• Learning at the Levitt.* Levitt at the Falls will break ground Thursday on a significant expansion, including a new community room funded by a $500,000 investment from Dakota State University Foundation. The new space, called the Dakota State University Community Room, will be housed in the Sweetman Atrium and will be used for indoor performances, community events, DSU alumni, donor recognition, and similar events, summer camps with DSU and additional educational programming. Learn more about the DSU Foundation here. 
• The people want late meetings. And late meetings they shall have – at least through the end of the calendar year. Lincoln County Commissioners heard from about a dozen people Tuesday night about how valuable it was to have one meeting each month take place outside of a normal work day. The commission started hosting one meeting at 6:30 p.m. each month a few months back, and the public's desire to keep it going was loud and clear.
  • Before public comment Tuesday, commissioners discussed doing away with the evening meetings, particularly because of inclement weather in the winter months and a sense that, as Commissioner Jim Schmidt put it, "there aren't a lot of new faces coming in."
  • The public pushed back hard on those objections, including testimony from two state lawmakers who urged the commission to keep the evening meetings.
    • "It's one of the best moves, I think, you guys ever did, but I'm just not buying the weather thing," said Rep. Kevin Jensen, noting that he and 104 others across the state trek to and from Pierre during some of the worst weather months of the year for the legislative session.
  • There was also a teeny bit of drama before the final vote in which Commissioner Joel Arends said if it wasn't for the public inputters, his fellow commissioners' "natural instinct is to want to close government off," at which point Commission Chair Tiffani Landeen called him out of order and ended the discussion.
• After-school programs are helping. Kids who've participated in the Sioux Falls School District's Community Learning Centers (CLC) are seeing academic achievement at a higher rate than their peers, according to data presented to the school board Monday evening. The vast majority of kids enrolled in these after-school programs saw test scores improve year-over-year.
  • Additionally, kids who went to CLC programs also saw higher attendance rates, fewer tardies and lower rates of behavioral issues year-over-year. You can see all of the data in this school board report.

*Denotes a paid partnership