The Griswold Community School District’s Board of Education Monday night, approved a settlement with the district’s certified staff. Superintendent Dana Kunze said the total package agreement was for 4.0% of the base salary. The package includes an insurance increase, and increases to FICA and IPERS. Kunze says the agreement puts the district in-line with what other districts in southwest Iowa are averaging. The Board also held a hearing at 5:30-p.m. with regard to School Board Director Redistricting, District Maps and the method of electing school board members. He says a district patron asked some questions about the process, and the board later voted to approve redistricting, unanimously. That means there will still be seven directors, but four geographical districts instead of seven, with three members elected At Large.

The process of determining Director Redistricting began following the results of the 2010 census. In other business, the Griswold School Board set May 1^st at 1-p.m. as the date and time for the sale of just under $3-million in bonds for various current and future projects. The move followed the approval Monday evening of a service agreement with the District’s bonding agent, Piper Jaffrey.  And, the board approved a contract with Bishop Engineering of Des Moines, for the parking lot project.

(9-a.m. News)

THURMAN, Iowa (AP) – Hundreds of volunteers have put their lives on hold so they can help people in a tiny western Iowa town recover from a mammoth tornado. The tornado ripped through the town of Thurman on Saturday, damaging most of the town’s homes but causing only a few minor injuries.  The 900 volunteers who showed up Sunday to help the town’s 229 residents were followed by an estimated 270 on Monday. Mayor Rod Humphreys Jr. told The Des Moines Register people will be cleaning up for a week, and “we should be 90 percent done by Wednesday.” Many of the volunteers are people whose homes or businesses were flooded by the Missouri River last summer. More volunteers are expected today (Tuesday), from as far away as Wisconsin and Montana.