Members of the Atlantic Community School District’s Board of Education will meet in a Special Session Thursday evening beginning at 6,  in the High School Media Center. The only item on their agenda, is approval of the district’s proposed Capital Improvement Projects. The Board discussed those projects during their regular meeting on Monday. The combined project cost amounts to roughly $9.5-million dollars.

Atlantic Superintendent Dr. Mike Amstein says that includes $1.6-million dollars in work on the Washington Elementary School. The proposal incorporates 4 new classrooms on the northeast wing, a small cafeteria on the side of the gym, and an access road primarily for buses that should alleviate traffic congestion in front of the building. The access road adds about $220,000 to the cost at Washington.

Proposed work on the Schuler Elementary School includes $3.8-million for the construction of 12 more classrooms, which will result in moving some third grade students at the Washington School over to the new addition at Schuler, as well as any overflow students at Schuler itself. The Middle School would get a new commons area under the proposed Capital Improvements Plan, at a cost of about $1-million. It would be situated in what is now the courtyard area between the auditorium and the gymnasium. And it would be similar to what is currently in place at the Atlantic High School.

As for the Atlantic High School, Amstein says the proposal includes the addition of seven new classrooms on the west end of the building, and expanding the art room, at a cost of about $2.9-million. In addition, the Board is looking at replacing all the heat pumps that the high school, but that is not included in the CIP. The pumps, which have been in-place for about 18-years, have reached the end of their life expectancy.

Amstein says the good news out of all this is that they can borrow money for the projects while the time is still right as far as the interest rates is concerned. He says interest rates are at record lows and are expected to continue to decline. And, the High School will come off of Debt Service at the end of May. The projects he says should serve the district’s needs for at least the next 10-years. If the projects are approved during Thursday evening’s meeting, the next steps include project development and design (the board has only seen preliminary drawings thus far).

The four-year graduation rate at the Atlantic High School fell below the statewide average for 2011-12, according to the Iowa Department of Education. That news came from Atlantic Superintendent Dr. Michael Amstein, during Monday night’s meeting of the Atlantic School Board. The graduation information from the DOE was broken down into a four- and five-year study, or cohort. Amstein said Atlantic’s 4-year cohort was 84.55, while the statewide average was 89.26%.

Atlantic’s five-year graduation rate was 91.87, which was slightly above the statewide average of 91.40%. Amstein said 11 students dropped out of the district last year, making the dropout rate 2.50%, while the state average is 3.20%. Amstein says while the five-year graduation rate and drop-out rates are below the statewide average, there is still much work to be done within the district to address the higher-than-average 4-year cohort, and the dropout rate.

Amstein was concerned that the graduation rate in the district for the 2011-12 calendar year was the lowest recorded over the past five-years. He said the administrative staff needs to sit down and try to determine what needs to be done to correct to graduation rate and address the dropout issue. He says they conduct exit interviews with students to find out why kids drop out, but no two circumstances are the same, and the reasons vary.

The Iowa Department of Education (IDE) has collected individual student level graduation and dropout data since the 2004-2005 school year, through Project EASIER (Electronic Access System for Iowa Education Records). In the EASIER system, each student has an assigned unique state student identification number. Iowa’s 2009 graduating class was the first group of students to have a statewide identifica­tion number for five years.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) – Five entities that want another Interstate 29 exit to be built south of Sioux City are preparing to underwrite a nearly $400,000 study.   The Sioux City Journal says  the cities of Sioux City, Sergeant Bluff and Salix, along with Woodbury County and an arm of the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce, are backing the idea. The exit would serve Sioux City’s Southbridge Industrial Park and the county-proposed Liberty Industrial Park.

Plans to ask the Iowa Department of Transportation for the exit failed last year when local officials couldn’t agree on whether to ask the department to rebuild the Port Neal interchange or build another to the north.   Sergeant Bluff Mayor Dale Petersen says a new interchange would make the area more accessible to businesses.

Officials with the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau and area law enforcement agencies are reminding motorists about the next Special Traffic Enforcement Program (sTEP).

STEP

Law enforcement agencies throughout the state will be out in force beginning tomorrow (Thursday, March 14^th) through Sunday, March the 17th, looking for motorists who are violating traffic laws during the St. Patrick’s Day weekend. The theme is “Don’t Press Your luck. Buckle up day and night.”

The sTEP program consists of five high-visibility enforcement waves throughout the year, meant to get motorists to change their driving behavior by buckling up, slowing down, driving sober, and obeying all traffic laws, in order to reduce the number of vehicle crashes and save lives.

During last year’s St. Patricks weekend sTEP wave, there were more than 16,279 traffic violations reported by 234 law enforcement agencies that together, had more than 1,600 officers working the enforcement effort. After the St. Patrick’s weekend sTEP, law enforcement will be gearing up for the same effort May 20th through June 2nd…during the Memorial Day Holiday.