The public is invited to attend an open house this (Friday) evening for the Atlantic Middle School. The event will be held from 5-to 7-pm, prior to the start of the Atlantic football game. Parents and patrons of the district will have a chance to check out the recently completed renovations at the Middle School, which include a new science lab, new windows and refurbished classroom floors. You’ll also have a chance to discuss future Capital Improvement Projects planned for other district buildings, with Design Alliance Architect firm representative Jerry Purdy.

Among the projects planned are four new classrooms at Washington Elementary as well as a lunch room, and the moving of third grade students from Washington Elementary to Schuler Elementary, which requires the creation of 11 additional classrooms at Schuler. A commons/dining area is also planned for the Atlantic Middle School, the addition of seven classrooms and expanding the art room at the Atlantic High School, and the addition of an access road behind Washington, to help deal with traffic congestion on 14th Street in front of the school.

Other projects include the replacing of 18-year old heat pumps at the high school, new bleachers in the Atlantic Middle School gym, and seats in the auditorium. School officials have said increased enrollment and the need for addition space to house special classes, are the reasons they are considering the projects.

Police in Atlantic report the arrest on Thursday, of 25-year old Kayla Ashburn, of Atlantic. Ashburn was taken into custody on a Cass County warrant for Theft in the 5th degree. She was brought to the Cass County Jail and held pending an initial court appearance.

w/ Ric Hanson

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The City of Atlantic’s Planning and Zoning Commission will meet Tuesday evening at City Hall. One of the topics of discussion during the meeting that begins at 5:30-p.m., Tuesday under “New Business,” is the Poet, LLC ethanol rail site, located north of the Rock Island Depot on north Chestnut Street.

City Administrator Doug Harris told KJAN news earlier this week that City Zoning Administrator John Lund issued a “Stop Work” order, which required Poet to cease construction of an ethanol “transloading station in Atlantic, because it did so without the City’s permission.

An e-mail to Atlantic Fire Chief Mark McNees from Rail Portfolio Manager Christian McIlvain, said as many as eight railcars at any given time will be loaded at the transloading station, each of which will be equipped with track spill pans to serve as a spill containment. The company intends to transload fuel from tanker trucks coming to town from Coon Rapids, into as many as 25 railcars, weekly. Physical movement of the cars will be handled by crews with Iowa Interstate Railroad.

City officials and others met with representatives from Poet Thursday morning. City Attorney Dave Wiederstein has acknowledged federal law pertaining to rail operations prohibits the City from stopping the project, but they City does have a say when it comes to the project complying with electrical, plumbing and fire codes.

City officials are concerned about public safety and wear and tear on Commerce Street (the main access road to the transloading site), but officials with Poet have said they are willing to work with the City with regard to any damage and repair of the street. And, Atlantic Fire Chief McNees told KJAN News he’s satisfied the company will have the proper safety precautions in-place when the stations are built.

w/ Ric Hanson

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa officials have launched a communications tool that aims to inform residents about new and emerging drug concerns. The Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy says the service will provide updates via a monthly newsletter. Special alerts may be issued via social media and local news.

Policy Director Steve Lukan says it’s important for Iowa residents to get timely information about the growing number of new synthetic drugs and other modified substances of abuse. Residents can sign up for the monthly newsletter online.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa public health officials have received a $1.8 million federal grant to help ensure children and some adults get adequate dental care. The money from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be used to expand a school-based dental program called I-Smile Dental Home Initiative and to monitor and evaluate the state’s dental public health program.

I-Smile helps Iowa’s children connect with dentists who provide treatment and evaluation. Other health professionals including dental hygienists, physicians, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, physician assistants, and dietitians are a part of a larger network providing oral screenings, education, guidance, and preventive services as needed. Since I-Smile began, 62 percent more low-income Iowa children have received dental services. Iowa is one of 18 states to receive CDC funding.

Funeral services will be held tomorrow (Saturday) in Harlan, for a five-year old Atlantic boy whose body was found August 31st in a ravine near Logan, in Harrison County. 17-year old Cody Metzker-Madsen has been charged with 1st degree murder in connection with the death of Dominic Lloyd Elkins. Metzker-Madsen is scheduled for his first court appearance on Monday.
Dominic’s mother, 24-year old Barbara Kunch, of Atlantic, told the Daily NonPareil that Dominic had behavior problems, but was getting better. Those problems eventually led to his placement in foster care and also a treatment program at Children’s Square U.S.A. in Council Bluffs. Staff at Children’s Square told Kunch that her son’s behavior was improving and that he reacted better to medications for his attention deficit disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and sleeping disorder.Dominic was placed in the Children’s Square treatment program in October 2012 and left in February of this year. He had lived with his foster parents near Logan for only three-weeks when the incident that led to his death occurred. Metzker-Madsen initially claimed he wasn’t responsible for the boy’s death, and that while he and Dominic were playing, the 5-year old hit both himself and Metzker-Madsen in the head with a brick before running off toward the ravine where his body was found face-down in a small stream. Authorities say the child had multiple injuries to his head and torso. An official autopsy result has not yet been released.
Funeral services for Dominic Elkins will be held on Saturday, September 7th at 1:00 pm in the Pauley-Jones Funeral Home in Harlan. Metzker-Madsen is being held in the Harrison County jail under a $500,000 bond, and will be tried as an adult. His preliminary hearing is scheduled 11 a.m. on Sept. 9 at the Harrison County courthouse.

School’s back in session for Iowa kids and a sleep expert says readjusting to the schedule can lead to problems of not enough sleep. Dr. Stephen Grant of Iowa Sleep in West Des Moines says it can be a problem for kids regardless of their age. “Basically school-aged children aged six to 12 years, these children need on average nine to 12 hours a night of sleep. And it’s rare that I see any of these kids getting more than eight on average,” Grant says. “And especially in the adolescents its even more salient that they believe they need even less sleep, when in fact they need at least nine hours themselves. But on average, the average teenager that I see gets about seven hours a night.”

Grant says the kids may also think they can catch up by sleeping in on the weekends — but that’s not the case. “It actually takes you about three days to catch up on your sleep, it’s nothing that you can do in one fell swoop,” he explains. It’s a matter of adjusting the schedules so the kids have the time they need. Dr. Grant says the method varies based on the age of the children. “In the school-age children it’s kind of just getting more of ceremony or kind of the expectation that sleep will happen sooner. But in the adolescents its really kind of reigning in some screen time or some smartphone time, or just allowing the teenager to window in on the potential of what life could be like with eight or nine hours under their belt instead of seven,” according to Grant.

Making sure the kids sleep at the proper time is a key. or they could suffer from “delayed sleep phase.”
“Given their own proclivity to define a sleep period, they would probably want to go to bet about maybe one or two o’clock in the morning and then sleep until 10 or eleven the next morning,” Grant says. “And if you take a look at it that would be perhaps a sufficient degree of sleep, but the timing of it radically impairs their pyscho-social functioning. School starts at eight o’clock in the morning and they need to be up and going and prepared. And these children suffer from delayed sleep phase, and it’s a real struggle for them.”

The doctor says he gets a lot of questions from parents about kids talking or walking in their sleep and snoring. For the most part, he says it’s not a major concern. He says about 40-percent of most adolescents sleep walk, and most eventually outgrow it by the age of 15. “And snoring in and of itself does not predict that these children have obstructive sleep apnea, but there is some concordance between patients that snore and the possibility of sleep disruptive breathing — specifically obstructive sleep apnea,” Grant says. Grant says if adjusting your child’s schedule does not do the trick and allow them to get enough sleep, then you can see someone like him who is a sleep specialist.

(Radio Iowa)

About one-third of Iowa is now in a severe drought and the increasingly dry conditions raise the risk for grass fires. State Fire Marshal Ray Reynolds says rural residents who burn ditches or large piles of debris need to be especially careful. “I think people underestimate just how dry the conditions are,” Reynolds says. “The other thing we see, as we start to get into the fields in the next month or so, equipment and machinery are another common cause of fires.”

Prairie or grass fires are also often ignited by discarded cigarettes.”We see an awful lot of people who are throwing cigarettes out of their cars and I’ve not seen a car yet that doesn’t come with an ashtray. We would just encourage people who are traveling through our state to put their cigarettes out in their vehicle in the ashtray,” Reynolds says. A simple spark, combined with the recent low humidity and a little wind, can quickly turn into a large fire.

Reynolds says every year, at least a few Iowans are burned or even killed in “controlled burns” that get out of control. “If we could just remind Iowans…if you absolutely have to burn, make sure you have a water source close by and just be cognizant of the conditions when you burn,” Reynolds says.

(Radio Iowa)