I don’t think the parents are coming back… They gathered up all the cell phones and electronics and destroyed them before they left. The kids are receiving help from the proper agencies.

This reminds me of what a former student is going through. Her boyfriend’s parents did home births for all the kids. No birth certificates, no social security cards, no records. Parents just decided last month to up and leave. The 18 year old just got dumped with his siblings, a farm, and no safety net. So the girlfriend and some other friends that just graduated have been working together to care for these kids and run the farm while they work with DHS to figure out how to go forward.

Or, hear me out… maybe it’s nobody’s freaking business besides her to decide what she does with her own body, so maybe just piss off? Why is that so hard to do?

Getting info on events and businesses is so much tougher now that I don’t regularly use Facebook. I missed both holiday garbage pickups because my county waste management company ONLY posts schedules on Facebook.

My kids love making the cursor fill the screen.

Privacy.com is literally the digital equivalent of what you were talking about. As for bank services, I don’t know that I have heard of any personally.

His daughter said he tried to talk the shooter down while protecting others. Chokes me up as a fellow Iowa teacher. I identify with that so much. Never met him, but I respect the hell out of him.

As a teacher who has fed kids who otherwise would have gone hungry over the summer, I’m appalled.

As an Iowan, I have no idea what more to do. Voting certainly hasn’t worked so far and reasonable arguments fall on deaf ears. Yes, I could move, but is it really any better anywhere else? I would feel like I was abandoning my family, my students, and community. It is important to show through action and compassion that there is more than just this kind of conservative nonsense in the world. Of course, she fast tracked giving our public education dollars to private schools with no change in accountability measures…

In a household of four with two full time incomes (both teachers, so take that with a grain of salt), we are at the point that the food budget is the only thing left to cut. We have canceled any subscriptions, cut all other spending, and often skip lunch/breakfast or eat Ramen noodles to save the bulk of our money for the kids and feed them better. I’m sick of beans and rice, BTW. Due to the nature of our jobs and the outside of school hours (which we are compensated for), side hustle is not an option. We would like to actually be present and part of our kids lives. I keep getting told “it gets better,” but the stress of making the bills and feeding the family is relentless, and that says a lot since we are way more fortunate than most. We need change.

It really is amazing how people just believe whatever outlandish story they hear. Had an elderly woman tell our state legislators at a local forum that teachers where I work were literally locking children into closets and teaching them to be gay. Legislators response: “Mumble, Mumble, yeah… we need to do something about these teachers.”

Lady, if we had the power to “indoctrinate” children, we wouldn’t have any late homework again, let alone tolerance for people different from yourself.