The annual Fran Moore Luncheon returns after COVID- 19 induced hiatus. The meal will be a Loaded Potato Bar to be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Eagles Club in downtown Vermillion on Monday, Oct. 24. The luncheon is sponsored by Juno Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star. To help kick your experience up a notch, music will be provided by Elaine Peacock and Isabel Trobaugh. Juno has supported the Banquets in Vermillion, Elk Point, Centerville & Beresford as well as our own state projects such as the Eastern Star Home in Redfield, Service Dog fund, Eastern Star Educational Scholarship, the ESTARL Scholarship for students and missionaries in seminary.

Safety was the theme of the Elk Point-Jefferson School Board meeting Oct. 10 as the board discussed secure entrances to all the buildings and the addition of a School Resource Officer.

In 2020, the Union County Historical Museum was looking to replace the bricks on the barn on West Main Street in Elk Point. However, the original plan of putting the bricks on the barn wasn’t able to be accomplished.

Once again, schools have become the target of a TikTok Challenge and not in a good way. Last year the school’s experienced strains of vandalism as students were challenged to photograph or video themselves vandalizing school property. The new challenge – “swatting” – goes even further.

The South Dakota Department of Transportation (SDDOT) announced that concrete repairs are scheduled to begin the week of Monday, Oct. 17 on the following roadways noted below.

Thousands of schoolchildren across South Dakota are facing new barriers to getting proper nutrition at school due to the end of a pandemic-era federal program that provided free meals to all students regardless of parental income.

The deadline for college or university students to apply to serve as legislative interns for the 2023 Legislative Session has been extended to Oct. 21.

South Dakota students and families can access a new, online tutoring program, staffed by college students who are preparing to become teachers. The Dakota Dreams Online Tutoring Program offers free online tutoring to K-12 students across the state.

September precipitation was once again below average in the Missouri River Basin. September runoff in the Missouri River Basin above Sioux City was 0.6 million acre-feet (MAF), 47 percent of the longterm average. Soil conditions in the upper Missouri River Basin continue to be very dry. According to the Drought Mitigation Center, over 90 percent of the Missouri River basin is currently experiencing some form of abnormally dry conditions or drought, which is almost a 20 percent increase from the end of August. “Runoff in the upper Missouri River Basin was below average during the month of September and is expected to remain low throughout the rest of 2022,” said John Remus, chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Missouri River Basin Water Management Division.

The South Dakota Rural Electric Association (SDREA) Board of Directors has selected Steve Barnett as the statewide organization’s new general manager. SDREA, which has served as the chief advocate for the state’s electric cooperative consumers for nearly 80 years, tapped Barnett to lead the association as the electric utility industry faces a rapidly changing future.