Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
The number of Iowa students for whom English is a second language has more than doubled in the last decade, according to a new report by the Iowa Department of Education.
The report, titled “The Annual Condition of Education Report for 2008,” shows that in the 2007-2008 school year there were more than 20,000 students for whom English was their second language. Three of every four English language learners identified their primary language as Spanish.
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that 120,000 people who classified themselves as Hispanic lived in Iowa last year, a 44 percent increase from 2000.
An analysis of the numbers by The Des Moines Register shows that the increasing number of immigrant families in Iowa is expected to reverse the declining enrollment numbers of Iowa public schools. The number of students has been falling for more than a decade, but in two years enrollment will jump to more than 479,000 students.
State education officials say the enrollment trend is spurred by climbing birth rates, particularly among Hispanic families.
“It is remarkable in this day and age,” said Judy Jeffrey, the state’s top education official.
Enrollment has eroded since its peak in the early 1970s. The 2007-08 school year marked 10 years in a row of declines, Iowa Department of Education figures show.
A turnaround could bolster the budgets of some school districts, but it also could tax teachers, who will face more students who do not speak English.
The overall percentage of minority students in Iowa is 14.4 percent, up from 3.6 percent in 2006-2007 and 7.7 percent in 1998.
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