Words cannot describe my anger as I read this front-page article from Sunday's Des Moines Register, about a family who are suing the Waukee school district over excessive time-outs the staff forced on their daughter, who has autism.

Waukee is the fastest-growing city in Iowa. I knew that the school district had some growing pains, but I had no idea its leadership was so poor as to allow this kind of conduct, let alone defend it.

Join me after the jump if you have the stomach to read about sickening treatment of special-needs kids in a public school.

My State Representitive Mark Smith (D-Marshalltown) put out a press release this week citing the improvements in education made during the last legislative session. As a teacher, I am very excited about many of these.

Smith highlights expanded access to pre-school, higher teacher pay, and more affordable higher education. Many would think I would be most excited about the teacher pay since I am a teacher. However, I think the expanded access to pre-school and affordable higher education will have the most long lasting benefits and are the most significant achievements. Don't get me wrong, the extra money I will be getting next year and beyond will be nice, but you don't go into teacher to earn a lot of money.

The expanded access to pre-school will greatly help students come to school prepared to learn. This will make my job easy. I teach 2nd grade and this year I had 5 students reading at a kindergarten level at the beginning of the year. Of these students, only 1 had attended pre-school.

I have written numerous times about the rise in cost of a college education and our debt for diploma system.  If we want to keep our young adults in the state, affodable higher education must be a priority.

It is great to see education once again become a priority in our state. These efforts will only strengthen our state in the future.