SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – Nine school districts have been selected as recipients of the 2026 Perkins Reserve Grant by the South Dakota Department of Education.

The grant provides major equipment upgrades for Career and Technical Education programs, helping to equip students with the skills and experiences needed for post-secondary education and the workforce.

“CTE programs are constantly evolving to match the pace of workforce needs,” said Secretary of Education Dr. Joseph Graves.

“The South Dakota Perkins Reserve Grant aids schools in equipping students with current technologies, resources, and tools, offering students a realistic, hands-on learning experience that will strengthen their marketability to colleges or employers once they leave the K-12 education system.”

The following school districts have been named as the 2026 recipients:

• Aberdeen School District:
  • Awarded $30,233 for new precision machine equipment for the manufacturing program.
• De Smet School District:
  • Awarded $15,898 for modernizing metal fabrication within agriculture programs.
• Lake Preston School District:
  • Awarded $43,160 for expansion of program offers in multiple career clusters to strengthen industrial alignment.
• McLaughlin School District:
  • Awarded $11,997 to purchase equipment to offer a new culinary arts program.
• Menno School District:
  • Awarded $32,844 to purchase small engines and attend professional development opportunities to enhance the agricultural mechanics program.
• Mitchell School District:
  • Awarded $38,663 for the modernization of the automotive technology lab.
• Timber Lake School District:
  • Awarded $42,400 for the expansion of agriculture course offerings to strengthen industry alignment.
• Wakpala School District:
  • Awarded $40,145 to purchase a skid steer simulator to enhance the agriculture and construction program.
• Wolsey-Wessington School District:
  • Awarded $26,201 to purchase industry-aligned equipment to enhance the agriculture and construction program.

You can learn more about the South Dakota Perkins Reserve Grant at doe.sd.gov.

Copyright 2026 Dakota News Now. All rights reserved.

MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin man who allegedly told police he tried to set fire to a Republican congressman’s office last year because he was angry that the lawmaker backed a bill requiring TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell off its U.S. operations was sentenced Thursday to seven years in prison.

In addition to the prison time, Fond du Lac County Circuit Judge Tricia Walker sentenced 20-year-old Caiden Stachowicz to seven years of extended supervision, court records show.

Stachowicz, of Menasha, pleaded no contest to an arson charge in November. Prosecutors dropped burglary and property damage counts in exchange for Stachowicz’s no contest plea, which isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for the purposes of sentencing.

Stachowicz’s attorney, Timothy Hogan, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

According to a criminal complaint, a police officer responded to a fire outside Republican U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman’s office in Fond du Lac, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) northwest of Milwaukee, at around 1 a.m. on Jan. 19, 2025, and saw Stachowicz standing nearby.

He told the officer that he started the fire because he doesn’t like Grothman, according to the complaint. He initially planned to break into the office and start the fire inside but he couldn’t break the window, so he poured gas on an electrical box behind the building and around the front of the building, lit a match and watched it burn, according to the complaint.

He said he wanted to burn down the office because the federal government was shutting down TikTok in violation of his constitutional rights and peace was not longer an option, the complaint states. He added that Grothman voted for the shutdown, but he didn’t want to hurt Grothman or anyone else.

Grothman voted for a bill in April 2024 that required TikTok’s China-based company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. operation. The deadline was Jan. 19, 2025, but President Donald Trump has issued multiple executive orders prolonging it. TikTok finalized a deal two months ago to create an American version of of the social video platform. Trump praised the deal.

A spokesperson for Grothman’s congressional office didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

House Oversight Committee Republicans are readying to confront Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison at a high-stakes hearing on welfare fraud Wednesday morning.

“While Governor Walz hesitated, taxpayers lost billions. Attorney General Ellison has likewise claimed his office was aggressively holding fraudsters accountable, but when his statements were tested against the record, they fell apart,” Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., will say, according to prepared opening remarks obtained by Fox News Digital.

“We have spoken with over thirty whistleblowers, many of them current employees and Democrats, who say they were ignored, retaliated against, and even surveilled for raising concerns. Instead of protecting the whistleblowers, the Walz administration protected the system that enabled fraud.”

Hours before the hearing kicked off, the committee released a 53-page report that accused both Walz and Ellison of knowing about the fraud allegations far earlier than previously thought.

“While the Committee continues to review documents and meet with whistleblowers, it is evident that Governor Walz and Attorney General Ellison knew about the fraud in federal programs administered by the State of Minnesota much earlier than they told the American people,” the report said.

“Transcribed interviews with current and former public officials from the State of Minnesota have confirmed that Governor Walz and Attorney General Ellison would have been aware of fraud in the [Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP)] and high-risk Medicaid programs administered by DHS as early as spring 2019 and fraud in [state food aid] programs administered by [the Minnesota Department of Education] as early as April 2020.”

Both Walz and Ellison previously pushed back on any accusations that they knowingly allowed fraud in Minnesota’s social programs and have accused Republicans of politicizing the situation.

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The high-profile hearing is the culmination of a monthslong probe by the House Oversight Committee targeting allegations of fraud in Minnesota.

The panel previously interviewed current and former officials within the state’s government, including those focused on food aid. 

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have charged multiple people with stealing more than $240 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program through the Minnesota-based nonprofit Feeding Our Future. However, the probe has since widened to multiple state-run programs being investigated for potential fraud. Childcare providers receiving state funding, mainly within the Somali community, are also under scrutiny.

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And the committee’s report accused the state’s progressive leadership of ignoring evidence of fraud in a bid to appease the Somali community in Minneapolis.

“The Committee has found that Minnesota lacked adequate oversight efforts to verify that taxpayer dollars were being used appropriately and could have stopped the flow of money to fraudsters at any time but chose not to for fear of political retribution from the politically active Somali community,” the report said.

“Further legislative efforts at the federal level are necessary to prevent this massive waste, fraud, and abuse of federal dollars from ever happening again.”

In his opening statement, Comer will call the scandal “one of the most extensive breakdowns of oversight this Committee has ever examined.”

“Billions of taxpayer dollars were stolen from social services programs while warnings piled up, whistleblowers spoke out, and state officials chose delay and denial over action,” he will say. 

“Federal prosecutors estimate that as much as $9 billion may have been stolen from just fourteen Medicaid programs administered by the State of Minnesota. As our investigation has shown, it happened because state leadership failed, repeatedly, to intervene. What we’ve uncovered in Minnesota is not a paperwork error or a few bad actors slipping through the cracks. It is a sustained failure of leadership.”

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Meanwhile, Democrats on the committee have accused Comer of trying to distract from the fallout of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis — including the killing of two U.S. citizens by federal agents.

“I encourage folks to watch those videos and see what’s happened for themselves. And I’m hopeful that this committee investigates this incident and that we have full accountability,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said during a previous hearing on Minnesota fraud.

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