Gazette Daily News Podcast, October 19

Be sure to subscribe to The Gazette Daily news podcast, or just tell your Amazon Alexa enabled device to “enable The Gazette Daily News skill" so you can get your daily briefing by simply saying “Alexa, what’s the news?

If you prefer podcasts, you can also find us on iTunes or wherever else you find your Podcasts.

This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Tuesday, October 19.

It will be pleasant and sunny again on Tuesday. According to the National Weather Service there will be a high near 75 degrees in the Cedar Rapids area with sunny skies. A south wind of 5 to 15 mph could gust at times as high as 25 mph. Tuesday night it will be mostly clear, with a low around 52 degrees.

The Cedar Rapids Community School District saw drops in achievement scores in reading and math at each grade level that took the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress last spring when compared with 2019 — which educators say reflects a loss of instructional time last year.

The Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress is a test taken by students in grades three through 11 once a year to measure performance in English Language Arts, math and science. Students were not tested in 2020 because of the pandemic.

Officials attribute the drop in achievement to loss of instructional time because of the pandemic and the August 2020 derecho, and as both students and teachers had to adapt to remote learning.

A 20-year-old man is in critical condition after being found with a gunshot wound inside a crashed car.

Police said they were called at 6:37 p.m. Sunday about a crash on eastbound Highway 6 in southeast Iowa City.

Officers said the vehicle the man was driving left the roadway and crashed into the median just west of Sycamore Street. The man, who was not identified, was taken to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City in critical condition, police said. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact the Iowa City Police Department

Negotiators for Deere & Co. and its striking union spent Monday talking, without reaching a contract agreement, as of 6 p.m. that would end the five-day strike by roughly 10,000 workers.

Union workers holding blue-and-white signs — members of the Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) — spent the day on the picket lines in Davenport, Dubuque, Waterloo and Ankeny, Iowa, and East Moline, Milan and Moline, Ill., and in Kansas.

The six-year contract offer from Deere, which union members overwhelmingly rejected, would have raised wages by roughly 5 percent over the life of the contract. The proposed deal also limited retirement benefits for workers hired after the contract was ratified.

Multiple Deere workers have told reporters that the proposed contracts was unacceptable, considering the company’s record-high profits over the past year. They also have said they have recently dealt with forced overtime and poor treatment from managers.

About 9,000 members of the Iowa National Guard have been directed to get a COVID-19 vaccination or risk disciplinary actions that could include “separation,” as a last resort, if they refuse without citing an approved medical or religious waiver.

The vaccination deadline for Iowa Air National Guard members is Dec. 2, while members of the Iowa Army National Guard will have until June 30, 2022, to comply.

Officials estimate that about 65 percent of Iowa’s roughly 9,000 Guard members had received at least their first COVID-19 vaccination as of Oct 15.