The Cass County Board of Supervisors are set to meet Wednesday morning, in Atlantic. The main action item on their agenda is approval of a subcontract between the Cass County Board of Health and Nishna Valley YMCA, to facilitate the provision of a Community Transformation Grant for the period covering Oct. 1st, 2013 through Sept. 30th, 2014.

The meeting begins at 9-a.m. in the Supervisor’s Board Room, at the Cass County Courthouse.

A power outage that began at around 8-a.m. has hit parts of Cass, Montgomery and Pottawattamie Counties. According to information provided by the Mid-American Energy website, as of 9:40-a.m. more than 957 customers of Mid-American were affected by the outage in Cass County, including 201 in Elliott, 564 in Griswold, and 226 in Lewis.

In addition, the outage affects 12 customers in Montgomery County, and 10 in Pottawattamie County. 1,181 customers are affected in the Council Bluffs metro service area. Officials with Mid-American had not returned a call by KJAN New seeking an explanation for the outage, as of 9:55-a.m.

The outage has forced the Griswold Community Schools to dismiss classes at the Elementary School, beginning at 11-a.m., and at the High School, at 11:25. The Griswold Library is also closed until at least 1:30-p.m.

Clarinda Police Chief Keith Brothers says no injuries were reported following an accident Monday evening at the intersection of West Clark and South 18th Streets. The accident happened at around 5:05-p.m., when vehicles driven by 84-year old Lloyd Cavner and 18-year old Caleb Ennen, both of Clarinda, collided after Ennen failed to stop at a stop sign. The 2005 Kia Sedona he was driving hit Cavner’s 2010 Dodge van on the left rear side, causing $13,000 damage altogether. Ennen was cited for Failure to obey a stop sign, Failure to provide proof of insurance and driving while suspended.

Discussions about potential Capital Improvement Projects designed in-part to help deal with increased enrollment in the Atlantic Community School District, will continue over the next few months before a final plan is presented to the community and a vote on an $11-million bond issue is put before patrons of the District sometime early next year.

During Monday evening’s meeting of the Atlantic School Board, Design Alliance Architect Jerry Purdy reported input from parents, teachers and others during the recent open house at the Middle School, and during other discussions, revealed some surprising ideas about how the District should deal with increased enrollment, in terms of its facilities.

He says some people questioned why and expansion of the high school was needed. He says there are parts of AHS that can handle an increase of up to 100 students, but the fact remains there are some teachers still sharing classrooms. That’s especially true, he says, with regard to the art and industrial arts programs. He said also he spoke with some teachers about ideas on how to deal with classroom size as the number of students increase throughout the grades. During some workshop discussions, there were suggestions by teachers on how to deal with increased classroom size.

He says they suggested “Pulling the 9th grade out of the High School and building a seventh, eighth and ninth grade building [at the high school},” then shifting the Schuler Elementary students to the middle school, and take a couple of grade levels out of Washington and move them to Schuler and move pre-school to Washington. Purdy says State of Iowa guidelines says Elementary classrooms must meet a certain size requirement. If those classes are moved to the old high school or the Middle School, the classrooms are not big enough to meet the minimum guidelines. He says if the district wants to reduce classroom size from the current 23-25 students down to 15 per classroom, that presents a “different scenario.”

Original plans for the Capital Improvement Projects included an expansion of instructional space at each of the district’s facilities. Included in the discussion, was the possibility of: Adding a new cafeteria and additional classrooms at the Washington School; a new cafeteria and commons area in the Middle School in an area between the gym and auditorium; seven new classrooms at the high school; and 11 more classrooms at Schuler Elementary.

Other meetings designed to gather input on the Capital Improvement Projects will take place this week and next week, with the Atlantic Booster Club and Parent Teacher Organization (PTO). Once all the suggestions are extrapolated into a summary form, that information will be presented to the School Board, sometime within the next couple of months.

The number of students enrolling in the Atlantic Community School District continue to increase. That was the word Monday night from Superintendent Dr. Michael Amstein, during his report to the school board. Amstein says the district “Is up about 30 students. That’s very good. We continue to be somewhat of an anomaly in southwest Iowa [because other districts are not picking up students like Atlantic is].”

He said as of Monday, there were 1,492 Kindergarten through 12th grade students in enrolled. The biggest increase is between the incoming Kindergarten Class and Senior Class. He said it marks the fourth consecutive year that the school district has shown an enrollment increase.

In other business, the Atlantic School Board Monday, approved a sharing agreement with the Harlan Community School District for a Curriculum Director. Amstein says Harlan wanted to share services with regard to their ESL – English as a Second Language – program, with the curriculum delivered under the guidance of Atlantic’s curriculum director.

Amstein said there are some operational sharing dollars available to Atlantic the agreement, which allows 100-percent for 5-years, as long as the agreement continues for that time frame. The agreement would allow Atlantic’s ESL Director to communicate via Skype with the Harlan District three Friday’s per month, and be on-site for a half day on Friday’s, once a month. It’s estimated 12 students in the Harlan District would be served by the arrangement, for a total of 28 between the districts.

And, the Atlantic School Board Monday, approved a School Resource Officer’s (SRO) Agreement for the 2013-2014 school year. The agreement is in-line with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Cass County County Sheriff’s Department, CAM, Griswold and Atlantic School Districts, as far as cost sharing is concerned.