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)

‘And be sure to show your work.”

Remember back in grade school, how you hated it when your teacher said that?

What’s the difference how I come up with the solution, you thought, as long as it’s right.

Of course, by now you know that in most things it’s not enough to stumble across the correct answer. Far more important to know the process — to be able to generate solution after solution, even when the details change.

It comes to mind as two national high school rankings are released this week, including a handful of top Iowa schools in their number.

Eight Iowa schools made Newsweek magazine’s list this year of the country’s best 1,000 public high schools, including Iowa City West, Iowa City High, Cedar Rapids Washington, Cedar Rapids Kennedy, Cedar Falls, Decorah, Ames and Mid-Prairie in Wellman.

The Washington Post also released its top 1,900 schools this week, which listed Washington, Kennedy, West, Ames and Des Moines Roosevelt.

Both publications generated their lists by crunching data like graduation and college matriculation rates, test scores and Advanced Placement courses.

And while the schools that made the grade deserve a big pat on the back for the recognition, there’s a much larger, unanswered question to ask here: How do we replicate their success?

Oh, if it were as easy as memorizing a formula: Qualified teachers + supported and motivated students + plentiful resources = superior schools.

But the truth is not everything that works in Des Moines will fly in North Liberty. Solon won’t excel by trying to simply mirror West or Washington. There may be best practices, but there are no more shortcuts to educational excellence for schools than there are for students.

I hope that message comes through, too, at Gov. Terry Branstad’s Teacher and Principal Leadership Symposium this summer, intended to “launch a statewide conversation” about how to create stronger shared school leadership in Iowa. Dozens of local and national experts are expected to share their 2 cents.

There’s a lot of value in sharing ideas about how to recognize, reward and enhance the ways teachers serve as leaders within their schools. But we need to be careful not to get so caught up looking for the one “right answer” that we forget the bigger picture.

It’s not enough to hit upon the solution once or even a dozen times. We have to know how to apply the lessons in a number of different contexts.

We have to show our work.

Comments: (319) 339-3154;

jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

John Heckel (left) helps Jamee Weber of Marion look for information on the computer on Friday, Sept. 23, 2011, at the Heckel Law office in Cedar Rapids. Weber's brain was injured in a motorcycle accident in 2005, and she now relies on a home health aid for rides to work , help around the house and brain exercises. (Liz Martin/SourceMedia Group News)

How can we better serve Linn County residents with mental health issues and developmental disabilities, and how can we do it for less?

That was the $1 million question Linn County supervisors asked Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities director Mechelle Dhondt last fall.

Dhondt set out to find the answer, enlisting the help of everyone she could think of — boots-on-the-ground folks who knew the people the system hopes to serve.

She asked them: What are you doing? How is it working? What might make it better? Then, she listened.

The conversations that followed were “unbelievable,” Dhondt told me last week.

A lot of the issues raised were familiar in broad contours, but the dialogue brought out details, and possible solutions, that no one had really considered.

Take Iowa’s shortage of psychiatrists — something we’ve known about for years. It can take weeks for a person with mental illness to get in to see someone, even if only to have a prescription filled. Turns out a huge part of the problem is patients missing appointments in the first place.

During community meetings in recent months, one provider said they might book 20 appointments for a day but only have six patients show.

“All that time was just wasted time,” Mechelle told a packed house at the Grant Wood AEA office on Friday.

About 100 people were there to review the draft redesign concept that’s come from the fact finding — an elegant proposal to stitch together the MHDD safety net while improving efficiencies.

“The nice thing, you’ll notice, is there’s really nothing there that costs much money except printing,” Dhondt said while reviewing a proposal for transition services. That’s true for most of the ideas outlined on a handful of densely written PowerPoint slides.

Developing a joint assessment and referral process, diverting non-emergency cases to free up hospital beds, enlisting the support of peers to help keep clients stable — over the next few months, small committees will further refine these ideas and create action plans to implement them.

It will likely take some money to fill a few gaps, but overwhelmingly, the plan stands to measurably improve services while significantly slashing costs. That will be critical as details of the new regional MHDD delivery system start to jell.

“Resources are going to become more and more limited,” Dhondt warned the group Friday. Another issue that’s no big surprise, in broad contours.

But taking a closer look, that might not be such a problem, after all.

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

Gazette archive photo.

Here’s a lovely Bike to Work Week present: After years of trying, Cedar Rapids has earned the distinction of being one of America’s “bike-friendly” cities.

In fact, two Corridor cities were among the 24 newly declared Bicycle Friendly Communities by the League of American Bicyclists this year. University Heights also earned the distinction.

They join Iowa’s current bike-friendly cities — Des Moines, Cedar Falls and Iowa City — on a shortlist of only 214 areas so designated in the country. Nicely done.

It takes a lot of work to earn the designation. The league judges applicants’ investment in bicycling based on “the five Es” — engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation and planning. National experts look at physical infrastructure and planning processes, but they also look at how a city encourages cycling through educational programs, incentives and enforcement of traffic laws that hold both motorists and cyclists accountable.

Why bother, you ask?

Biking is a win, win, win: cheap, healthy and good for the environment. It’s also good for our image, Iowa Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Mark Wyatt told me this week.

“This is something that does attract people to a community,” Wyatt said.

Young professionals, creative types, people who want to raise a family all look at quality-of-life stuff like bike friendliness when deciding where to make their home.

Boomers and Gen-Xers want to be active. Surveys show a lot of Millennials are not even interested in buying cars. Even Mayor Ron Corbett is giving biking to work a try.

As cities compete for attention, support for alternative transportation will become an even more important part of the mix, Wyatt predicts.

Way back in 2009, when Cedar Rapids first started looking into bike-friendliness, there were no Bike Friendly cities in Iowa. Iowa City once had earned the title, then lost it when standards were raised.

Since then, Iowa’s bike-friendly cities have added miles of bike lanes and made other infrastructure improvements. Most important, city officials have made bike traffic an integrated part of transportation planning.

It’s a good lesson for even more Iowa cities — friendlying up your town can be cheaper and easier than you might think.

So as bicycle enthusiasts challenge bike-curious Iowans to try commuting on two wheels this week, I’ve got a challenge of my own.

How many more bike-friendly cities will I be able to congratulate next year?

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

The whole point of having elected office is to give voters a choice about who represents them.

But too often, downticket races for offices like county auditor don’t generate much attention.

Not so in Johnson County this season, where Auditor Tom Slockett is facing a tough primary opponent (In that county, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2:1, the real election action often is in the spring, not November). It’s the only contested race for Johnson County office this year.

The good news is that means we can expect some meaty debate in at least one local race. That is, if some Slockett-haters can get their over-the-top rhetoric under control.

It’s only right that we have a rigorous contest for every elected office. But two anonymous websites launched since late last week have little to do with vetting Slockett. They’re just dirty pool.

I won’t name either smear site here. Suffice to say, they’re easily found.

On one, the unnamed author claims to list “examples of missteps” Slockett’s made in office going as far back as 2004, purporting to give “the rest of the story” behind public incidents without naming a single source — to protect informants from retaliation, of course.

Another site tries to influence voters by using such civil and sophisticated tactics as Photoshopping Slockett’s head onto a fat old orangutan’s body. Hilarious.

Slockett, who is under investigation by the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board for allegations he used public resources to support his re-election bid, certainly has some explaining to do.

In 2008, after a series of elections errors, The Gazette saw fit to write a pre-Election Day editorial warning Slockett and his office to mind the details in order to try and break a string of elections marked by error:

A 2007 glitch that caused the office to post incorrect results to its website for about 20 minutes; technical problems that delayed counting of the county’s absentee ballots the year before. In 2005, returns initially left out 60 game-changing write-ins. The year before that, nearly 200 absentee ballots were found after the “final” election count.

All the errors were corrected before results were canvassed and recorded, but it didn’t exactly inspire voter confidence.

Voters must know how Slockett proposes to address these ethical and procedural concerns so they can decide for themselves if he’s still the right candidate for the job.

But they also deserve an election that’s based on more than hidden detractors lobbing rotten tomatoes at the incumbent.

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

Beauty queens

My dad worked nearly his whole life for a modest, family-centered chain of department stores, starting out selling shoes and working his way up to management.

Along the way, he got to know people better than just about anyone I’ve met.

And while I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a retail therapist, he developed this knack for treating people right, no matter who they were or where they came from.

He had purely practical reasons, of course. If you’re rude, people will remember it. They’ll tell their friends. After that, you won’t have to deal with annoying customers anymore — you won’t have to deal with many customers at all.

But to my dad, treating people with respect was more than good business. It was the right thing to do.

So I’ve been wondering this week what he’d say about a West Liberty woman’s complaint that staff at an Iowa City bar wouldn’t let her dance on a raised platform with her friends. (That is, what he’d say after he got done shaking his head about the idea of young women dancing on bars.)

University of Iowa student Jordan Ramos was out at The Union Bar when her friends decided to climb onto a platform and dance. But when she went to join them, she says, a bar employee stopped her because she was “not pretty enough” and “obviously pregnant.”

Ramos, who isn’t pregnant, told reporters she tried to file a human rights complaint with Iowa City, but there are no civil protections for size discrimination.

That’s little help to The Union as the story has spread — to ABC News, Huffington Post, and everywhere in between. Staff may not have broken any laws, but the allegations sure make them look like jerks.

Now, to no one’s surprise, a former Union bouncer is confirming that staff were told to let good-looking females dance in high-profile areas but to keep the “fat and ugly girls” away.

Union owner George Wittgraf has publicly apologized for any disparaging comments his staff may have made to Ramos. The bar owner nailed it when he told a reporter: “We can’t be mean to people. It’s bad business.”

To some, the whole thing seems pretty silly. None of us has a constitutional right to shake our booties on the bar. People, especially women, are judged by their looks roughly a billion times a day.

But as my dad would tell you, there’s a difference between making judgments and treating people unfairly.

The latter is more than bad for business, it’s a bad business altogether.

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

President Barack Obama speaks about the rising costs of higher education Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at the University of Iowa Field House in Iowa City, Iowa. The President, who was on a three campus tour, was pushing to keep interest rates low on a widely used loan program aimed at low-income and middle-class students. (Brian Ray/Pool Photo)

It’s no surprise that President Barack Obama’s college affordability message got such an enthusiastic response Wednesday in Iowa City.

Student debt is one of only a few pocketbook issues for the young voters who made up the bulk of the president’s audience at the University of Iowa Field House.

But Obama wasn’t pandering: The cost of college is something to care about even if you’re closer to your 20th reunion than to commencement.

College tuitions and fees have tripled in the past 30 years, even when you adjust for inflation. Student debt is at a record high. Some experts think we’re staring down the barrel of a student debt crisis that will make 2008’s housing collapse look like a stumble in comparison.

On the other hand, college is clearly worth some investment: Workers with advanced degrees are more likely to find a job, and make — on average — significantly more than their peers with a high school diploma.

The Pew Research Center crunched Census Bureau data to find that the average adult with a four-year degree will earn $1.42 million over a 40-year career, compared with $770,000 for a typical high school grad. That’s no chump change.

And the collective benefits of a well-educated workforce are huge — directly affecting state income, sales and property tax collections. Allowing college graduation rates to stagnate makes it harder to recruit and sustain businesses dependent on highly skilled workers.

According to a study released this week by the Center for Law and Social Policy, the United States is falling far behind other countries in numbers of workers with postsecondary credentials.

The group estimates that in order to remain globally competitive, states must ensure that at least 60 percent of working-aged adults have an associate or bachelor’s degree by 2025. In Iowa, today, we stand at about 40 percent.

In short, we’re all going to suffer if we don’t figure out this college affordability puzzle, and quick.

Keeping loan interest rates down will help, but it’s not the whole answer. As Obama mentioned Wednesday, 40 states cut higher education spending last year.

Here in Iowa, state funding covered less than 40 percent of regent universities’ general education budgets in fiscal 2011. It accounted for

77 percent of those budgets 30 years before.

If we want to keep from paying the hefty collective costs of pricing more students out of higher degrees — and higher standards of living — state legislators are going to have to pony up.

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

Radically normal.

That’s the phrase Zach Wahls uses to describe the women who raised him.

And it’s a fitting description of the Iowa City kid-turned-gay rights superstar whose message has resonated with millions of people around the world.

“Our family isn’t really so different from any other Iowa family,” Wahls said last year when he stood before state legislators to oppose a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

It took a few days for the impact of those words to sink in, he told me Monday.

Impact, perhaps, being an understatement.

Video of Wahl’s three-minute testimony has been viewed online more than 18 million times. His speaking schedule has him traveling three-and-a-half weeks a month.

He’ll read from his new book, “My Two Moms: Lessons of love, strength, and what makes a family,” at Prairie Lights this Saturday.

When he squeezed me in Monday, the University of Iowa civil and environmental engineering student had a full media schedule, including an appearance on the “Late Show” with David Letterman.

What’s it like growing up with two moms, Letterman asked him.

“It’s like being really tall,” Wahls answered. “You don’t notice it until someone points it out.”

Or as he told me: “You can’t just pick me out of a lineup.”

If anything, the Eagle Scout and high school debater — a rare 20-year-old who can pull off wearing a business suit without looking like he borrowed it from an uncle — leans a bit toward the nerdy side.

Not that any of that has anything to do with his parents’ sexual orientation. If he’s successful, he says, it’s because they are great parents, not because they’re gay.

He credits his family’s values — such as strength, courage, innovation and hard work — for him and his sister turning out well. “Relatively well, anyway,” he said. Add modesty to the list.

“There are a whole lot of us out there,” he said. Kids of same-sex families as happy, as grumpy, as quirky, as boring — as everything — as their “traditional” counterparts.

It reminds you of what Wahls told legislators at the start of this crazy journey: “What you’re voting on here isn’t to change us. It’s to change how the law views us, how the law treats us.”

So he’ll continue to spread the word, although he hopes to get back to his studies soon.

“This issue of LGBT rights will hopefully be resolved before too long,” he said.

No big deal. Just unrelentingly, radically normal.

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

If you ask Tom Vilsack, the road to prosperity is paved with pig manure.

And plant-based plastics, and bio jet fuel, and other ag-related innovations we’ve only yet dreamed of.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is celebrating its 150th anniversary, but when the former gov-turned-Ag secretary met with The Gazette Editorial Board this week, his eye was on the future.

He shrugged off concerns about scarce resources and complicated problems. That’s no excuse not to move forward, in Vilsack’s book. It just means we have to work smarter.

“I kind of chuckle when members of Congress say we’re in tough times,” he told us, pointing out that in 1862, Congress managed to launch the USDA and land-grant institutions — right in the middle of the Civil War.

He ticked off projects like The Ohio State University’s research into using hog manure in asphalt. Collaborations like the one between USDA and departments of Energy and the Navy, to create a drop-in aviation fuel industry with a built-in military customer base and potential commercial expansion. Partnerships between government agencies and private investors or conservation groups with mutual or compatible goals.

Vilsack, wearing a pinstriped suit and Iowa-shaped lapel pin, seemed personally offended when he talked about how agriculture, like rural America, generally, is “undervalued and underappreciated” on the national stage. It’s agriculture that’s “going to help get the country where it needs to be.”

We’re all too familiar with the squeeze small family farmers have been under as large commercial operations continue to grow. But a quick look at the USDA census map shows that in most of rural Iowa, the number of farms actually increased from 2002 through 2007, not the other way around.

In fact, Vilsack pointed out, there were more farmers in this country (about 2.3 million) at the last agricultural census than there were five years before. Most of that growth came from small producers. He has a plan for them, as well.

Supporting local and regional food systems, encouraging farm-to-school programs and offering a helping hand to make it easier for young producers to get into farming — just a few of the ways USDA is helping support small operations and rural economies.

Agriculture isn’t likely to ever look again like it did 150 years ago, or 100 years ago, or even 20. But that’s OK.

Because after listening to Vilsack’s ideas about our rural potential, I’m pretty excited about the future.

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

Last summer there was no limit to the state’s ambitions for education reform.

We were going to pave the way for 21st century learning, light a fire under every student, reclaim our title as the state that does education right.

But as the legislative session winds down, it’s looking more and more like we’ll end up with a watered-down set of modifications and a whole lot of work ahead.

It seems that the governor and legislators all agree on competency-based standards, annual evaluations and more professional development for teachers and some kind of expansion in online learning. All want to explore, by pilot or task force, the idea of changing school calendar requirements.

But should we include character education in the Iowa Core? Establish a parent advocacy network? Change the way we hire and fire teachers? Install a stop sign at the end of third grade and hold kids back if they can’t read? These are the questions keeping lawmakers up at night. Not exactly the stuff of revolution.

That’s got some people disappointed. Not me. In fact, I think it might be for the best if, for now, all we’re able to manage is a little tinkering around the edges of the current system.

It was a naive, if noble, impulse in the first place that led state leaders to think they could draw up a perfect reform blueprint, push it through the Legislature and impose it on Iowa’s schools — all in a matter of months.

The truth is that while there’s no shortage of opinions, no one knows, exactly, what a 21st century education should look like. Yet.

But in the last year, we’ve started taking the question seriously. Started talking possibilities in PTO meetings, breakrooms and around dinner tables across the state. Not just legislators, but teachers, administrators, parents and even kids.

Last weekend, our parent company hosted a daylong brainstorming session, challenging dozens of interested folks to think bigger about the future of education (you can find out more about it at http://iowatransformed.com).

The result is a broader and richer conversation today than we had a year ago. But it’s going to take a lot more conversation and a little trial and error to figure out where we want schools to go and how to get there.

And that will be true regardless of whether or not legislators decide to bar schools from opening their doors before the state fair shuts down for the season.

So I say: Why worry if lawmakers seem preoccupied with rearranging deck chairs?

There’s so much more to talk about.

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

A ten-year old girl that was abused draws hearts on a sketch pad toy in the waiting room of the Child Protection Center, part of St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids, in 2003. The girl sits besides a Cabbage Patch Kid doll that the Child Protection Center gave her as a gift for coming into the center to be interviewed by a specialist about the abuse she experienced. (Gazette file photo)

An ounce of prevention isn’t just the opening phrase of a worn-out cliche. It’s a brilliant approach to child welfare.

I dare you to find anyone who would argue it’s better to wait to offer a hand until a tenuous family situation deteriorates into abuse.

Yet that’s how our child protection structures work, for the most part. Funding for foster care and adoption is stable and relatively plentiful. Funding for prevention, scarce and uncertain.

With few exceptions, it’s up to state legislators and local groups to scrape together the resources to keep families safe and intact. To address the stresses that threaten and teach the skills that protect — the ounce of prevention that makes families strong.

We got some good news on that front this month, with the announcement that the state Department of Public Health’s fledgling Maternal, Infant, Early Childhood Home Visiting Program got a $6.6 million boost from federal health care reform funds.

The voluntary program offers comprehensive support to pregnant women and families with young children in a handful of high-risk counties.

They give priority to families who could really use the help — low-income or younger pregnant women, for example, or families with a history of child abuse or neglect, or who have children who are struggling in school, have developmental delays or disabilities.

The home visits aren’t to punish or investigate — rather, to help identify potential problems and connect families with resources before tiny issues become crises.

The program measures outcomes such as increased child health, safety and development, and strong parent-child relationships to make sure the relatively meager budget is wisely spent.

Research has shown that home visits can slash the number of child abuse and neglect cases by half.

That’s right, half.

The federal grant is a much-needed shot in the arm that will allow expansion into 14 high-need counties, making the program available in 18 counties, all told. Of course, that leaves out 81 counties, including Linn and Johnson. For now.

Some of the grant money will go into building statewide infrastructure that would support future expansion of the home-visit program. That’s something our state leaders need to get behind.

Because we need a solid safety net for children who are being abused and neglected, but it’s so much smarter — for kids, families and communities — to work upstream.

An ounce of prevention. Not a new idea, but a smart one.

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

Thanks to our wonderful panelists and a full house, we began a great discussion at last night’s Fractured Families forum. But even though we stretched to 90 minutes instead of 60 (and parking lot conversations continued long after), we barely scratched the surface of this complex and important issue.

I’ve got a stack of audience questions at my desk this morning, and a number of my own that we didn’t have time for last night. Panelists have graciously agreed to answer more questions by e-mail for me to post to the blog. In the meantime, use this open thread to discuss your own thoughts or any questions you might still have.

It’s been more than two years since I wrote about Jessica Wilbur — the Guernsey mom who says state child protection workers took her 5-year-old daughter without her permission or a judge’s consent. More than a year since I learned about a second case — this time a Jasper County dad.

Because those removals were classified as “voluntary,” those parents had no right to a hearing, no legal help and little information — none of the safeguards built into formal child removal. Frankly, it boggled my mind.

In the months that followed, I talked to families from all over Iowa about their experiences with the state child protection system — complicated cases with a lot of moving parts.

Still, I saw a pattern emerging: Parents desperate to do what it took to get their children back, but who felt thwarted at every turn.

It was a side of the story few of us had heard before — a quiet, everyday story of pain and frustration. A counterbalance to the horrific headlines that broadcast those (thankfully) few occasions our safety net fails and a child is seriously injured or dies from abuse.

It’s been months since I wrote a series of columns outlining just three families’ experiences: a mom who struggled for more than a year to regain custody of her children, even though two separate Department of Human Services-ordered evaluations recommended reunification; a grandma who divorced her husband, evicted her son and became a foster mom in the vain hope of keeping her grandchildren out of the system; a dad who lost all rights to his daughter even though he was never accused of abuse.

In all my years in journalism, I’ve never experienced the volume of reader feedback I received from those columns. Months later, I still hear from families looking for answers, looking for help.

Tonight’s forum won’t come close to answering every question. But I hope that it’s a start.

We’ve invited panelists with a wide range of experience — from the courts, the community and DHS. We’ll hear from a national expert in child welfare practice and someone who has seen Iowa’s system up close as a foster parent, service provider and mom.

Tonight’s forum won’t be the last word on this complex and emotional subject. But I hope it moves the conversation forward.

Tonight: 7 p.m. “Fractured Families: A public forum on child removal in Eastern Iowa,” African American Museum of Iowa, 55 12th Ave., Cedar Rapids. Broadcasts: KCRG Local 9.2; live stream on KCRG.com, TheGazette.com

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

Professional golfer and Cedar Rapids native Zach Johnson stands with kids who participate in Children of Promise, a mentoring program in Cedar Rapids that is the beneficiary of Birdies That Care for 2010 and part of 2011, at a press conference at Elmcrest Country Club in Cedar Rapids on Monday, July 5, 2010. (Cliff Jette/Sourcemedia Group)

As Assistant Director of the Sixth Judicial District Department of Correctional Services, Jean Kuehl’s mission is to promote law-abiding behavior and support positive change in adult offenders. So to her, it’s only natural to look back up the chain to where those adults started out: as kids in need of guidance and support.

In 35 years of corrections, Kuehl has seen way too many kids who grew up without: Without opportunities to explore their interests and talents, without positive role models, without help with homework or getting that first job. Kids who “grew up the only way they knew how.”

“Why aren’t we giving them a lifeline,” she asked herself.

That’s why she’ s so passionate about Children of Promise – the Community Correction Improvement Association’s mentoring programs for at risk youth.

Children of Promise has been quietly working to support at-risk youth in our area for more than 15 years – through one-on-one and group mentoring programs helping hundreds of kids aged 5 through 18 in Linn, Johnson and Jones counties.

Most of the kids involved with Children of Promise programs are living in poverty, often in high-risk neighborhoods where they’re surrounded by poverty and crime. They frequently come from families plagued by substance abuse, crime, mental illness and domestic violence and neglect. Many have parents involved with the corrections system and run a serious risk of following in that path.

The results have been measurable, according to the group’s statistics: 91 percent of the elementary-aged kids served by the group’s Foster Grandparents Program show improved reading skills. 97 percent of the older kids involved with the Youth Leadership Program have fewer behavior issues at school. Children of Promise participants show increased school participation, fewer unexcused absences, more plans to go to college and better social skills.

Keuhl credits that success to Children of Promise’s commitment to building community: “Really trying to create what happened in the ‘good old days’ where there were extended support systems around you in the neighborhood.”

“If you don’t have that, you’re just kind of stuck,” she told me when we talked last week.

Till now, Children of Promise has relied almost exclusively on committed volunteers and grants from the United Way and other agencies (“little pots of money here and there,” as Keuhl puts it). They were Zach Johnson’s Birdies That Care recipient in 2010 and 2011 – the first time most people had heard of the program. Now they’re branching out and trying to establish a donor base.

They’re holding a fundraiser this week emceed by Hawkeye Announcer Gary Dolphin. University of Iowa Football Coach Kirk Ferentz will give the keynote speech.

And I said I’d give them a plug because I’m with Kuehl and the others over at Children of Promise who think it’s nonsensical not to step in and try to help a kid who looks like they’re headed down the wrong path.

“If we really want safe communities, we’re going to have to do things differently,” Kuehl says.

Hear, hear.

FILE - In this Nov. 9, 2011, file photo Republican presidential candidates former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney laugh before a Republican presidential debate at Oakland University in Auburn Hills, Miss. Gingrich is facing his first debate as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination Saturday night, Dec. 10, 2011. Standing next to him will be Romney, whose campaign has launched an all-out offensive against Gingrich's record and leadership style. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

We’ve gotten a little spoiled here in first-in-the-nation Iowa. For weeks now, as Republican candidates have duked it out for their party’s Presidential nomination, we’ve been safe to answer the phone, to turn on the television, without risking an assault by political ads.

That reprieve is about to end, of course, as the primary season winds down and the general election begins, and we transition from old-news caucus state to battleground state.

It can make a person nostalgic for the good old days when every candidate didn’t seem to carry around his or her own set of facts — leaving us to sift through truths, half-truths and outright lies.

Thanks in no small part to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the 2012 race is shaping up to be as full of whoppers as the last — despite a bumper crop of fact checkers hired by partisan groups, by neutral non-profits and even here in the lamestream media.

Ads run by third parties have historically been more vicious and inaccurate than candidate-sponsored ads, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, told me earlier this week. This season has been no exception.

The Annenberg Center is home to FactCheck.org and now FlackCheck.org — websites that target inaccuracies in political ads and debates. I caught up with Jamieson when she was in Iowa City this week, a guest of the University of Iowa School of Journalism.

Isn’t it hard to keep up, I asked her — after all, it takes a lot less time and energy to pull numbers out of the air than it does to vet all those claims.

Not as hard as you’d think, she said. It’s not the number of inaccuracies that’s the problem so much as the repetition.

When the same fishy fact pops up in a half-dozen ads, it starts to take on a life of its own.

Jamieson’s group has identified a dirty dozen often-repeated deceptive claims in third-party ads since the beginning of this election season.

Fact checkers think they’ve had some impact — take Restore our Future’s ad “Happy,” which claimed Newt Gingrich collected a $30,000-an-hour consulting paycheck from Freddie Mac. Fact checkers cried “foul” and the pro-Romney super PAC dropped that claim from subsequent ads. It’s something.

Jamieson hopes that we can bring some reality back to political discourse by calling on candidates to stand by their claims and pressuring broadcast stations to turn down false third-party ads.

And as we brace ourselves for another deluge of political ads, it sure seems worth a try.

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

For all the discussion lately about using tax increment financing to stimulate economic development — whether it’s fair to counties and school districts, whether it hurts neighboring communities, whether legislators should do something to reign in excessive use — one important fact has been amazingly absent.

Namely: It doesn’t really work.

That’s according to data crunched by Iowa State economist David Swenson, who has been studying TIFs in Iowa for more than 25 years. His recent presentation to a House Ways and Means Subcommittee studying possible changes to TIF law is fascinating reading.

TIFs have been used to revitalize urban areas since the 1950s. Today, the vast majority of Iowa’s TIFs are created not to staunch the bleeding in a blighted area but to stimulate growth in an already-growing one, according to Swenson’s report.

The theory is that these districts boost nearby property values, create jobs, increase population and income and stimulate commercial activity, indirectly benefiting businesses and residents outside the TIF district.

In fact, Swenson found that even though TIF districts, of course, benefitted from increased valuation and activity within their boundaries, there were no meaningful correlations between TIF activity and net job or population growth in the counties in which they were located.

In other words, TIF districts didn’t create new economic activity. They only shuffled the deck.

That hasn’t stopped a few dozen suburban communities from aggressively using TIFs to leverage state resources, to get a leg up on neighboring towns and to shift the cost of development.

This TIF addiction puts the squeeze on taxpayers outside TIF districts, and on county governments and school districts frozen out of the revenue stream.

It’s a growing burden: In 2002, the impact of TIF on state school aid was $5.2 million, according to Swenson. In 2012, it was $46.8 million.

And now counties are getting into the act — creating TIF districts to encourage housing development or, increasingly, to promote rural economic development activities.

I guess it was just a matter of time before they got tired of holding the short end of the revenue stick. But where will it end?

Clearly, it’s past time for legislators to put the breaks on this shell game and pass meaningful TIF reform.

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

The Marriott Hotel and the Vesta restaurant sit at the intersection of E 9th Street and Quarry Road at the Iowa River Landing Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010 in Coralville. (Brian Ray/ SourceMedia Group News)

I got a considerable amount of feedback from readers about last week’s column about cities’ use of Tax Increment Financing and other incentives to encourage businesses to relocate within the Corridor.

“You nailed it,” one reader wrote. “I have lived in C’ville since 1996 and watched how the Council and City Manager use their aggressive approach to support their ‘build it – they will come’ agenda with little regard for the people who have had longtime businesses or homes.”

But others were not so enthusiastic about my musings – which they thought drew a picture that painted their cities as too mercenary by half.

Hiawatha City Council Member Marty Bruns e-mailed to tell me that the City of Hiawatha has never initiated contact with any nearby business to “lure” them with incentives, although he can’t speak for what developers may or may not do.

“When we do a review of each applicant who is soliciting a TIF award, we often ask them why they chose to move to Hiawatha,” he wrote. “The answer we get most frequently is that we are easier to work with as our staff is more timely in our responses to them, more responsive to their questions and that our staff tries hard to accommodate their needs.”

In fact, Bruns said, the City of Hiawatha has been told their TIF practices are a good example of how the program was intended to operate. The city limits TIF incentives to commercial businesses, usually for five years. If a business moves within that time, they must refund the awards.

“Our intent is to ease a new company’s transition and enhance their ability to survive so they can provide jobs in the City,” he wrote. “We have no interest in raiding our neighbors as we recognize that is a short sighted tactic.”

On the south end of The Corridor, Deanna Trumbull, President of Trumbull Consulting, took umbrage at my insinuation that her company was trying to poach Iowa City businesses. “Quite frankly, if I were a successful and vibrant business owner inside or outside of this market and was not at least introduced to Iowa River Landing, I would find it odd and even insulting,” she wrote in an e-mail.

She told me in some cases, business owners had contacted her. And in any case, developers had been approaching Iowa City businesses to see if they wanted to expand to Iowa River Landing, not to try to steal them from downtown Iowa City.

That’s the same way Coralville officials have characterized the eight-figure deal they offered Von Maur earlier this year. And I suppose it’s not their problem if the company decided after taking it that their Iowa City store was redundant, after all.

According to news accounts, City Administrator Kelly Hayworth has said Coralville now has a policy against recruiting local businesses to relocate to Iowa River Landing, but it didn’t when that Von Maur deal was in the works. Meanwhile, state legislators continue to work on possible TIF reform.

Just this week, Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, said there’s a growing consensus about the need to make TIFs more transparent and to do something to prevent over-the-fence incentives from competing communities.

His House counterpart, Rep. Tom Sands, R-Wapello, had this to say, according to Gazette reporter Rod Boshart: “TIF has got to be addressed … I think if we don’t get it under control, the abuses will continue to grow just because if it’s OK for a handful of cities to do it, then it’s probably OK for every city to do it.”

In the meantime, it’s been suggested that a regional authority might help us think bigger when it comes to economic development. That seems like an idea worth pursuing.

Royceann Porter of Iowa City wears a hoodie reading "I am Trayvon" at the Pedestrian Mall for the 1,000,000 Hoodie March for Trayvon Martin on Monday, March 26, 2012, in Iowa City, to show support for seeking justice for the killing of the Florida teenager. Martin was killed by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman while walking back from a store to buy Skittles and iced tea and wearing a hoodie. (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)

“I am Trayvon.”

Sometimes it’s written in block letters across the shoulders of a hooded sweat shirt, sometimes in the somber, angry expression on the wearer’s face beneath the upturned hood.

As hundreds of Iowans gathered this week to demand justice for the slain Florida 17-year-old, many had stories to share about their own, unwitting suspiciousness: Walking too slowly, walking too fast, talking too loudly, being there at all — you never can tell what will make a passing driver reach over and lock his door; a woman pull her kids a little closer; a store clerk follows your movements with an icy glare.

It’s a humiliation most people of color I know say they’ve experienced at least once. For some, it’s almost routine — an annoying background signal that says no matter who you are or what you do, you’ll always be a suspect in some peoples’ eyes.

At the same time, there are folks out there thinking: “I am George Zimmerman,” the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot the unarmed Trayvon Martin in the chest on his way home from the store.

Although the initial report depicted a man suspicious because Martin was “walking slowly in the rain,” Zimmerman says Trayvon attacked him, leaving some people thinking: Just because all black men wearing hoodies aren’t criminals doesn’t mean that none ever are. Why should I be a victim?

And between these very different worlds lies Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows citizens to use deadly force if they only feel threatened. What a dangerous line to draw.

Iowa House members passed a similar law this month, but it died in the Senate. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, says he’ll bring it up again.

I can’t help but think back to a March day five years ago, when a University of Iowa junior walked into an environmental science lecture wearing a hoodie and a ski mask.

The horrific Virginia Tech shootings still were fresh. A petrified classmate called police, who cornered the hoodie-wearer. He told them he was cold. They released the student — embarrassed and irate, but alive.

Was Zimmerman in mortal danger? Or was he fending off that same boogeyman that makes some people cross the street when young black men approach?

Five hundred, 1 million, 2 million hoodies worn in solidarity won’t bring Trayvon Martin back to tell his side of the story.

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

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this column detailed alleged injuries sustained by Zimmerman which have since been called into question.

Caption: In this undated image released by Beef Products Inc., boneless lean beef trimmings are shown before packaging. The debate over “pink slime” in chopped beef is hitting critical mass. The term, adopted by opponents of “lean finely textured beef,” describes the processed trimmings cleansed with ammonia and commonly mixed into ground meat. Federal regulators say it meets standards for food safety. Critics liken it to pet food _ and their battle has suddenly gone viral amid new media attention and a snowballing online petition. (AP Photo/Beef Products Inc.)

Goodbye, pink slime.

Hy-Vee is the most recent grocer to announce it will discontinue selling lean, finely textured beef — that amonia-treated concoction that few of us had even heard of until recently, let alone thought we might be eating.

Even though a number of consumers have concerns about widespread use about the meat byproduct, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says there is nothing unsafe about the additive.

Even so, the response to recent news reports about the additive — which is made through a process that would have given Upton Sinclair the dry heaves — show that the majority of consumers find it pretty disgusting.

First, fatty trimmings once deemed suitable only for pet food or cooking oil are heated up and centrifuged to separate the meat from fat. The lean bits are compressed, then treated with ammonium hydroxide gas to kill possible bacterial contaminates such as E. coli. The resulting pink goo is mixed back into ground meat.

Because it’s not technically an additive, manufacturers are not required to let consumers know if a product contains finely textured beef.

And that’s the real gross-out factor here: that we carnivores likely have been eating the stuff for years without knowing it, all the while blithely assuming that the hamburger we ordered at a restaurant, or the hamburger we bought at the grocers, was simply that — ground-up beef.

Hy-Vee announced on Thursday that in response to customer concerns, its 200-plus stores would no longer purchase ground beef products containing the mixture. They join other grocers with local outlets — like Safeway and SUPERVALUE — that already have announced they’ll cut the product from their supply chain.

And the USDA — which, according to one news report, had plans to buy 7 million pounds of the product for school lunches — earlier announced they’ll let districts decide whether or not to serve the product to students.

Of course, even lean finely textured beef has its supporters, God bless them, who find nothing wrong with the process. Some have even implied that pink slime opponents are nothing but weak-stomached fussbudgets.

If you want to eat pink slime, I won’t stop you.

But it’s a problem when a don’t-ask, don’t-tell system of food production allows manufacturers to sneak a product in under the radar and onto our plates.

After all, if we are what we eat, don’t we have a right to know what, exactly, that is?

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

The Marriott Hotel and the Vesta restaurant sit at the intersection of E 9th Street and Quarry Road at the Iowa River Landing Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010 in Coralville. (Brian Ray/ SourceMedia Group News)

Here’s how you don’t go about creating a regional economy: By cannibalizing your neighbors’ tax base.

It’s not just a jerk move, it’s a short-term solution that does little to help the tide rise in interconnected communities.

Yes, I’m looking at you folks down at OliverMcMillan, the San Diego-based developer partnering with the City of Coralville on its ambitious Iowa River Landing project.

Rumors have been floating for a while now that recruiters were knocking on the doors of Iowa City storefronts trying to entice business owners to pack up and move to the Landing, where there’s lots of retail space and plenty of free parking.

Gazette business reporter Dave DeWitte recently got confirmation from three downtown Iowa City business owners that they’d been approached, and had politely declined the offer.

Of course, that’s something developers do all the time. This is real estate we’re talking, not Sunday school. But things get shady when a city gets involved.

Coralville is already taking a beating for the tax-funded, eight-figure incentive package the city used to lure Von Maur — Iowa City’s last department store — to the new development.

More than two dozen businesses and individuals have signed on to a lawsuit that claims Coralville and OliverMcMillan violated state law by using public funds to offer Von Maur that sweetheart deal.

But even if it’s not illegal, it sure isn’t neighborly. Not that Coralville’s the only mercenary municipality using tax increment financing and other incentives to entice business across the city line.

Remember last year, when Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett made a very public attempt to encourage Go Daddy to move its operations, and 300 jobs, from Hiawatha to downtown?

Hiawatha’s done the same in the past, using incentives’ siren song to lure a fistful of businesses from their neighbors to the south.

It’s small-minded for cities to look just a few miles away for growth; actively recruiting over the fence salts the fields where we want regionalism to grow.

It also makes life harder for business owners who have enough to worry about without having to tiptoe around a brewing civil war.

Forget Iowa’s Creative Corridor, try Iowa’s Covetous Corridor. Maybe Iowa’s Crafty Corridor. Actually, call it anything you like — it won’t matter. Unless more local leaders start paying more than lip service to regionalism, the designation won’t mark anything more than a circle of counties on a map.

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

Credit: The Associated Press

Newspapers, rightly, faced a lot of criticism this week for pulling Garry Trudeau’s series of comics about Texas’ sonogram law.

I happen to agree with the many readers who have argued that while the strips are at times uncomfortable to read, it’s the law that’s obscene, not the satire.

It’s understandable that papers were reluctant to run this week’s Doonesburys on the comics page, where they might come in contact with young eyes and older readers expecting lighthearted laughs.

But there’s something a little sinister about not running the strips at all, of politely turning away from a disturbing trend that deserves considerable public debate.

Texas legislators are not alone in hoping to dissuade women from choosing legal abortion by forcing them to listen to descriptions of grainy black-and-white images of their developing fetus.

In fact, bills mandating that women seeking abortions submit to transvaginal ultrasounds or similar unnecessary procedures have been introduced in a handful of state legislatures.

Such bills far overreach the idea of informed consent — and that’s the crux of Trudeau’s Texas series, which literally outlines in black-and-white the patronizing details of Texas’ version of the law.

The strip pokes with a sharp stick at the Madonna-whore inflections of hundreds of reproductive rights bills that have been introduced across the country and the rhetoric that’s surrounded them.

In fact, some newspaper editors have said they yanked the strips, in part, because one included the word “slut,” which they thought would be offensive to readers.

Again, uncomfortable. Again, Trudeau’s not to blame.

Almost everyone understands it’s not OK to call a woman “slut.” It has never been a nice word, but right now it’s as good as toxic — just ask Rush Limbaugh.

The root of the vulgarity is, of course, the age-old idea that Good Girls Don’t — which is the message a lot of women are getting from the barrage of attempts to legislate their personal decisions.

Why that’s offensive should be self-explanatory. The question of how often, with whom and under what circumstances a woman decides to have sex is nobody’s business but her own.

And for a certain class of speaker, words like slut and whore are used to try to shut women up when sex isn’t even the issue. You’ll remember Sandra Fluke’s testimony was about birth control for medical conditions, not so she could sleep around.

In every case, it’s a way of saying a woman has no value. She doesn’t count — another message many women are taking from this rash of legislation.

It’s uncomfortable, it’s odd, even a little frightening to consider the ways American women’s sexual morality has crept into legislative debate.

But that’s not Trudeau’s fault. And we don’t resolve it by turning away.

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

Aaaaaand, they’re off!

State legislators started debating a massive education reform bill on Tuesday.

It’s the start of what’s sure to be a long and passionate exchange, as legislators in both chambers struggle to find common ground in a vast sea of possible changes to the way Iowa’s K-12 schools do business.

On the eve of the debate, Gov. Terry Branstad made one more plea for legislators to “be bold” in considering reforms such as his proposal to allow students to take up to 100 percent of their public school coursework online.

“This is not 1950,” Branstad cautioned on Monday. A good reminder for lawmakers when debating a host of topics, I’d say.

But even though virtual schools are becoming increasingly popular across the country, we’re not exactly living in some kind of Buck Rogers technotopia, either. Let’s hope legislators remember that in the days ahead.

Part of virtual schools’ appeal is that they save school districts money, although proponents prefer to focus on the convenience of anywhere, anytime learning and the variety of courses offered. Backers call the schools a natural fit for young learners who, they point out, practically live online anyway.

Well, some of them do.

As legislators debate, we’ll likely hear by-now-familiar concerns about instructional quality, the lack of human interaction and the ethics of handing taxpayer money to a handful of private, out-of-state companies.

Unfortunately, we’re not likely to hear much about access.

What access, you ask. Iowa’s open enrollment law means any Iowa student could enroll in any Iowa virtual school.

Ah, yes — but to fully participate, they need access to an up-to-date computer and a high-speed Internet connection. There’s the rub.

According to the folks over at the non-profit Connect Iowa, just over half of Iowa’s low-income households with children have broadband connections at home — 1 in 3 don’t even have a computer.

Among minority groups, only 37 percent of low-income households with children have broadband access. Just over half of all rural households, regardless of income, have high-speed connections.

So as legislators debate the finer points this week — the virtues and vices of virtual learning, of unlimited enrollment, the proper role of a flesh-and-blood instructor — they should remember those details just won’t matter for a good number of Iowa students. Not because they’re not interested, but because they’re not connected.

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

Jerry Robinson of Cedar Rapids currently works at Studio 32 as a dental lab technician, and has nine months left in the drug court program. Photographed on Tuesday, March 6, 2012, in Cedar Rapids. (Liz Martin/The Gazette-KCRG)

If your roof leaked, you could set out an army of pans and buckets all over the floor to catch the rivulets as they fell. That would work for a while.

Then when those containers started overflowing, you could empty them and watch them fill up again, over and over — empty and fill, empty and fill.

That would work for a while.

But as you went through the cycle you might notice the problem getting steadily worse, not better. You could scratch your head and curse the pans for not working the way they were supposed to. Or you could just fix the stinking roof.

So it goes with drugs and crime. Thankfully, local officials have had their eye on the real problem for a while now, and they’re starting to see results.

Forty participants have graduated from drug treatment courts in Linn and Johnson counties since they were started in 2007 and 2008, respectively, according to Gazette reporter Trish Mehaffey, who caught up with several for her compelling article this week.

The courts offer an alternative to prison time for serious but non-violent adult offenders whose drug use is the root cause of their criminal acts.

The program is no picnic. Agreeing to enter drug treatment court means agreeing to follow your individualized treatment plan and the rules set out for you by the judge, treatment providers and probation officer.

Immediate sanctions can range from an early curfew to inpatient treatment or even jail time.

It takes most people longer than a year to graduate from the program. Many fail.

But a heartening number succeed. So far, 40 people, clean and sober, who not only have stayed out of our bulging prison system — they’ve gotten their lives back.

And there are so many more offenders who could benefit: According to the Iowa’s Drug Policy Advisory Council, there were 880 people imprisoned on drug-related charges in Iowa in 2011, alone.

That doesn’t include thousands more whose drug and alcohol abuse was a major factor in their criminal behavior or parole revocation.

The prison system isn’t designed to provide those folks the kind of intensive treatment and community support they need to kick their habits. Nor should it be.

Because for all the work involved, drug treatment courts still cost pennies on the dollar compared with the cost of incarceration. The solution is clear.

So why keep carting off to prison our non-violent drug-related offenders, just to release them and then fill the cells again?

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

What to do about payday lenders, those storefront operations promising quick cash for a postdated check and a “small” fee?

The payday industry preys on the very people who can least afford it, effectively charging borrowers 10 times the rate of a high-interest credit card, nearly 100 times the interest you’d pay on a secured loan from a bank. Usually on loans that don’t add up to more than a couple hundred bucks.

People take out the loans to get through a tight week, but according to the state Attorney General’s Office, nearly half of Iowans who use the service borrow from payday lenders more than a dozen times a year, paying more than 400 percent in interest — not infrequently borrowing again just to cover their previous payday loan.

In fact, researchers say users of these “emergency” loans end up worse off than people in similar straits who figure out other ways to make it to payday. They are more likely to suffer financial hardship, to lose a conventional bank account, to become delinquent on credit cards or file for bankruptcy.

The payday industry is growing — there are 522 delayed deposit operations licensed for business in the state. Just two years ago, there were 435. That’s got cities looking for options to curb the growth of payday options within their jurisdictions.

The problem is, cities’ hands are mostly tied. The state regulates the meaningful bits, like which and how many businesses are licensed to run payday operations, the terms they can offer customers and the interest they are able to charge. But state legislators have declined time and time again to tighten restrictions on the problematic businesses.

So Des Moines, West Des Moines and Clive have passed ordinances limiting where payday lenders can operate. City council members in Ames expect to review a similar ordinance this spring.

Now, Iowa City is looking at the same. City council members were scheduled to discuss the issue at a work session last night, after this column went to bed.

But there’s a second problem, besides cities’ limited power to regulate payday lenders.

Often as not, it isn’t that the folks who turn to payday lenders don’t know they’re being ripped off, it’s that payday loans are the only option for too many high-risk, low-income borrowers trying to make it to their next paycheck.

Until more lenders step up to offer small-dollar loans to low- and mid-income borrowers with less than stellar credit, too many Iowans will remain caught in the payday loan cycle.

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

Thanks to the Inter-Religious Council of Linn County for hosting a thoughtful discussion about Iowa’s child protection system on today’s “Ethical Perspectives on the News”

Mount Mercy University Philosophy Professor Mary Ducey led panelists April Dirks-Bihun, Professor of Social Work at Mount Mercy University, local attorney Ray Scheetz and myself in a deep discussion about child protection in Iowa, why family preservation is important, the role of the courts and best practices from other states. Although we came at the issue from different angles, the message was clear: Iowa needs to fundamentally change the way it handles issues of child welfare — particularly in cases of parental drug abuse or neglect.

For some of my thoughts on foster care and child removal, see:

12.28.11 “Remove-first” policy hurts families

12.31.11 “They were just suspicious of me from the beginning”

12.31.11 Victor’s story, part 2: No hope for family placement

1.4.12 “Do those 2 boys think I abandoned them?”

1.7.12 “I thought it would all be cleared up in a day or 2″

1.11.12 A plan for protecting kids

1.16.12 What you said about DHS and helpful resources

A cell in a maximum security cell block that is empty for maintenance at the Johnson County Jail Monday, March 8, 2010 in Iowa City. The jail sent all of the inmates from the cell block to another county jail for the week so they could clean the area and do maintenance work (Brian Ray/The Gazette)

As Cedar Rapids voters ready to weigh in for the second time in a year on a flood protection tax extension, county supervisors to their south are hesitating over a November referendum on a much-needed justice center — more than a decade after their last attempt.

Two very different public safety projects born of different circumstances that stand in stark contrast in terms of progress and priorities.

Last May, when Cedar Rapidians narrowly rejected a sales tax extension, tax supporters got right back up, dusted themselves off and crafted a revised proposal.

Johnson County voters might have sent a clearer message in that county’s jail bond referendum in 2000 (65 percent voted “no”), but surely, 12 years is long enough to bring a case back to the people.

Instead, the issue of whether and when and where and how much to spend on a new justice center has been talked to death then resurrected then talked to death again. Supervisors have gone round and round on the question more times than I can count.

Just last week, in what seems like their thousandth conversation about how to pay for the now-$48 million facility, they stalled once more when Supervisor Terrence Neuzil announced that he wanted to bond for only $39 million instead of the otherwise agreed-upon $43 million, and to find budget efficiencies to make up the rest. His four colleagues cried “foul.”

Now, a few million dollars is nothing to sneeze at, and Neuzil should be commended for his frugality. But other supervisors argued, compellingly, that it’s the fiscally responsible thing to plan for the project’s true price tag (something with which many an irate Cedar Rapids voter would surely agree).

How did they resolve it? Did they compromise? Decide to go with the majority? No. They all threatened to take their toys and go home.

Since then, Neuzil has said he’ll go as far as $40.9 million. (This same Neuzil who said in 2000 that he was “frustrated” and “upset” by the jail situation. The same who, four years later, as board chairman, pledged to come up with “real alternatives to solve our continuous problems with an overcrowded jail.”)

The others say they’ll settle for nothing less than unanimous agreement, because dissent will only place doubt in the minds of the voters.

What, do they think we’re not watching now?

As supervisors fiddle, the need only grows greater, the cost heavier.

And the danger grows greater that if they talk justice center plans to death one more time, it just might be for keeps.

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

Or a public access television studio, more like.

Watch us cover it all in just 30 minutes on Yale Cohn’s show: near downtown development, Occupy Iowa City, Whitney Houston, pot smoking professionals and bar brawls.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelogon/

A couple of years ago, I was listening to a conference keynote speech with colleagues, when a newspaper editor across the banquet table pulled out his cellphone and started tweeting.

I still remember my shock that this grown professional, like some bored teenager, would care more about connecting with his Tweeps than being present at the table (we were front and center; his actions were obvious). Sure, the speech was interesting, but it was hardly breaking news to tweet.

By now, of course, it barely registers with me when someone pulls out a smartphone mid-meeting, or starts fiddling with their keyboard in the middle of a conversation. I’m as guilty as the next one of checking out from the place I’m at to check in with what’s happening somewhere else.

Still, I wonder if ignoring the here and now isn’t going to cost us more than the patience and good graces of a few co-workers and friends. When everything worth paying attention to is happening someplace else, what will happen to here?

Most of human history has been one of intense local connections. Not that long ago, the struggle was to understand the world outside your city limits. Today, it’s just about the reverse.

Just a few generations ago, Washington, D.C., was just some sleepy far-off swamp few citizens paid much mind to — the real action was at the statehouse. Now, Barack Obama is the only politician a lot of folks could even name.

Thousands become irate enough to flood city streets whenever the G8 gets together, but local issues come and go with little comment.

Case in point — a number of Iowans were outraged by national headlines about a Virginia bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion. Far fewer realized that lawmakers here had introduced similar legislation (it died in funnel last week).

Our local leaders do it, too, handing over local decisions to faraway consultants. There seems to be this unspoken assumption that if it comes from here, an idea can’t be all that important or smart.

Of course, “local” has become a hip watchword in some circles. But that new localism is focused nearly entirely on consumption — what we eat, what we buy. Not what we do.

I remember from not all that long ago the slogan “think globally, act locally.” Maybe it’s time to dust it off, to revise it. How about this:

Think locally, then act.

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

Today’s column is brought to you by the word “access.”

It’s at the heart of three issues that caught my eye this week — one federal, one state and one local.

First, there’s the good news/bad news that the U.S. Postal Service has decided not to close mail processing facilities in Cedar Rapids and Waterloo.

The good news, of course, is that means 214 local jobs will stay put and mail delivery won’t slow down. For now.

The bad news is the Postmaster is no closer to figuring out how to keep offering a service no one seems willing to compromise about even though ever fewer of us use it.

We want all the access to speedy, six-day delivery we had back when mailboxes were bursting and the USPS was flush but we’re unwilling to subsidize delivery, a la Amtrak. Something is going to have to give.

On another front, state lawmakers are debating whether and how much online education should count as “school.”

The Senate Education Committee unveiled this week a reform bill that would limit students to no more than 50 percent of coursework online, unless they get a waiver from their home school and parental approval.

The way it stands now, any Iowa student can open enroll in either of the two school districts that have signed deals with online academies to offer K-12 curriculum to students from home.

Fans say it gives kids access to a range of electives small schools can only dream of. Foes worry about quality and teacher-student time.

Then there’s the question of nearly $6,000 in per-pupil funding districts lose for each student who enrolls online. Seems like opening the window to student learning means shutting doors for the majority of already-struggling schools.

Which brings us to Iowa City, where members of the self-supported municipal improvement district board have shut the doors to their meetings so they can hatch in peace their brilliant plans to revitalize downtown.

They’re tax funded, but a non-profit organization, they say, not a government group. They don’t have to comply with Iowa’s Sunshine laws. They may be right.

But did someone say taxation without representation? Well, the board says, anyone who pays the tax can come — if they sign on as SSMID members.

Seeing as how fewer than 50 percent of those paying the tax signed a petition for the district in the first place, it smells a little like a loyalty oath.

And it’s just bad form to limit public access to meetings about how to make downtown more vibrant and relevant and attractive to — you guessed it — the public.

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

There’s nothing complicated about the motivation behind legislators’ push to legalize online poker in this state: It’s the money, stupid.

The state stands to rake in new tax revenues of up to $13 million a year if online gambling becomes a reality here.

But even if lawmakers do have dollar signs where their eyes should be, it seems so gauche to come right out and say it. I guess that’s why both sides of the aisle are trying to pitch their support of an online poker bill as an attempt to bring law and order to gambling’s new Wild West.

“We have it out there. It needs to be controlled,” Sen. Wally Horn, D-Cedar Rapids, told The Gazette’s Rod Boshart this week. Others told him Iowa needs to “get out in front” of the industry, which has been operating for more than a decade.

Yet Senate Study Bill 3164 doesn’t contain a single provision that would staunch the flow of money to illegal offshore gambling sites — it couldn’t if it tried.

All lawmakers are proposing is that Iowa, albeit responsibly and orderly, reach its hand into the revenue stream. And the only development legislators might “get out in front of” is possible federal legislation that would legalize Internet poker across the country.

If Iowa passed Senate Study Bill 3164 — which allows intrastate, interstate and international arrangements — our casinos would be ready to flip a switch and make sites available to anyone, anywhere, the moment federal lawmakers gave the green light.

Iowa’s not the only state to think of this. For years, casinos in Nevada have hosted (and advertised) free-play websites to build brand loyalty in advance of possible legalization. Last year, and with one eye on the national stage, the already gambling-saturated state passed a law making online gambling legal.

More than a dozen companies already have applied for online operating licenses, according to industry news sources.

Call me a cynic, but I don’t think it’s because they want to protect poor innocent Nevadan gamblers from evil offshore online gambling parlors.

Still, Iowa legislators insist the money is an afterthought, even as they dream of ways to spend it. The only problem is that it’s not free money, exactly.

Critics are right to worry about the potential negative social effects of expanded online gambling.

And 69 percent of Iowans oppose legalizing online poker, according to Iowa Poll results released by the Des Moines Register this week. Only 28 percent supported the idea.

Still, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal told Boshart he gives the bill even odds at passing.

Sounds to me like the game is rigged.

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

From left, Reverend William E. Lori, Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., Reverend Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President, The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, C. Ben Mitchell, Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy Union University, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, Director Straus Center of Torah and Western Thought, Yeshiva University and Craig Mitchell, Associate Professor of Ethics of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing: "Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion & Freedom of Conscience." (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

How did a debate about religious freedom and health care devolve into a bizarre discussion about why and whether (and what sort of) women need access to contraception in the first place?

In an effort to explain away Thursday’s mind-boggling gaffes, some Republicans are claiming they are victims of an elaborate scheme to discredit them. That holds as much water as Rick Santorum backer Foster Friess’ family planning advice.

Friess’ on-air recollection about how in his day, contraceptive care was easy — women simply kept their knees together — is almost too wild to be offensive, even if he intended it (as he now says) as a joke. Almost. Friess was trying to downplay questions about Santorum’s controversial positions on contraceptive freedom. Instead, he ignited a firestorm.

Women’s groups have called his statements irresponsible, which they are, although I’d like to think even impressionable women of childbearing age would know better than to base medical decisions on the ramblings of some investment manager old enough to be their grandpa. (Just in case, ladies: No. Aspirin will not prevent conception.)

I’m just baffled the billionaire septuagenarian thought he could defend his guy, now polling neck and neck with Mitt Romney, by effectively calling half the U.S. adult population a bunch of whores.

Cut to Capitol Hill, where Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) apparently saw nothing weird about an all-male revue discussing a ruling that institutions such as hospitals and universities, regardless of religious affiliation, must include free birth control coverage in employee health plans.

To be fair, a couple representatives of the fairer sex had a chance to speak later in the afternoon.

But by that time, of course, the photo had gone viral: A lineup of five shlumpy, middle-aged men in dark suits talking about women’s access to contraception.

And here we are.

They’re calling it another culture war — over birth control. In 2012.

What began as a legitimate question — how to balance religious freedom with employees’ access to medical care — has mutated into a battle of moralistic coots vs. women. Strike that — versus nearly everyone. Ask any half of a heterosexual couple: Family planning ain’t just for females.

It’s an unwinnable position — one any political operative would kill to place his opponent in.

Too bad Republicans have only their own tone-deafness to blame.

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

The Occupy Iowa City campsite is seen at College Green Park in Iowa City on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011. (David Scrivner/The Gazette)

Occupy Iowa City, we hardly knew ye.

You remained an enigma from your first, tentative steps in October through your swelling ranks and bulging statements of principles to your quiet dwindling as the days shortened and nights grew cold.

Some will argue that Iowa City’s decision this week not to renew occupiers’ permit to protest in College Green Park is no big thing — that it just marks one more transition in an ever-evolving movement.

But “movement” is beginning to seem a generous word for what Occupy has become: a loose affiliation of people who occasionally get together to form committees or heckle a presidential candidate.

I’m starting to wonder if we pinned too many hopes on an event which, after all, started out as a magazine “what if.”

Instead of crystallizing our discontent, the occupation has confused it, snowballing from a protest against Wall Street and runaway corporatism into an unwieldy list of gripes.

Back in October, I took some grief for saying I didn’t get what Occupiers hoped to accomplish. The vagueness, the diffusion were part of the process, supporters said. The Occupation was a crucible from which every good thing would be forged.

But here we are, four months older. What exactly has it wrought?

I can’t help but think back to successful grass-roots movements in recent Iowa City memory.

Take Students Against Sweatshops’ six-day occupation of University of Iowa administrative offices in 2000, which gave birth to a code of conduct for all companies with UI licensing contracts, prohibiting child labor and guaranteeing that workers producing university-related goods are paid decent wages.

Or 15 years earlier, when UI students and their peers at other college campuses pressured the institutions to divest from dealings with segregated South Africa.

Those movements had a lot in common besides success. They had a clear message and a clearly defined goal. They relied on a core group of motivated members unified around a specific, common purpose. They fought for something, not only against.

I first asked the question last fall, and still I wonder: What is Occupy Iowa about?

It might not be too late to make this primordial soup of activism coalesce into a movement — or many — with the power to enact positive change.

But if Occupy doesn’t want to waste away the way the physical protest did at College Green Park, it will have to work even harder to figure out, and help us see, exactly where it stands.

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

Solon High School chemistry teacher Ken Beck used to see two types of students in his classroom.

Some “played the points game,” as he calls it, completing their homework but not doing so great on tests.

Others blew off the daily work but blew him away on tests — they clearly got what he was supposed to be teaching them.

In a traditional classroom, that first student could easily earn an A or a B — although they might be hard-pressed to tell you much about chemistry. The second student would be lucky to skate by with a C, he told a group of legislators and teachers on Friday.

Iowa law requires students spend a certain number of class hours learning a subject, but one idea in Gov. Terry Branstad’s education reform proposal is to create a pathway to a competency-based system that would evaluate students on mastery, not time.

The idea has a lot of fans, but would it work? Solon High has been piloting a system that seems to indicate it would.

A handful of teachers this year are taking a standards-based approach to grading — outlining exactly what they expect students to learn and designing tailored assessments that show whether or not students have learned it. Instead of racking up points, they have to be able to show that they “get it.” Instead of copying homework and cramming for tests, they have to practice until the concepts are deeply ingrained.

“It really makes students own their own learning,” Solon High School Principal Nathan Wear told me. “No longer are they just sitting passively in a classroom and the teacher does all the work.”

On Friday, a handful of us headed to the school to learn more.

Standards-based evaluation brings learning into focus, the kids told us. It motivates them, it seems more relevant.

“For [our parents] it was a mechanical process they had to learn … but it’s a different society now. We need to connect things,” one student said.

Standards-based evaluation rewards learning more than the timing and rote processes of learning. To the students, it just makes more sense.

Of course, that doesn’t answer every question about how competency-based systems might work — figuring out how to manage classrooms and staff when students are coming and going as they learn, not when the calendar dictates, will be no small task.

But after seeing the passion of those Solon kids, excited to be captains of their own learning, I am certain.

Figuring out those details will be worth it.

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

Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats speaks during a news conference in front of the Iowa Judicial building, Friday, Aug. 6, 2010, in Des Moines, Iowa. Vander Plaats said Friday he won't launch a third-party campaign for governor and instead will head an effort to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices who joined last year's decision legalizing gay marriage. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

As if we needed more evidence of Family Leader supporters’ flailing attempts to keep hate fires burning on issues of same-sex marriage and gay rights,  I got more striking examples in my inbox yesterday in response to Wednesday’s column about Bob Vander Plaats’ group’s beef with Iowa Safe Schools’ annual anti-bullying conference.

First, a number of kudos from readers glad I pointed out how desperate the Family Leader seemed in trying to pick a fight with Gov. Terry Branstad for not asking his title be removed from the Iowa Governors Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth; how bizarre their attempt to spin the conference as some kind of school-sanctioned Sodom.

“It’s almost sad to watch the group have to contort itself into increasingly uncomfortable-looking positions to keep mining the outrage that has fueled the Family Leader leader’s lukewarm success,” I wrote. A number of you agreed.

A former educator and state legislator commended me on my “guts;” a local high school principal wrote to offer his thanks.

“Our kids deserve schools that are safe and open for everyone,” he wrote. “They face bullying on many fronts. It is so disappointing to see adults join in the bullying as well.”

I heard this from a state legislative staffer: “I see and hear all the hate that comes from across the rotunda, and appreciate someone calling things the way they are.”

And this from One Iowa Executive Director Troy Price: “I don’t think most people out there realize just how far the Family Leader has fallen over the last year, and your column really snaps that into focus.”

Then there was this note, from John, the Leader’s lone defender, with the subject line: “YOUR A LOON- AND YOUR EDITORIAL IS A JOKE! YOUR ARACIST!”

“MADAM- YOUR LOUSY EDITORIAL- REFLECTS TYPLCIAL LIBERAL BIAS- AND IS DISHONEST. YOUR A LIBERAL RACIST- ANTI-CHRISTIAN BIGOT. AND YOUR EDITORIAL IS LIBERAL CRAP! NOTHING BUT A HATCHET JOB TO THE FAMILY LEADER. YOUR A ANTI-CHRISTIAN BIGOT. AND ONE IOWA IS NOT A CIVIL RIGHT GROUP. THEY ARE A PERVERT HOMOSEXUAL EXTREMIST GROUP. AND THE MAJORITY IOF IOWANS DO NOT AGREE WITH YOUR LIBERAL IDIOT VIEWS. AND MOST DO NOT AGREE WITH HOMOSEXUALITY- OHTER THEN HOMOS ARE PERVERTS AND LIBERALS LIKE YOU ARE MORONS.”

And I’m a terrible cook, and I hate kittens and butterflies, and I don’t know all the state capitals, and did I mention I’m an idiot and a moron? But seriously.

I’m happy to have a reasonable conversation about civil rights and same-sex marriage. I welcome it.

But I’m even more convinced today than I was yesterday that reasonable Iowans are overwhelmingly being turned off and turned away by the irrational fire and brimstone rhetoric of anti-gay activists.

Witnessing the Family Leader’s long, slow free-fall to irrelevance is like watching a car careen off a cliff in slow motion.

The damage is done, the trajectory is set. There’s nothing to do but cringe and brace yourself for the inevitable fiery crash.

The Leader’s seemingly unending quest to alienate Iowa’s reasonable majority stands in especially stark contrast to other groups’ current efforts to increase tolerance and promote civil rights for all Iowans.

Take, for example, One Iowa’s coffee klatsch campaign to humanize same-sex marriage and gay rights issues for Iowans who are on the fence by introducing them to gay friends and neighbors whose lives are measurably better because of moves toward equality.

Meanwhile, the Bob Vander Plaats vehicle is picking a fight with an anti-bullying conference whose controversial platform is that all students deserve to feel safe and supported in school.

It’s almost sad to watch the group have to contort itself into increasingly uncomfortable-looking positions to keep mining the outrage that has fueled the Family Leader leader’s lukewarm success.

This time, they are railing against the Iowa Governors Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth, trying to spin the conference’s anti-bullying agenda into a salacious pro-gay conspiracy. They called on Gov. Terry Branstad to ask Iowa Safe Schools, which organizes the conference, to remove the word “Governor” from the event’s name. Branstad, rightly, brushed off the group’s request.

That wasn’t enough for Vander Plaats’ crowd, which took its fight to We the People, asking on its website if we approve of “a conference that supports immoral, premarital sexual behavior among Iowa students,” or the governor “lending his title” to such an abomination.

Gross mischaracterization aside, my guess is that most people’s answer would be: yawn.

For years now, the Family Leader has been trying to tell us our culture is on fire. You can’t blame us for being a little tired of the alarms. The fact is, junior high and high school are no picnic for kids who are different. Bullying isn’t a problem we can afford to take lightly, or that groups should irresponsibly pervert to try to convert it into political hay.

Branstad apparently knows the first rule about dealing with bullies: They wilt when you don’t give them the attention they crave.

And it seems to me that Iowans are becoming equally wise to the Family Leader’s bullying ways.

Comments: (319) 339-3154;

jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

It seems silly to question the idea that we need ”highly qualified” teachers in every classroom; people who are experts at the subjects they are assigned to teach, but who also are  experts in child development, in classroom management and a host of other things. They have to have the personality and drive to steer their students – naturally inclined to laziness and distractability – to excellence.

But according to a new e-book I’m reading, even I could help your child learn calculus or bioengineering or a host of subjects — provided I got out of the way.

In the book, “Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discovering the Transformational Power of Self-Organized Learning,” author Sugata Mitra uses evidence gathered from his Hole in the Wall Project to argue for “minimally invasive education” — learning environments in which teachers act more as facilitators than experts.

The success of that project led organizers to take the experiment one step further: to have the children, with the aid of an untrained adult facilitator, use computers to teach themselves difficult subjects like English or biotechnology. According to Mitra, self-directed children who had guidance only from an untrained facilitator performed equally well on tests over the subjects as children taught by experts in some of India’s most elite schools.

Since then, Self-Organized Learning Environments have been created in classrooms in several countries, leading the author to conclude that an “excellent” teacher is one who stimulates student learning by asking big questions. All we have to do is teach children to read, to search for information and teach them a “rational system of belief” — i.e. that they can learn about the world by asking and answering relevant questions. He writes: “Children who have these skills scarcely need schools as we define them today. They need a learning environment and a source of rich, big questions. Computers can give out answers, but they cannot, as of yet, make questions.

“Hence, the teacher’s role becomes bigger and stranger than ever before: She must ask her “learners” about things she does not know herself. Then she can stand back and watch as learning emerges.”

When properly designed (the book includes a step-by-step guide for starting school-based SOLEs), teachers don’t even need to be in the room with the learning group, but can facilitate by remote. It’s truly a groundbreaking idea.

And one worth exploring, as we continue to ask ourselves how to shake the dust off our old models of teaching and learning, how to make school relevant in a 21st Century world.

A speed camera on a road sign north of the H Avenue NE interchange on Interstate 380 in Cedar Rapids. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

I got a call last week from John Johnson – the guy whose Jan. 5 letter to the editor (“I-380 speeding tickets hurting C.R. merchants”) drew howls of protest from readers, not because of his opposition to Cedar Rapids speed cameras, but because he paid his daughter’s fine. He and I disagree about whether traffic enforcement cameras are a good idea, but we both were surprised by how his points about their use were buried under an avalanche of parenting advice.

I thought it was odd that readers seized on what they saw as Johnson’s parenting flaws and all but ignored his argument about the cameras. Writer after writer has bemoaned the poor example they felt Johnson set by telling his daughter he’d pay her ticket if she promised to shop in Coralville, instead of driving the monitored roadways from Kirkwood (where she’s going to school) and Cedar Rapids stores. The letters still are coming.

Johnson told me he’s been getting calls and letters at home, too. One handwritten note he showed me suggested he “apologize to the people of Cedar Rapids.”

Those writers missed the point, Johnson told me (incidentally, he says his daughter is a fantastic and responsible young woman) see the note he wrote to me below.

Johnson thinks its the civil fines that don’t teach drivers anything. He had a very specific lesson in mind: He wanted his daughter, who is 20, to pay attention to how government’s got its finger in everything.

“The schools can’t teach everything to a kid, and that’s where a parent steps in, he said. I brought her something to the table to show her it wasn’t right.”

Johnson, a professonal driver, said he doesn’t buy the argument that speed cameras are about safety. He thinks it’s another example of government meddling.

I asked Johnson if he considered himself politically conservative. “Oh, yeah,” he answered. The family is very active in political issues.

And he’s taught his daughter not to back away from an argument; to stand up for what she thinks is right.

But would he still pay her fine if he had it all to do over? Absolutely, he said.

“I did more than the right thing,” he told me. ”I’m so glad I did it this way.”

Here’s a statement he sent me to share with all the folks who have read his letter and wagged their finger over his decision:

“I’d like to thank all you fine people who have taken the time to reply to my letter about your speed cameras, especially the ones offering up parenting tips. I just don’t know how I was able to raise a daughter who helps her mother decorate the home and her dad bust down truck tires. A daughter who was class president, National Honor Society, did volunteer work at the nursing home, clerked at Kum and Go, raised money and organized a teen dance at Hobo Day, County Fair Queen, had several craft items go to State Fair via 4H program, is on the Kirkwood Dean’s list and a Kirkwood Student Advisor. If only I had taken away the keys and grounded her to teach her a lesson.

“While I hoped to teach her a lesson about how speed cameras infringe on our Constitutional rights you fine people have taught her how some are willing to give up liberty for perceived safety, let alone try and run other people’s lives. Sure your cameras may have lowered the speed, but how far are you willing to let a government trample your rights? And if it was all about safety she would have had points on her driver’s license and increased insurance rate as if an officer had stopped her in person. But no, half the money went to the police pension and the other to the owners of the camera. Do you really want to go down a road where you have a PD working on a for profit basis? I know it has done wonders for our political system.

“In my truck I own, the technology exists the lets the company I am leased to know if the headlights are on, seatbelt use, fuel level, idle time, average speed, top speed, braking force, air temp and thanks to GPS tracking my exact location every minute of the day. And even on days off, with nothing to do with the truck, I still have to account for and report to the company what I was doing, all per Federal law. So how much liberty are you willing to give up for safety? What if Cedar Rapids leaders passed a law if you have an auto licensed in CR it must be equipped with a system like I have that can issue a “ticket” because you did not come to a complete stop at the Wal-Mart parking lot exit 12/29/2011 at 15:45 eastbound onto Walker Street. Before you say that will never happen, 2 things come to mind. The ban on smoking was only going to be on flights of 4 hours or more and casinos would only be on rivers.

“Both she and I have learned many things from this and not to speed in CR is way down on the list. First and foremost is just how far people are willing to try and run other people lives and the extreme way they are willing to do it. We at the Johnson home really have enjoy the hand written notes demanding I apologize to the people of Cedar Rapids and questioning my parenting skills, all unsigned.

“One lesson I didn’t have to teach my daughter. If you have something to say, have the courage to sign your name.

“PS. Windsor Heights want to put a speed camera on I 235 for “safety”. All 8/10s of a mile that 235 goes thru the city. Tell me again how it is not for the money.”

What makes a teacher great? We could discuss that question for days.

Or the even tougher question: How do we get our hands on enough excellent teachers to put one in every Iowa classroom?

Can we do it by limiting access to teacher prep programs to students who have at least a B average?

Probably not.

So what’s the idea doing in Gov. Terry Branstad’s $25 million education reform plan, intended to drag our K-12 schools into the information age?

It’s one of the odd bean-counting ideas strewn in among the governor’s forward-thinking reform ideas like competency-based promotion.

And as a House subcommittee continues to comb through the plan’s details, there has been a lot of head scratching over those elements that seem to reach back 100 years for ideas about how to transform our schools.

Even the governor’s proposal to open alternative pathways for professionals who want to become teachers — a fantastic idea, if you ask me — includes that 3.0 GPA requirement.

So if I’m a successful midcareer chemist and I want to teach Iowa 10th-graders about the mysteries of the Periodic Table, the department of ed is going to dust off my college transcripts to see if I’m up to snuff? It makes no sense.

And what does that mean for students who might have taken a more wandering path to their educational calling? Surely they could have valuable experience to share with Iowa’s kids.

But what’s even more troubling is how the proposal doesn’t seem to fit into any overarching plan or reform philosophy.

Instead, it appears to be a simplistic solution floated in an attempt to address a very complex problem: How to identify and recruit truly excellent teachers.

The thinking is backward — as if a lack of strict GPA requirements is what’s been preventing brilliant would-be teachers from flooding state colleges of ed. As if we can fix the problem simply by raising one arbitrary bar.

As Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal has pointed out, the governor has brought the 3.0 requirement to the table even as state education chief Jason Glass makes his case for a waiver from federal No Child Left Behind requirements.

Iowa’s waiver application isn’t yet public, but the early word is that Glass will argue strict test-score standards aren’t an accurate reflection of what’s happening in our schools, or what our kids are learning.

It’s a good argument, one that will make sense to a lot of people.

So why doesn’t it apply to teachers?

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

The building at 521 E. Washington St., Iowa City, on Thursday, January 5, 2012. The building houses Defunct Books and the Red Avocado restaurant. (Mark Carlson/The Gazette)

People like to gripe about the Haves and the Have-nots.

The special treatment, the small considerations the Haves enjoy even in our relatively humble Iowa communities.

And it’s true to some extent. Kirk Ferentz and I may work in the same town but we live in vastly different worlds. I suppose there’s a little “Upstairs, Downstairs” anywhere you go.

But often, it’s not some red-carpet conspiracy that prevents local decisions from going residents’ way. When it comes to city government it’s usually not so much a matter of the Haves vs. the Have-nots, but the Knows vs. the Know-nots.

Take the recent dust-up in Iowa City over the demolition of several buildings on the 500 block of East Washington Street to make way for a new dime-a-dozen retail-residential building, the likes of which are popping up like mushrooms all around the city center.

A lot of folks are up in arms about the change, which has displaced two beloved local businesses. They swarmed a recent City Council meeting, 5,000 signatures in hand, in an 11th-hour plea for council members to block the move.

Longtime activist Caroline Dieterle spoke for many when she said, “Getting rid of things that are this nice in favor of building a soulless apartment building is wrong.”

Accusations flew, explicit and implied: Council members and city staff just “don’t get” the quirky charm of Iowa City’s older neighborhoods. They don’t care about local business. They’re so deep in developers’ pockets they can’t see they’re destroying the very fabric of our community.

But if you want to make a local developer spit in her soup, just try telling her the City Council is a tool for her trade. No, the reason developments like the one on Washington Street go through isn’t because the boss plays golf with the mayor. It’s because they know the rules.

They have to — it’s their business. If local residents want to be heard, they have to make it their business, too.

Starting next week, the Department of Planning and Community Development is holding public workshops to discuss the city’s long-term approach to economic, environmental and social sustainability issues — part of a very public process of updating the city’s comprehensive plan. They’ve even set up a website to collect and showcase residents’ ideas: www.icgov.org/goodideas.

You just can’t raise a loud enough hue and cry to save a beloved building two weeks before the wrecking crews arrive. But that’s the great thing about getting in the know — you’re all ready for the next round.

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

Mike McKay of the Iowa City Housing and Community Development Commission takes a swing with a sledgehammer at old cabinets that had been removed from an apartment at the Broadway Condominiums complex at 1956, 1958, and 1960 Broadway Avenue on the Southeast side of Iowa City on Tuesday, October 25, 2011. The sledgehammer event was a ceremonial kickoff for an extensive remodeling project at the complex by SouthGate Development Services. (Mark Carlson/SourceMedia Group News)

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but a proposal to rename Iowa City’s Broadway Street in an effort to rehab its reputation just plain stinks.

Southgate Development wants the city to change 1,550 feet of Broadway south of Highway 6 to something else.

It’s an effort to distance their neighborhood investments from the area’s troubled public image.

As if trouble is just wandering around town, looking for a place to land, when it looks up at a street sign, its eyes lighting in recognition: “Aha! Broadway — the place I’ve been looking for all this time.”

As if you could enter neighborhood blocks into some kind of streets department version of the witness protection program — offer them a fresh start as Park Avenue or Mrs. Jones.

Southgate has suggested “Redwood Drive” as a nice alternative — one that doesn’t bring street crime and poverty to mind.

But neither does the name “Broadway” in most contexts. In fact, I hear there’s a really nice one out East somewhere.

Bottom line is no matter how clever your name, it’s not enough to make your reputation or change the way people think about you.

Just ask Marrion Morrison or Robert Van Winkle — it takes more than a cool-sounding name like John Wayne or Vanilla Ice to create an image you’re proud to hang your hat on.

Southgate knows this, that’s why they’re sinking nearly $6 million into renovating the locally infamous Broadway Condominiums — investing a lot more time and money than it would have taken just to rename the buildings something comforting, like Nice and Quiet After 10 P.M. or No Crime Around Here Homes.

I understand Southgate’s motivation to polish the area’s image. Truth be told, rumors about public safety concerns on Broadway and on neighboring streets have often far outstripped the actual condition of the neighborhood.

But it’s property investments like Southgate’s and commitments like the city satellite police station that will turn those rumors around.

It’s the good news from programs at the Broadway Neighborhood Center, the good work of Neighborhood Watches and other groups, the fun events like the annual 319 Festival that are helping Iowa Citians understand what the neighborhood is really like.

It’s what’s happening that is changing people’s perceptions of Broadway. Not what the city decides to call it.

The idea that renaming a street could have anywhere near that kind of impact?

I just call that silly.

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

A speed camera on a road sign north of the H Avenue NE interchange on Interstate 380 in Cedar Rapids. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

I  am fascinated by the letter war that’s erupted in response to a dad who says he was so opposed to Cedar Rapids’ speed cameras that he paid his daughter’s ticket when she got one on the condition that she stay away from downtown.

It’s an odd eddy in the round-and-round we’ve had about traffic-enforcement cameras for what seems like a lifetime now.

In case you missed it, Mad Dad’s Jan. 5 letter to the editor started out like this:

“I just paid my daughter’s fine for speeding on Interstate 380,” he wrote. “I made a deal with her. I’ll pay the fine if she goes to Coralville to shop. As she goes to Kirkwood Community College and Coralville is not that far down the road, she took me up on the deal.”

That didn’t fly with some readers who felt compelled to attack the writer’s parenting skills and “warped sense of responsibility” in letters of their own.

“I would have grounded the ‘kid,’ taken the car keys away and demanded they take responsibility for their own actions by paying their own fine,” one reader wrote.

“Doesn’t being a parent mean “parenting” our kids?” another asked.

“Gee, I wonder what’s wrong with our society,” sneered a third.

Apparently, there’s no shortage around here of people who are experts at raising other people’s children.

But what really surprised me is that no one (so far — the letters still are coming) has taken Mad Dad to task for his faulty, if not uncommon, presumption that Cedar Rapids traffic enforcement cameras were approved and installed to rake in profits.

No one has even attempted to answer his question: “So, city fathers, was it worth the lost sales tax revenue to get your speeding under control?”

The answer, of course, is yes — speed cameras on 380 have proved their worth a thousand times over, not in dollars but in crashes, injuries and property damage avoided.

We all have seen the data by now — red-light and speed cameras have significantly reduced the number of crashes and fatalities in Cedar Rapids, just as intended.

But I guess that doesn’t mean they don’t still raise complicated ethical questions — depending on where you’re standing.

I guess the closer you are to the ticket, the murkier the issue becomes. When someone else is caught in the dragnet, the cameras’ benefits are crystal clear.

That’s one good thing about cameras, if you ask me — they don’t play favorites or get distracted by bluster or excuses.

People, on the other hand, are apparently much harder to keep on track.

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jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net