeled? Get an estimate of the cost.

Before you sign your name on a mortgage, the lender must describe to the penny every charge you’re on the hook for.

There are even laws demanding funeral directors be upfront and transparent about their fees.

But if you have to go to the hospital, good luck figuring out what they’re going to charge you — or what a fair price even is. If you can think of any other product and service where pricing is so confusing — so seemingly arbitrary — I’d like to hear about it.

A team of researchers with University of Iowa Health Care and Iowa City VA Health Care System set out to learn what it would cost for a healthy 62-year-old woman to pay for a routine hip replacement. They called two hospitals in every state and the District of Columbia, plus the 20 top-ranked orthopedic hospitals in the country, pretending to be calling on behalf of their uninsured grandmother, who wanted to pay for the procedure herself.

And even though there’s been plenty of talk about the need for greater transparency in health care costs, four out of 10 of the top-ranked hospitals — 36 percent of the surveyed hospitals, overall — couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give a cost estimate for the common procedure.

Nine of the top-ranked hospitals were able to provide complete pricing information, but only 10 of the study’s randomly selected hospitals could, according to findings published this month by the Journal of the American Medical Association’s internal medicine publication. For three of the top-rated hospitals and about half of the rest, researchers had to track down separate estimates from physicians to get a total idea of the cost.

A lot of hospitals seemed confused by the question, researchers reported. They bounced the inquiry around from department to department. The figures they eventually came up with: Anywhere from $11,000 to $126,000. Quite a spread.

Researchers couldn’t find any rhyme or reason for the discrepancies. The cost at top-rated hospitals ranged from $12,500 to $105,000. The other hospitals quoted prices from $11,100 to $125,798. Medicare and large insurers usually pay between $10,000 and $25,000 for similar surgeries, researchers note. A bit of cost difference makes sense — even a fast-food hamburger costs more in some places. But $100,000 bump?

Of course, patients always could shop around for the best price — if they’ve got a lot of time on their hands and are willing to travel for a deal. But requiring true cost transparency seems a much more efficient way to bring some sanity to health care pricing and protect the vulnerable consumers who are paying. Just as it does in nearly any other purchase that we make.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad introduces Debi Durham of Sioux City as the new Iowa Economic Development director in November 2010 in Urbandale. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Iowans already angry over a fertilizer plant’s record-breaking tax break were ready to blow their stack after learning the company’s sibling stands accused of defrauding the U.S. government.

Already, critics were saying the more than $200 million in state and local tax credits was too much to pay for the much-needed jobs in Lee County. Some call the incentives offered to Iowa Fertilizer Company — a subsidiary of Cairo-based Orascom Construction Industries — the state’s worst economic development deal to date.

It’s certainly the largest, enough to raise the question of how high we want to bid in today’s economic bachelor’s auction where job-hungry states fight over a few good-looking employers’ attentions.

The Associated Press’ recent revelation — that another Orascom subsidiary stands accused of improperly securing $332 million in U.S. funding for construction projects in Egypt — raises another important question. Just who are we trying to woo?

Last week, the AP reported the details of the lawsuit, filed in 2004. In it, the feds say a Virginia-based Orascom subsidiary and another U.S. company lied about the involvement of a third partner — an Egyptian company — to meet U.S. nationality requirements for companies bidding on U.S.-funded water and wastewater projects in Egypt.

The lawsuit is ongoing, and Orascom denies the allegations. The Iowa Fertilizer Company wasn’t required to disclose the lawsuit and so they didn’t. You can even argue it doesn’t matter, that these two small pieces of a vast multinational corporation probably have little to do with each other. But it’s troubling the Iowa leaders who signed off on the tax deal didn’t know the lawsuit existed at all.

Economic Development Authority Director Debi Durham’s explanation doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence:

“It did not come up in our due diligence,” she told the AP. “But you’re talking about a global corporation that has numerous subsidiaries. I’m not sure how anyone would have found that.”

The AP did — by taking a look at Orascom’s annual report. That sounds like Due Diligence 101.

It’s exactly the kind of homework you should do before getting into any long-term relationship, and it makes me wonder:

Are state leaders too head-over-heels for big development deals? What happens when the honeymoon’s over?

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(Photos courtesy of my Aunt Rosie)

I was five years old when Paul Harvey stood up at the national convention and first delivered the “So God Made a Farmer” speech to a bunch of FFA kids.

The job description he laid out should have been enough to send them all running: Hundred-hour workweeks; make-do lifestyle; the kind of humble, hardscrabble simplicity that sounds a lot more noble in novels and speeches than it feels in real life.

Harvey was no farmer, of course. No more than I was. He was a big-time Chicago radio man who traveled in big circles. Friends with people like Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover and the preacher Billy Graham. I was just one grandchild among many clamoring for a chance to drive the ancient pickup, to light the match and burn the trash, “helping” grandpa out in the fields or in the machine shed until he shooed us away.

Still, Harvey’s voice was as much a part of that place as the outbuildings. We’d hear him over the airwaves on the old clock radio in the kitchen, or wedged between my grandparents on the bench seat of their Ford LTD, the springs poking the backs of our legs as we bounced along the gravel road to town.

My grandpa would be wearing a clean pair of Key Imperials. Grandma’s wardrobe was more varied. But likely as not, she’d have on something brightly colored, probably with flowers — proud gladiolus or floppy peonies or spiky lilies like the blooms that spilled out of her famous flower beds.

Even then, Harvey painted an idealized picture of rural America. Already, my grandparents’ world was changing. The big barn, the hog house and chicken coop stood empty. The hired men and hired girls long gone. In the fall, my grandma still gathered hundreds of apples and rolled crust after crust for her pies. But there were no more starving harvesting crews to feed. Just her family, large as it was, and those neighbors still in the habit of visiting.

Their numbers dwindled as the farms grew larger. The smaller operators were too busy for pie and chitchat, having taken on part-time jobs for the insurance or just to make ends meet. To support their “farming habit” they told each other, making a joke of an ugly truth. Over in town, the buildings emptied, too. The hardware store, the grocer, then — the coffin’s final nail — the school. Ghost towns, empty during the day while everyone went off to work or learn their lessons somewhere else.

We Iowans all have our own versions of this story. Still we thrilled to the still photos of Dodge’s Super Bowl ad last week; felt our hearts hum to the purposeful tune of Harvey’s words. We couldn’t help it. It spoke to deep-held beliefs about who we are.

There’s nothing wrong with respecting, even revering, hard work and the values of simplicity and community that got us where we are today. But today’s small farmers need more than sainthood — they need a chance at preserving their livelihood. A chance at passing on more than a set of romantic notions to future generations.

We aren’t kids anymore. We can’t just wander up to the farmhouse when we’re tired and in need of a grandmother’s coddling or cooking.

We can’t tear back out again to play around with our rural heritage when it suits us, poking our heads in old outbuildings and playing pretend. We can’t listen with only half an ear as we duck into the barn, testing the boards in the haymow as, somewhere back in the distance a grandma calls out to warn us:

Be careful. That old floor isn’t all that stable any more.

Watch that you don’t fall through.

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Foster Grandparent Kay DiMarco, 95, left, helps Lily Castle learn words Wednesday, Januar 9, 2008 at Newman Catholic Elementary School in Mason City, Iowa.(AP Photo/The Globe Gazette,Jeff Heinz)

I’m a sucker for efficient solutions. That’s why I’m such a fan of Children of Promise’s Foster Grandparent program.

The federally funded and locally operated program connects volunteers aged 55 and older with younger children in need of extra care and attention.

Last year, 48 Foster Grandparents logged in more than 25,000 hours. They worked with 225 children at 36 schools, Head Start/Early Head Start Centers and child development centers in Linn, Johnson and Jones counties, according to program organizers.

They helped the kids with literacy and social skills. They were a stable, comforting classroom presence. And they took a big load off teachers’ shoulders by spending lots of one-on-one time with youngsters on important skills.

After working with a Foster Grandparent, the youngest day care kids were more engaged, organizers tell me. The older Head Start kids (aged 2-6) had longer attention spans, were better able to follow directions and accomplish tasks.

The elementary school children were much more engaged in reading — the cornerstone to school success. But the kids and their teachers weren’t the only ones to benefit.

In addition to the pride of making such a difference, and the purposefulness of staying active and involved in the community, Foster Grandparent volunteers received a tax-free stipend for their time — a little something to help keep up with rising costs and maintain their independence. It’s a classic case of win-win-win. My favorite.

Unfortunately, program organizers say if more volunteers don’t sign up before the end of March, we might lose that federal funding — and the Foster Grandparent program — forever.

They need men and women aged 55 or older, whose annual income isn’t much more than 200 percent of the poverty level ($22,340), and are willing to volunteer anywhere from 15-40 hours a week.

Volunteers receive a tax-free stipend of $2.65 per hour, reimbursement for transportation costs and a meal on the days that they serve. They also get the chance to make a difference in their community. To change a kid’s life for the better.

All you need to bring is patience and a love of kids. They’ll teach you the rest.

For more information, contact Gina Tarullo at 319-730-1214 or email cciafostergrandparents@gmail.com

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Exterior view of the Captiol in Des Moines, Iowa, Tuesday Jan. 31, 2012. (Steve Pope/Freelance)

Only a few of the lobbying groups following state legislators back to Des Moines this month are likely to see their efforts pay off.

There are a lot of people in this state. A lot of interests, sometimes conflicting, clamoring for lawmakers’ time and attention. But I can’t think of a group’s legislative agenda more deserving of that attention than that of Iowa’s Foster Care Youth Councils.

These are kids who’ve personally been involved in the state child-protective system and who now represent their peers. Kids who know too well what it’s like to be an afterthought. To be left out or left behind. And they’re not asking for the moon here, no seven- or eight-figure incentives, no sweetheart deals.

They want state-funded emergency shelter beds close to home, so that at-risk youths have ready alternatives to homelessness and unsafe living conditions. So they can stay close to siblings, other family members and community ties.

They want resources so every foster child, every child at the Iowa Juvenile Home and the State Training School, and those who were adopted at age 16 or older, have help starting life on his or her own. Because without the help of services such as the Iowa Aftercare Services Network, Preparation for Adult Living Job Corps, too many young adults turned loose after being in the system falter when they should be learning to fly.

They want smoother transitions for kids whose out-of-home placements mean they have to change school districts. The ability to open enroll or get full credit for the classes they’ve taken. To participate in extracurricular activities and stay on track for graduation.

They want the state to give relatives an honest shot at taking care of their own family members who must be removed from their parents, and for those kin placements to have equal financial, medical and other supports as foster parents do, without having to jump through so many hoops. Because even though relative and kin placements are demonstrably better for kids than non-relative foster care placements, kin typically are eligible for less than half the financial assistance, placing undue hardship on families who take in their own.

And they want the state to do more to help victims of domestic human trafficking — kids in “the system” are often targets for traffickers — get their lives back on track after they’ve been derailed by their horrendous experiences with kidnapping, coercion and abuse.

These are modest requests well within legislators’ power and state budget restraints. These are considerations most Iowa kids take for granted. That Iowa’s foster and adopted kids would have to ask for them in the first place is more than a little shameful. Legislators should not make them ask again.

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I’ve been confused by the fusion of two entirely separate issues: The new revenue purpose statement for Iowa City schools and the school board’s proposed “diversity policy.”

I figured the lumping of the two at forums and in conversation was just a case of bad timing. Both are set to be settled Tuesday evening. Polls close on the RPS special election at 8 p.m. The diversity policy is scheduled for a final board vote just a couple hours before that, but that’s where the similarities end.

It should have been noncontroversial, if not a no-brainer, for voters to give the district permission to borrow against future sales tax money earmarked for infrastructure needs in order to catch up on a backlog of the same.

But previous conversations about educational equity — specifically, about how to even out the district’s horribly lopsided enrollments of kids living in poverty — have always ended up a mess.

The district’s parents are generally supportive of school equity, but they also love their neighborhood schools. It’s a puzzle that’s seemed as if it could only be solved by picking up and rearranging all the district’s neighborhoods. After all, that’s where the segregation starts.

Proximity or diversity, that’s been the choice for a long time now. So you can’t really blame parents for assuming the proposed diversity policy is the final move in a zero-sum game.

But that’s where the two odd-bedfellow issues, strangely, meet.

I hadn’t thought of it that way until I talked with Superintendent Steve Murley last week. He pointed out that if the RPS passes, giving the district the ability to quickly build and open new elementary school buildings, balancing enrollments of students eligible for free- and reduced-price lunch could happen a lot more naturally as enrollment boundaries are, necessarily, redrawn.

“I think sometimes they look at the diversity policy and think the sky is falling,” he said.

But when Borlaug Elementary was built and Roosevelt Elementary was closed, they managed, with plenty of scratch paper and lots of public input, to redraw school boundaries that kept kids local and brought free- and reduced-lunch enrollments in nearby elementaries that had ranged from 15 percent to 56 percent to somewhere in the 20s — with a gap of 9 percent between the lowest and highest, compared to 40 previously.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty painless, Murley said — a whole lot better than the nightmare busing scenarios that have many district parents so worried. And if the RPS passes and the district can fast-track new, much-needed, elementary schools, we can expect similar processes and results.

I know it’s strange to think that the district’s proposed diversity policy could be implemented without compromising the neighborhood school setup that so many parents hold dear. But by letting the district borrow ahead to build now, voters set themselves up for a win-win.

So those who have vowed to use their vote in the latter to show their displeasure with the former should consider the opposite: That same vote could make implementing policy a whole lot easier.

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Iowa National Guard troops. (David Scrivner/SourceMedia Group)

After Sept. 11, 2001, then-Cedar Rapids Jefferson senior Amanda Irish knew she would enlist.

She’d been thinking about college, but also about old concepts of duty and sacrifice (she was reading “The Red Badge of Courage” at the time, she remembers). The choice was clear.

“Somebody had to stand up to defend this country,” she told me Thursday. “I was as good as anyone else.”

Irish spent four years as a U.S. Marine, training Marines and sailors to defend against nuclear, biological and chemical attack. “I would have enlisted in infantry if I could have,” she told me. As things stood, that combat arms job was as close as she could get.

Irish, now 28 and a University of Iowa pre-med student, never went overseas but she knew plenty of women who did. She dismisses the traditional reasons for excluding women from combat positions just as quickly as you can list them:

“Isn’t that silly,” she said about the idea that men are somehow more expendable than women.

“The Spartans fought side-by-side with their lovers,” she said of the romantic entanglements coed combat units might allow.

“I think women understand what they’re getting into,” she said, throwing a fire blanket over any other possible objection.

The hands that are wringing after military leaders lifted the ban on women in combat last week aren’t those that can execute a proper salute. The people who know — like Irish, her fellow veterans and those still in service — see no reason not to allow qualified women to serve in combat positions.

Not all servicewomen will likely be suited for those jobs, or even want to fill them. But those who can and do should have an even chance. For years, women already have been in the line of fire — as members of Lioness and Female Engagement Teams, in Forward Support Companies, as drivers and other “non-combat” personnel caught across increasingly blurry battle lines.

As of 2011, more than 150 servicewomen had died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Service Women’s Action network. Women made up nearly 15 percent of the total active U.S. military force — 20 percent of the reserves new recruits — yet they’ve been excluded from 20 percent of active-duty jobs.

The ban has cost servicewomen honors and promotions, pay and recognition. SWAN has called the military’s combat exclusion policy “one of the last remaining institutional glass ceilings for women.”

Lifting the ban doesn’t represent any kind of terrifying culture shift. It’s a reflection of reality. The folks in our armed services know that already. It’s about time the rest of us recognized it, military and civilian alike.

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Members of the Crow Wing County Chapter of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life march in sub-zero temperatures on South 6th Street in Brainerd, Minn., Tuesday, Jan 22, 2013 on the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in the United States. (AP Photo/Brainerd Dispatch, Steve Kohls)

On the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it can seem as if little has changed. The protests and counter protests are familiar sights. The talking points are old news. The signs, themselves, could be on loan from a museum: Stop Abortion Now. Keep Abortion Legal. Same as it ever was.

A generation after the landmark Supreme Court ruling, the lines in the sand between pro-choice and pro-life camps seem as firmly drawn as ever. Hopeless, the thought of trying to spark a dialogue between groups that can’t even agree on a simple definition of terms.

Life or choice? Fetus or unborn baby? These aren’t distinctions that invite discussion. They divide.

So it’s unsurprising that nearly half the respondents to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center said they think it’s not morally acceptable to have an abortion. Fewer than one-third said they would like to see the courts overturn Roe v. Wade. Those two numbers have remained steady over the past 20 years, according to the group, but it’s not a deadlock, exactly. Because what has changed in recent years is the number of people who say the issue really matters.

When Pew asked in 2006, 28 percent of respondents said abortion was a critical issue. Another 28 percent said it was important. When the group asked again this year, more than half the respondents said abortion wasn’t important compared to other issues. The numbers of people who said they thought abortion is critical or important dropped by 10 and 11 percentage points, respectively.

There’s every sign that trend is going to continue — only a little more than one-third of respondents ages 18 to 28 told Pew they thought abortion was either critical or important. More than 60 percent didn’t really care.

That’s surprising among an age group for whom unintended pregnancy — which account for nearly half the pregnancies in this country — can be especially life-changing. You have to wonder if all the fiery rhetoric isn’t burning young people out on the entire issue. Or if they don’t have a better handle on the question.

Preventing unintended pregnancy in the first place is a whole lot less contentious, and it makes much more sense. Forty years after Roe v. Wade, maybe we can focus our efforts on that.

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School districts looking into installing guards and security equipment in schools may have nothing but good intentions. But they should take a minute to think before spending precious school funding on gear they hope will keep our children safe.

As Sandy Hook reminded us, it’s critical that schools have emergency plans and practice them. But it’s just as critical that we remember that schools already are one of the safest places for children; that violent incidents at school are rare — and have been on the decline for nearly 20 years.

“Schools are a haven,” says journalist Annette Fuentes, who has researched school violence for more than a decade. Her book, “Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse,” should be required reading for every school board member, administrator or parent worried about school safety.

“Unfortunately, whenever something like this happens, people look for a quick fix,” she told me when we talked this week. They call for schools to install panic buttons, armed guards, metal detectors, cameras. Even — in the case of one New Jersey elementary school — retina scanners.

“It helps to make people feel better,” she told me. “Like they’re doing something.”

“That’s completely understandable, but there’s no good evidence-based research to prove that [it works],” she told me. “There is research, however, that shows that adopting these strategies degrades the learning environment and actually contributes to a sense that the school is less safe than it actually is,”

Violent crime in school is shrinking regardless of whether the school has implemented security measures, she told me.

“It’s an illusion,” she said. “And the consequence for kids who have to walk through metal detectors every day — it makes them feel like criminals.”

It’s tempting to look for the perfect product to buy in order to keep kids safe at school. But we have to remember: They almost always already are.

Spending money on unnecessary gear takes precious dollars that could be used for school guidance counselors who could help identify kids at risk for developing anti-social behaviors. On smaller class sizes so teachers can maintain classroom control. On other resources that actually might work.

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Everything’s going digital, or so they tell me. Books are outdated; newspapers obsolete. We print types are dinosaurs working in a museum — cute throwbacks, lucky if we’re still working at all.

So why would a couple of University of Iowa library science students be trying to open up a small community library to serve the southeast side of Iowa City? Haven’t they heard?

“I hope that it just gives people greater access to information and helps bring the community together,” organizer Cassandra Elton told me this week.

Not everybody has access to the Internet’s endless stream of information. The Digital Divide is real. According to a 2010 report by the non-profit Connect Iowa, just more than half of Iowa’s low-income households with children have broadband connections at home. One in 3 don’t have a computer. Among minority groups, only 37 percent of low-income households with children have broadband access.

The numbers might have changed a bit, but there’s no Googling going on in many of the houses south of Highway 6.

And Elton, 25, who also works as a paraeducator at Grant Wood Elementary’s after school program, says a surprising number of her students have never been to Iowa City’s public library downtown. By bringing the library to them, she hopes to hook the kids on reading and learning.

The group’s got 68 children’s books in its collection and counting, including a few books in Spanish, according to its online catalog. Other details have yet to come into focus — like where, exactly, the library will be.

It might be mobile, showing up at the neighborhood center and schools, or connected somehow with an after school program. The important thing is that it be easy to get to.

One thing Elton’s sure about, she wants it to be full-service, with computers and story time and ESL classes and “crafternoon” activities. All things that may already be available around Iowa City but, as Elton said: “They’re kind of all over the place.”

It’s good to see that someone is working to bring it all together for the families on the southeast side of town. Working to make sure the digital divide doesn’t become a societal divide, with some people zooming along the information superhighway and others left on the side of the road.

Find out more at http://antelopelendinglibrary.org.

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University of Iowa President Sally Mason addresses members of the media during a question and answer session Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012 at the University Capitol Centre in down Iowa City, Iowa . (Brian Ray/The Gazette-KCRG)

So all I have to do to strong-arm the folks at the University of Iowa, one of the state’s largest employers, with attorneys on retainer — home to an entire law school, for crying out loud — is threaten to take them to court? That doesn’t seem right.

But it seems to be the lesson to take from the cover-up of survey comments critical of former College of Education Dean Margaret Crocco — just one recent example of the public university’s tight grip on information of significant public interest.

Late last year, UI President Sally Mason told reporters that her tight-lipped stance on public information stemmed from her reluctance to get involved in legal questions of student and staff privacy. She acknowledged persistent criticisms about the school’s lack of transparency under her leadership, especially when it came to providing details about high-profile controversies that raise big questions about the way the UI does business, but said her stance won’t change so long as the school’s lawyers tell her she’s better safe than sorry when it comes to breech of privacy.

“I am absolutely committed to not putting the institution at risk for litigation if I can help it,” she told reporters. “I do not think that’s productive, nor do I want to spend money on litigation.”

A position that must not have been lost on Crocco, or untold other UI employees who might wave the threat of lawsuits in order to keep potentially embarrassing details private, even when the public has a valid interest.

Last fall, Crocco racked up 44 votes of no confidence and only 16 votes of support out of 91 ballots distributed among faculty. But emails released by the UI in response to open records requests last week show that Crocco threatened to “involve an outside attorney” if UI Provost Barry Butler didn’t suppress critical comments included in a separate workplace survey.

The very next day, emails show, Butler contacted the survey leaders to make sure they gave him all the records of those comments to be placed in Crocco’s confidential personnel file.

They complied, of course. What choice did they have? Then every member of the College of Education’s faculty advisory committee and staff council resigned in protest. A few days later, Crocco turned in her own resignation.

A lawsuit averted, but was it worth it?

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Students at Kirkwood Elementary School wait in line for their lunches Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013, at the school in Coralville. The Iowa City Community School District's proposed new diversity policy would require schools to be within a certain range of each other in terms of the percentage of their students who receive free or reduced-price lunch, which is used to measure poverty in schools. (Brian Ray/The Gazette)

Would a “diversity policy” by any other name have raised this much of a stink? We’ll probably never know.

But things sure are heating up over an Iowa City School Board proposal. The email chains are flying.

So much so that today’s vote has been postponed. Instead, school board members have scheduled a listening post from 9 to 11 a.m. at the district’s headquarters, 1725 N. Dodge St. in Iowa City. Let’s hope it clears up at least some of the most serious misperceptions about the proposed policy and the concerns it means to address.

First off, the policy does not specifically target kids who are members of racial or ethnic minorities — something critics have called condescending. The “diversity” it seeks to promote is economic. The “minority” kids are those who receive free and reduced-price lunch — i.e. kids in poverty — a group that statistics show is more likely to struggle in school.

The policy would even out distribution of that population, which now wildly swings from 6 percent to nearly 80 percent at the elementary level. Maybe you think that’s condescending, too. But researchers have found that schoolwide concentrations of poverty of greater than 50 percent negatively affect student performance across the board. When the number goes down, every type of student performs better.

Correlation is not causation, opponents of the policy say, and that’s the truth. Just because two things happen in tandem doesn’t mean one causes the other. But on a more practical level, it doesn’t matter what’s so magic about that 50 percent mark, if it works. And it’s no knock on teachers and administrators at schools with high free- and reduced-priced lunch numbers, or the innovative ways they’ve found to deal with the trend.

The revised draft policy (available on the district’s website) would require the district to fully use existing building space — another of critics’ concerns. It likely would require busing — something the district does already. Some, including some School Board members, have said the board is trying to push the policy through too quickly. That’s one concern with merit.

With so much rumor and misunderstanding out there about the policy, the board is right to take a step back and explain what the policy is — and isn’t — about.

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Students head to class during passing period at Iowa City West High on Tuesday, April 17, 2012, in Iowa City. The school board will discuss the potential need for a new school based on enrollment projection. (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)

Iowa’s K-12 enrollment is up for the first time in nearly two decades — that’s the good news.

Bad news is those enrollment figures, released by the state last week, probably aren’t much more than a blip in continuing trend of decline.

And, anyway, only about half of the state’s 348 districts saw any part of the 0.6 percent increase in K-12 enrollment between the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years. Look at the five-year figures, and the number’s even worse.

Cedar Rapids tops the list for raw numbers, with a loss of 851 students since the 2008-09 school year. Some smaller districts have seen as much as a 25 percent decrease in enrollment in that time.

Two-thirds of the state’s school districts have seen student enrollments shrink over the past five years, which means fewer per-pupil dollars to stretch.

But fewer students don’t necessarily mean fewer expenses, school officials say. Even a couple hundred fewer bodies can go nearly unnoticed when spread out over a dozen school buildings and a dozen grades.

And shrinking districts such as Cedar Rapids and Davenport can be double-darned, struggling at the same time to deal with steady increases in the number of kids living in poverty and with other factors that make them statistically more likely to struggle.

According to the Child and Family Policy Center, one in five young Iowa children live below the poverty line. Nearly one-fifth of our kids start kindergarten needing to catch up to their peers in their physical, cognitive or social-emotional development.

There, too, a closer look at the numbers reveals large differences among districts.

In a recent analysis conducted on behalf of Early Childhood Iowa, the group identified a few dozen high-poverty census tracts concentrated in only 13 counties. For the most part, a handful of neighborhoods in the state’s largest cities.

No big surprise, maybe. No more than it is to say that meaningful, sustained enrollment growth is a dream for all but a few growing districts.

But food for thought as lawmakers start once again beating the drum for comprehensive school reform.

All these one-size-fits-all theories, all these centralized services, might sound good in Des Moines, but they’re no good if they don’t work in 348 districts — rural and urban, growing and shrinking, rich and poor.

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