BREAKING NEWS: Davenport and Bettendorf School District schools will require masks on all buses and school vehicles starting Wednesday, Sept. 22, according to an e-mail sent out to all students in the districts. The following e-mail was sent out today: Beginning on Wednesday, September 22, 2021, masks will be required on all school buses and other district vehicles based on the CDC requirements and affirmation by the IDPH and Iowa Department of Education. This guidance was posted in the Iowa Department of Public Health “COVID-19 and K-12 School Update for Fall 2021” guidance which... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: The Davenport School Board voted 5-2 tonight to install a mask mandate for all Davenport Community Schools. TJ Schneckloth, Superintendent of the schools, issued the following statement tonight: Dear DCSD Families and Staff, On Monday, September 13, 2021, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa issued a temporary restraining order regarding the State of Iowa’s current mask requirement ban.  With the issue of this temporary order, until further notice, Iowa school districts can require face masks in schools. Following a special Board meeting on Thursday,... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Southern Illinois regions have run out of available ICU beds, a dangerous metric that could trigger new, harsher covid-19 mandates from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Southern Illinois reported Monday that it had no available ICU beds in an area of almost a half-million people, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. That marked the first time since the covid pandemic began that an Illinois region had reported no available ICU beds. Illinois Medical Professionals Action Collaborative Team, known by its acronym IMPACT, released a statement Tuesday, describing it as “signaling... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: As the covid-19 delta variant spikes numbers throughout the state of Illinois and schools are hit particularly hard, some officials and parents are calling to close schools and return to remote learning. More than 125 schools statewide — including several in the Quad-Cities area — have been hit with significant outbreaks of covid, according to the Illinois Department of Health. As of Friday, 128 outbreaks were active and causing significant absenteeism, according to the IDPH. Some of the worst outbreaks have been occurring in western and southern Illinois, and among Quad-Cities... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Vaccines could be available to schoolchildren ages 5-11 throughout Illinois as soon as later this year, according to reports out of Frankfurt, Germany. The company behind the vaccines, BioNTech will be requesting approval for its covid-19 vaccine use in kids 5-11 across the globe over the next few weeks and preparations for a launch are on track, the biotech firm’s two top executives told German newspaper Der Spiegel. “Already over the next few weeks we will file the results of our trial in five to 11 year olds with regulators across the world and will request approval... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has ripped into President Joe Biden’s new covid-19 mitigation plan, calling it “dangerous” and saying “enough is enough!” Biden’s new vaccine requirement was announced yesterday, requiring all government employees to be vaccinated and companies with 100 employees or more to require workers to get vaccinated or tested for the virus every week. Companies violating the policy could be hit with heavy fines. There’s no timetable yet on when the mandates will come into effect. “It’s about protecting yourself and... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: As covid numbers continue to spike higher, and officials dread numbers after the bustling Labor Day weekend celebrations, Illinois Gov. JB Pritkzer has warned the state could be hit with “significantly greater mitigations” if the state’s covid metrics continue to slide downward. New covid-19 cases statewide jumped 18.3 percent over the past week, with nearly 6,000 reported today so far alone, according to statistics from Covid-19 Illinois. Nearly every county is now at a ‘warning level’ for Covid-19, and the entirety of Southern Illinois has only one ICU bed... Read More

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently signed an Executive Order that requires all Illinois higher education employees and students, as well as K-12 employees, receive the COVID-19 vaccine. For employees and students who cannot, or will not, get vaccinated, the governor has also mandated weekly COVID testing, which is already in place at WIU. Those individuals who are unvaccinated and who attend classes and/or work on either of our WIU campuses (Macomb and Quad Cities) must comply with the required weekly testing to avoid disciplinary action. Test clinics (saliva-based tests) are held on both the... Read More

BREAKING NEWS: Some Illinois High Schools in western Illinois have put their sports seasons on pause due to the virulent outbreak of the covid-19 delta variant in their districts. Mercer County School District 404 in western Illinois sent out a letter to parents today saying they were pausing all practices and competitions for high school sports “while we implement outbreak protocols” regarding the massive spread of the delta variant within their schools and districts. “Due to the number of positive cases at Mercer County High School, our football, volleyball, and cheer squads... Read More

Will Iowa residents, schools and businesses be forced by the federal government to comply with mask mandates and other covid-19 restrictions? This is the big question as a battle royale shapes up between Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, the Biden administration’s Education Department, and the Iowa Supreme Court, headed up by a Republican judge who was appointed by Reynolds in 2018. This week, Iowa was nailed with a civil rights investigation by the Biden administration’s Education Department over Gov. Kim Reynolds’ move to ban mask mandates. The federal government investigation levels the charge... Read More