Page 4 - Alan Ostergren News Today

Iowa has long been known as a local-control state when it comes to schools. On this encore episode of Talk of Iowa, a look at how state laws passed in recent years have affected the decision-making power of local school districts and boards.

A company seeking to build a carbon dioxide pipeline should have obtained a court order before attempting to survey private land from which it had been barred, a prosecutor argued.

A company building a pipeline in northwest Iowa didn't have a court order to survey land from which it was previously barred by the owner.

Iowa has long been known as a local-control state when it comes to schools.

Reasonable” is a word that is used often in Iowa’s laws. Reasonable fees. Reasonable rules. Reasonable efforts. Reasonable force.

"Given the highly emotional topics school boards have been dealing with, prohibiting a parent from attending meetings for a year seems extreme."

Randy Evans argues that it was extreme for the Linn-Mar school district to ban Amanda Snyder from attending meetings for a year.

In a hearing Tuesday on a lawsuit over the Cedar Rapids ordinance requiring five of the nine-member Citizens Review Board identify as people of color, a judge asked whether the policy reflected a bias that white people could not identify trends rooted in bias.

“Reasonable” is a word that is used often in Iowa’s laws. Reasonable fees. Reasonable rules. Reasonable efforts. Reasonable force. But events in recent weeks show government officials are not always following what many Iowans would think the term means. And when government officials deviate from

Recap of news from around the state