WEATHER SERVICE SAYS 99 MPH DERECHO WINDS HIT THE UPPER PLAINS

Strong storms that brought hurricane-force winds to an area stretching from the Upper Plains to the Midwest have been preliminarily classified by the National Weather Service as a derecho, defined as a long-lived line of storms with extreme winds.

The weather service’s Storm Prediction Center said Tuesday it made the determination based on local storm reports showing straight-line winds gusting well over 60 mph from South Dakota and into Iowa, Minnesota and western areas of Illinois and Wisconsin from late Monday into early Tuesday. A storm is classified as a derecho if its wind damage swath extends more than 240 miles (386 kilometers) and has wind gusts of at least 58 mph or greater along most of the length of the storm’s path.

Many areas reported gusts of over 75 mph. The highest reading appeared to be in northwestern Iowa just before 10 p.m. Monday, when a gust clocked at 99 mph was recorded at Sioux Center.

The high winds tore down trees and tree limbs throughout the region, damaged some buildings and left thousands of customers without power by midday Tuesday. But the overnight derecho was not nearly as destructive as others in recent history, like one in 2020 that traveled from eastern Nebraska across Iowa and into Wisconsin and Illinois, reaching wind speeds of a major hurricane and flattening an estimated 100,000 trees in and around Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

A December 2021 derecho in the Great Plains and Upper Midwest spawned at least 45 tornadoes, caused widespread damage and killed at least five people.

The overnight storms didn’t drop as much rain as was feared, meteorologists said.

“It looks like everything certainly stayed under 2 inches,” or 5 centimeters, said Alexis Jimenez, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Des Moines, Iowa.

That could change, at least for Iowa, Tuesday night into Wednesday, Jimenez said.

“It’s southwest Iowa’s turn for thunderstorms with heavy rain,” Jimenez said. “We’re looking at maybe some more damaging winds. Of course, none of the magnitude as we saw last night.”

The weather service said severe thunderstorms are expected Tuesday into Wednesday from southern Montana into the central High Plains and across much of Nebraska and Iowa.

 

ADVOCATES WORRY MEDICAID WORK REQUIREMENTS WILL BLOCK CARE FOR PEOPLE WITH SUBSTANCE USE DISORDERS

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Joshua Haiar / South Dakota Searchlight) – South Dakota health professionals and advocates are warning that new Medicaid work requirements could disrupt care for people struggling with substance use disorders and other behavioral health problems.

Angela Kennecke, CEO of the addiction-focused nonprofit Emily’s Hope, said people with a history of addiction often have criminal records. She said that means they face steep obstacles in the job market.

“If you can’t get a job, you lose coverage,” she said. “But without coverage, you can’t get treatment. That’s the cycle we’re concerned about.”

Kennecke spoke to South Dakota Searchlight after a roundtable discussion organized by U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-South Dakota, on Tuesday at Avera Behavioral Health Hospital.

Wyatt Urlacher, a clinical social worker with South Dakota Urban Indian Health, told the roundtable he’s worried, and “I’m sure I’m not the only one.”

“The majority of my clients are covered by Medicaid,” he said.

Kim Malsam-Rysdon, Avera’s vice president of public policy and a former South Dakota secretary of health, talked with South Dakota Searchlight after the discussion.

“We know that people who have access to health insurance, whether that’s Medicaid or anything else, are more likely to get the care they need earlier,” Malsam-Rysdon said. “So it’s a big concern for us when folks may lose their health care coverage for whatever reason.”

Medicaid is a federal-state program that pays for the health care of low-income people. Under the new federal policy in the Big Beautiful Bill Act, Medicaid recipients will be required to log 80 hours a month of work, job training, education or volunteering to keep their benefits.

Johnson defended the new Medicaid requirements, highlighting the list of exemptions.

“What people don’t understand is that seniors, young people, pregnant women, people with children, folks with disabilities, people in areas with high unemployment, veterans and tribal members are unaffected by the work requirement,” Johnson said.

A March 3 analysis in the journal Health Affairs estimated that 2.29 million Medicaid enrollees with a substance use disorder in the U.S. would still be at high risk of losing coverage under a work requirement that includes exemptions for people with disabilities, those looking for work, or in school or training. That is largely due to the number of people with a substance use disorder who are unable to meet a work requirement.

Taylor Clark, the operations supervisor at Choices Recovery Services in Sioux Falls, told South Dakota Searchlight that 95% of the people who seek care there are Medicaid recipients, and few of those people are employed. Clark said that without Medicaid for those seeking care, services may be in jeopardy.

A $50 billion fund created by the bill to help rural providers deal with lost Medicaid reimbursements is expected to bring at least $500 million to South Dakota over five years. But Johnson said the money is temporary rather than permanent.

“This is not a forever pot of money,” Johnson told Searchlight. “States should not use this to just fund ongoing operations. They need to ask themselves, ‘How do we use this money to transition to a better system?’”

Johnson said providers should invest in technologies to help deliver greater access to cost-effective health care.

The Medicaid work requirement will take effect nationally at the end of 2026.

 

SOUTH DAKOTA WOULD JUMP EIGHT SPOTS IN TEACHER PAY RANKINGS BY MEETING ITS OWN TARGET

SOUTH DAKOTA (Makenzie Huber / South Dakota Searchlight) – If South Dakota’s average teacher salary matched the state’s target teacher salary, the state would have ranked 38th in the nation this year for average teacher pay.

Instead, it ranked 46th at an average salary of $56,328, according to the 2025 National Education Association teacher salary report.

The target teacher salary isn’t actually the state’s goal for average teacher pay. In reality, it’s a basis for the state’s public education funding formula. Funding determined by the formula goes not just toward teacher salaries, but also toward overhead costs and salaries for other school workers.

In recent years, the gap between the target teacher salary and the average teacher salary in South Dakota widened. The target teacher salary for the 2023-24 school year, which is what the latest rankings are based on, was $59,659.

In addition to climbing the ranks in teacher pay if the target salary was reached, South Dakota would have risen above neighboring states Montana and North Dakota.

Members of the state Teacher Compensation Review Board learned more about the rankings during their Monday meeting in Pierre. The group is required to meet each year by law to review teacher compensation compared to surrounding states and report the findings to the governor and Legislature.

Going forward, lawmakers hope to see progress in teacher pay due to a law passed by the 2024 Legislature that sets a minimum teacher salary and mandates increases in average teacher compensation in school districts nearly equal to increases in state education funding. About 95% of South Dakota school districts met the state’s mandated minimum $45,000 salary last school year.

Board member Sen. Taffy Howard, R-Rapid City, said she wants to see the new legislation “play out” before the board recommends further changes to adjust or improve teacher compensation.

Board turns its attention toward teacher retention, student behavior

Howard and other board members called for ways to improve teacher job satisfaction and address one of the leading reasons teachers leave the profession: behavior problems among students.

South Dakota Department of Education data presented by Caitlin Scott of Marzano Research showed that the teacher turnover rate in South Dakota is higher than most surrounding states. About 16% of teachers in April 2024 reported that they no longer taught at the same school. North Dakota was the only surrounding state with higher numbers at 23% turnover.

Elementary and music teacher vacancies were higher than average at the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, according to the data. Ahead of the 2024-25 school year, math and science teachers were revealed as having high vacancy numbers. Overall vacancies as of June of this year stood at the second lowest number since 2019 at 144 vacancies throughout the state, according to the Associated School Boards of South Dakota.

Board members discussed student-teacher ratios, funding for schools and incentives for school districts and teachers to better address student proficiency and behavior problems.

Howard told board members she’d prefer to see a list of recommendations from local school districts, rather than “unfunded mandates” from the Legislature, especially as the state faces a $24.5 million shortfall in projected revenue.

“I would like us, if it’s a purview of this committee, to try and focus more on how we can make the teacher’s life better in the classroom and in the school,” Howard said. “Because we don’t necessarily have a lot of money to throw at this.”

Howard told South Dakota Searchlight after the meeting that finding ways to address teacher retention and student behavior is a form of compensation.

“Does it always have to be a monetary form of compensation?” Howard said. “Or can we do other things to compensate them by making their life better in the classroom in general?”

South Dakota Department of Education Secretary Joseph Graves said he plans to follow up with board members on their concerns and prepare recommendations for the board’s next meeting in August.