Shoppers in Atlantic who choose to support the community and local business during the “Tax-Free Weekend,” will have a chance to win an additional $200 in passport bucks donated by Premier Partner First Whitney Bank. All completed passports in the month of August will be entered into a “Back to School” drawing for a chance to win $200 in passport bucks. The Chamber will also continue the monthly drawing for $50 in passport bucks.

The winners of the “Back to School” incentive will be announced the first week of September. Here’s how it works:
1.     Passports are available for pick up at the Atlantic Area Chamber of Commerce or participating businesses.
2.     You receive stamps in the amount of purchases.
3.     Once your passport is complete, you have the option to return the completed passport to the Chamber or participating businesses to be entered into a monthly drawing to win Passport Bucks only redeemable at participating businesses.
4.     At the end of the year, all the completed passports will be eligible for a Grand Prize drawing! Prizes will include Passport Bucks and items provided by participating businesses.
5.     To learn more and how to be a winner, visit www.atlanticiowa.com.

Click here for a list of participating businesses and more details on the Shop Local Passport program, or contact the Atlantic Area Chamber of Commerce 712-243.3017.

Police in Council Bluffs are investigating the second armed armed robbery this week, of a convenience store. At around 6:50-p.m. Thursday, uniformed officers responded to the D & S Express for a reported armed robbery at the business. The suspect had fled prior to the arrival of officers. The cashier on duty at the time said a black male entered the business and pointed a hand gun at her. The suspect then ordered the cashier to give him all of the monies from the register and threatened to shoot her in the face if she did not.

The suspect fled the business with the cash drawer and an undetermined amount of money. He was described as being approximately 6-feet tall, in his late twenties to thirty’s, with a stocky build. The suspect also had what appeared to be a torn up t-shirt covering his face and was wearing dark clothing with gloves.

The incident remains under investigation. Anyone having any information concerning the robbery should contact the Council Bluffs Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division at (712) 328-4728 or at Crime Stoppers (712) 328-7867.

Due to the latest Zika virus outbreak, Iowans who want to donate blood are being asked to wait a month if they’ve recently traveled to south Florida. Potential donors were already being deferred if they’d recently visited Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, South America or the Pacific Islands. That risk area is being broadened, according to Claire DeRoin at LifeServe Blood Center in Sioux City.

“LifeServe is asking that blood donors who have traveled to Broward or Miami-Dade counties in Florida, we ask that they refrain from giving blood for 28 days from the departure date from those affected areas in Florida,” DeRoin says. “The safety of the community blood supply is our top priority.” LifeServe supplies blood to 120 hospitals in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota.

“We have 100% confidence that the blood supply is safe and will remain safe,” DeRoin says. “That’s the reason we’re putting these precautions and these deferrals in place, just to make sure there is no risk to anyone receiving blood.” At least 15 Zika cases were confirmed in south Florida in the past several days. Kirby Winn, spokesman for the Davenport-based Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center, says this is the first time a location in the U-S has been added to the Zika deferral list.

Winn says, “Even though the reports on the Zika transmission within that region seem to be really isolated to even certain neighborhoods with Miami-Dade County, we’ve broadened that out to the county itself.” He emphasizes the deferral does -not- include other parts of Florida, like Orlando, Tampa or Jacksonville. Before the outbreak in south Florida, Winn says it was estimated about two-percent of potential donors would have traveled to the previous Zika locations.

Winn says, “It’s not major numbers by any means, but we collect anywhere from 500 to 800 donations every day and even 2% is two out of every hundred and it obviously adds up over the week or over the month.” The Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center serves 88 hospitals in parts of four states — Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri.

(Radio Iowa)

There is some progress in improving the reading levels of students in kindergarten through third grade in the state, but members of the State Board of Education expressed concern Thursday, about whether it is enough. The director of the Department of Education’s Division of Learning and Results, David Tilly, talked the board about the progress of the efforts to improve reading levels beginning last fall.

“Only 64 percent of the kids met their benchmarks across the K-3 system. That’s alarming, that’s not a very high level,” Tilly says. “We also looked at the exact same statistic in the spring and we see that in our data, about four percent more of our students are hitting that target benchmark.” The reading issue is part of the state education reform plan and making sure that all students are proficient readers by the end of third grade.

Tilly was asked how the improvement stacks up with what he thought it would be. “You would hope to see about a three percent growth — three to four percent growth if it’s real per year– statewide,” Tilly says. Tilly says 65 percent of the districts saw improvement in reading levels, while the other 35 saw declines. Tilly spoke with Radio Iowa after the meeting and he says some districts did struggle with the new programs designed to help kids improve.

“I think a lot of the issues have to do with systems getting geared up, getting organized, looking at their data — figuring out in their systems which parts of the system are working and which parts of the systems need work,” Tilly says. He says there weren’t any noticeable differences between larger and smaller school districts.
“I think that the possibility for making improvement is uniform across our schools,” Tilly says, “I think the challenges in different schools are different, but the ability of the schools to be able to tackle those challenges I think is equivalent. I think that there are different challenges and more challenges in some ways in urban centers than rurals. But if you look at schools that are highly effective you can see schools with all of those characteristics making significant growth.”

Board of Education members expressed concern that the four percent pace of improvement would mean there will still be around one quarter of the students who are not reading at the proper level in another year. By that time students who are not reading at the proper level will have to go to summer school and won’t be able to advance to the next grade if they don’t improve. Tilly says it is not likely the improvement.pace will pick up dramatically.

“When you look at state’s that have actually grown and made those growths on their state assessments — three to four percent a year on their proficiency seems to be a sustainable rate. The reality is that it doesn’t turn around overnight,” Tilly. Tilly says there is a lot of good work going on — but it’s not just a matter of sitting down with a child and showing them how to read.

“There’s an article, a professional journal article called ‘Teaching Reading Really is Rocket Science.” And in some ways it really is,” he says. Tilly says there are several components to being a good reader. “From understanding that there’s a letter sound correspondence between letters, understanding that the letters can be put together and when you put the letters together they make works, understanding the you put words together into sentences, how to sound out words, how to read those words fluently and accurately. There’s so many skills that go into what we see at the end of it — well that’s just reading,”Tilly explains.

He says when kids are deficient in any one of those areas it hurts their overall ability to read and they need help in improving. Tilly says this is the first time the state has had the data to get a good assessment of reading levels. He says 97 percent of the K-3 students in the state are now being assessed.

(Radio Iowa)

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:40 a.m. CDT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Board of Regents has hired a Washington, D.C., search firm to help select the next president at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. The board announced the hiring of AGB Search on Thursday. The firm will be paid $85,000, plus expenses, for its work, which will include identifying potential candidates and conducting background checks on applicants.

DIKE, Iowa (AP) — A sheriff and sheriff’s deputy from different Iowa counties are being hailed after helping deliver a baby on the side of an east-central Iowa highway. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports that the roadside delivery happened Wednesday along U.S. Highway 20 just east of Dike with the help of Hardin County Sheriff Dave McDaniel and a Grundy County deputy. Both mother and baby are reportedly doing fine.

BURLINGTON, Iowa (AP) — A Burlington man convicted in May of manslaughter in the death of his 22-day-old son is asking for a new trial. The Hawk Eye reports that a judge will hear 24-year-old Randall Payne’s request during an Aug. 26 hearing. In his request, Payne says prosecutors failed to turn over key evidence until midway through his trial. Payne believes the evidence, which includes photographs detailing the injuries of the infant, could exonerate him.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Soldiers from the U.S. and Canada have spent the last few weeks engaging in war games in expansive interior Alaska, with about 800 Iowa National Guard personnel playing the bad guys. About 5,000 soldiers and support personnel have just concluded the exercise, called Arctic Anvil. It was coordinated by the Hawaii-based Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Capability from the 196th Infantry Brigade. It was the largest training exercise held in Alaska in the last 15 years.