GREAT SCOTT! This is heavy.
There’s a podcast that started in late 2015 that, like the “Star Wars Minute”, tackled the “Back to the Future” trilogy, dissecting every minute of the movies in 15- to 20-minute segments.
The podcast link at the iTunes Music store only covers the last 300 episodes, so the first 50 podcasts (for the first 50 minutes of the first movie) have to be listened to or retrieved from the website.
That should cover about the next two years of road trips.
Due to a cascade of inexplicable subroutine malfunctions, the Matrix will be shut down for diagnostics and given a hard reset. The management apologizes for the inconvenience.
The Alta and Aurelia school districts — one mostly in Buena Vista County, the other mostly in Cherokee County — extended their whole-grade-sharing agreement last year. Last month, however, they dove into full reorganization, effective next year. Story: Cherokee Chronicle-Times.
The school board of the consolidated district will start as a transitional board, with technically three active boards at once in the next school year, and it will eventually be whittled down to one five-member at-large board. (Chronicle-Times, again) The new state law combining city and school elections had no effect on this decision, but it will be interesting to see if districts change to an at-large plan because of it.
The Alta and Aurelia districts combined have lost 25% of their students since 2000.
This weekend, for only the second time in the Big 12 era, Iowa State is in a position it used to be in quite often — the warmup act for the Oklahoma Sooners the weekend before their game against Texas.
It may not have been an official secret bylaw in the Big Eight, but Oklahoma’s season schedules made Iowa State the first conference opponent a disproportionate amount of time. Remember, this was before Oklahoma and Texas were together in the Big 12.
Before 1974, OU played a conference team eight times the weekend before Texas; ISU accounted for three of those. (Oklahoma State was not a conference opponent for most of this time.) Usually, though, in a schedule that started the weekend after Labor Day, OU played all non-conference teams including Texas before the Big Six/Seven/Eight teams.
Then from 1974 (shortly after the emergence of the 11-game schedule) to 1995 (the end of the Big Eight), ISU was both OU’s first conference opponent and the opponent before Texas 10 of 21 times. Five other years, OU’s conference opener and pre-Texas game was Kansas State in the “Futility U” era.
When Big 12 play began, and the North teams only played OU twice every four years, its pre-Texas opponents were more varied. Three of the first five Big 12 seasons, OU played Kansas, but that included the John Blake era and KU managed to win in both Lawrence and Norman.
It’s Oklahoma week, and as such, here’s the link to my compilation of just how thoroughly non-competitive ISU has been in this series. Because of Kentucky’s late-fourth-quarter collapse against Florida this year, ISU-OU remains the sixth-longest active overall winless streak between teams in the same conference.
Yesterday’s “Message Monday” from the Iowa DOT:
If you don't get the message today – ask the nearest millennial. https://t.co/RnUAg8GpyS pic.twitter.com/GPSVXQ1WI9
— Iowa DOT (@iowadot) October 2, 2017
More than a year after Iowa Falls exerted pressure on Alden to end its current grade-sharing arrangements, Iowa Falls got what it wanted. (Story: KLMJ)
The deal, which will last until 2028 (PDF), matches up with the previous arrangement except that Iowa Falls sixth-graders will not go to Alden. That little change turns it into a one-way sharing agreement, since all Alden junior high and high school students go to Iowa Falls. (Alden sixth-graders will remain at the elementary there.)
That means the longest existing two-way whole-grade sharing agreement is South Hardin (Eldora-New Providence and Hubbard-Radcliffe), which started in 2008 and earlier this year was extended to 2024.
Weeknight college football games, in a word, suck. Tonight against Texas is one of them. But without them, Iowa State would be even worse off for exposure.
It has been years since an Iowa State football game was not available on TV or streaming, at least at some package level. But being on TV and being a highlighted game are far different things.
A review of network and start-time assignments since 2004 shows that in 13 years, Iowa State football has been on ABC, ESPN, or ESPN2 on a Saturday night precisely twice. (Why 2004? A few reasons: A kindergartner in fall 2004 is a college freshman today; that far back, only half the games were on TV at all; and that’s where the lsufootball.net archive stops.) There are plenty of other night slots, but the best Big 12 games have gone to those three. This is changing somewhat following contract negotiations that gave “Big Fox” more Big 12 games and, now, more Big Ten games as well.
ISU’s highest-profile Saturday appearances on prime-time TV in those 13 years are 2006 Nebraska (a loss), 7 PM on ABC; 2014 Baylor (a blowout loss), 7:20 PM on Fox; and 2015 TCU (another blowout loss), 6 PM on ESPN2. The two most recent ISU wins on ABC are 2002 Nebraska* — with Brent Musberger making the call — and 2005 Iowa. Both were 2:30 kickoffs.
When ISU has been on ESPN or ESPN2 at night otherwise, it’s been on a weeknight: 2005 Army, 2011 UConn, and 2011 Oklahoma State** were all Fridays (the last moved from ESPN2 because of the NBA lockout); 2013 Texas*** and 2016 Oklahoma were Thursdays. The even-year games at Texas appear consigned to the Longhorn Network until either it or the Big 12 Conference die — technically the “ESPN family of networks”, but come on. (ISU is cool with this because the game goes to cyclones.tv, and then Kansas does the equivalent for its games at Texas on odd years.)
It would be nice if times and networks didn’t matter as much as they do, but you have to factor in ESPN’s tendency to ignore anything that isn’t either on a flavor of ESPN or the CBS SEC Game of the Week. As far as “GameDay” and halftime highlights are concerned, 11 AM on FS1 barely counts as being on TV at all.
The last 1 PM kickoff at Jack Trice Stadium was 2010 Kansas, and ISU’s last 1 PM kickoff ever was 2011 Missouri in Columbia. The former was the last game that was neither televised nor streamed, and the latter the last that was online-only. I prefer afternoon games, but the spotlight is in the night light, and the Cyclones just haven’t been winning enough to get into that position.
* The viewer will note that the song played in the stadium at the end was “Celebration” and very much NOT “Sweet Caroline.” See also this remembrance of Pete Taylor.
** As of this morning, that’s the second-to-last time ISU has won a game on any ESPN-related network. The only one later, of 17 games overall, is 2014 Iowa (ESPN), thanks to Kirk Ferentz’s “Ice Ice Maybe” routine.
*** [indiscriminate primal screaming]
September 27 and 28, 1997: Video stills of the north side of North Tama school, the weekend of a dedication ceremony for the addition with a multipurpose room (above), Iowa Communications Network room, and kindergarten.
The first of two substantial additions to the North Tama school complex since the baby boom was dedicated 20 years ago today.
In the mid-1990s, save for a new shop on the southeast corner, a recently constructed elevator, sloping roofs, and a change around the gym doors, the exterior looked nearly the same as it had since the mid-1960s. (The only giveaway to substantial renovations inside was a spot of slightly different colored bricks.) That changed in 1997, when a new multipurpose room and kindergarten were added on the north side.
A graduation-sized crowd turned out on Homecoming weekend for band and vocal performances along with a dedication ceremony in the MPR. The new entrance (tan overhang) and the green space in front, though, would only last about another decade.
All of the exterior you see in the frames above, except the side of the MPR abutting the parking strip, has been obscured from view by a giant addition to the front in 2009-10 that added a junior high commons, central office, varsity locker rooms, concession space, and vaulted ceilings (bleah). Speaking from experience, a sure-fire way to make you feel old is to have such a major change done to your school after you graduate.
Here’s an interesting data point that has emerged in the discussion of inequity in per-pupil funding among school districts in Iowa: The two districts with the longest one-way whole-grade-sharing arrangements are also maxed out in funding. Delwood has sent grades 7-12 to Maquoketa and Stratford has sent 7-12 to Webster City since 1987, and both are among the districts with the highest level of per-pupil funding.
As reported by the Gazette, when the Iowa Legislature set a funding formula in the 1970s, schools spending more than that were allowed to continue spending more. Today, that can be up to $175 per student, and when you multiply that by the entire enrollment it can make a difference. For example, 400 students at Hudson (another maxed-out district) earn the district $70,000 more than 400 students at North Tama (a state-minimum district).
The comparatively higher funding can’t do everything. Those districts weren’t able to hold on to their high school, but they have been able to continue existing. There’s a bundle of other districts also at or near the top funding level that more recently lost their high school or shared high school: Gilmore City-Bradgate, Twin Rivers, Lu Verne and Northeast Hamilton. CAL will join this group next year. The differential may enable them to continue going on independently longer than they otherwise would have. (But still, each decline in the student body means a drop in state money.)
A bill that would have equalized per-pupil funding across every district in Iowa passed the Senate unanimously last session but died in the House.
July 5, 2013: Grand Junction school.
In less than a decade, the East Greene school district will go from a full K-12 community to nearly erased from the face of the earth.
The entire complex in Grand Junction, with a 1915 building at its core, will be demolished after the city council determined it could not maintain it. The small town doesn’t need a community center, because a smaller one was built not too long ago. (I suspect, but cannot prove, that “school closes within 5-10 years of a community center being built” has happened a few times in Iowa.) According to the Jefferson Herald, a $1.5 million renovation was done in 2012 but the facility needs upgrades to the heating system.
This decision follows East Greene’s consolidation with Jefferson-Scranton and closure of this building (as Greene County Intermediate) last school year, with an addition built at Jefferson instead. The only piece of East Greene that will be left is the gym in Rippey, after the main building there was torn down.
It is an absolute crying shame that this building is going to be lost, but there’s no way of getting around it.
