In early 2021 I wrote about “Western College” in southern Linn County and how that connected to the short-lived Leander Clark College in Toledo.
Now the Gazette’s “Curious Iowa” series has a feature on College Township with more history about the hamlet of Western itself.
(Yes, the article misstates the name of the merged Tama-Toledo paper.
The school building in Hills was constructed in 1965, just before the town was attached to the Iowa City school district. Six decades later, that school is in danger of closing.
Iowa City has put Hills Elementary on the chopping block for budget reasons. Stories: KCRG (video), KWWL. KCRG notes that more than 40% of the student body is Hispanic. The Daily Iowan reports that closing the school would save the district $1.6 million. The DI also says that Iowa City’s grade structure is changing from junior highs (grades 7-8) to middle schools (grade 6-8), which frees up space for Hills students at other sites.
The board will make its decision March 26.
The replacement of the Black Hawk Bridge at Lansing just got underway in November, but it does not appear it will be in time for a seamless transition.
The current bridge was shut down Sunday after “unexpected movement” and it will be closed for at least two months, the Iowa DOT says. (KWWL has two stories, the first of which misspelled “Chien”.)
The bridge hasn’t been opened continuously since it opened in 1931. It was closed between 1945 and 1957 after damage from ice dams.
Ups and downs to hit unvisited towns, plus the northwest corner tri-state marker, are covered in the continuation of my 2015 circumnavigation of Iowa.
A column by Iowa Writers’ Collaborative member Cheryl Tevis has some photos of schools in her area: Boxholm, Pilot Mound, and Paton (the last just some bricks forming a monument to itself).
The column covers many school-related bills still active in the Legislature, and it piqued my interest on many fronts, but I’m going to focus on one.
Tevis wrote that state Sen. Jesse Green of Boone is pushing a bill that “would require the sale to a private school — if the private school is the highest bidder.” Tevis also wrote that at a public forum in Jefferson, Green said that “he had learned of a public school near Cedar Falls refusing to sell its building.”
I scratched my head trying to think of a school facility currently on the market around the area, and came up empty rural-wise. I soon found the answer: In December the Waverly-Shell Rock school board refused to sell one of its soon-to-close elementaries to an organization that wants to put a private school in Waverly.
The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported that the board had rejected a $70,000 bid from a group called Inspired Life while continuing to consider much smaller bids for either a community center or low-income housing.
In Green’s Jan. 26 newsletter, which Tevis referenced, he said, “I have heard reports that some public schools are refusing to sell their old buildings to existing accredited private schools for no good reasons and they would rather tear the buildings down than see another school use it.”
Senate File 2333, approved by the State Government Committee on Valentine’s Day, breaks the heart of those who think a school should make the ultimate decision on what to do with properties it no longer has a need for. As Tevis said, it requires a public school to sell property to a private school if the private school is the highest bidder. It also bans any attempt by a political subdivision to ban school buildings from being sold to private schools. (Yes, a ban on banning something.)
If Green is referring to the Waverly case, he’s incorrect that the district would rather tear down the building — at least, not as of two months ago. He’s also incorrect that there isn’t a good reason.
“Every school dollar now, with the new (education savings accounts), goes away from the public school, and we are a public school,” Jen Kettleson said in the Courier story. “But we need to protect the school that we’re a part of.”
The Legislature, by the way, missed the deadline to set public school supplemental aid funding, although there is now a bill in the House with a 3% increase.
On Sunday, the Moline anchorage to one of the bridge piers of the old I-74 bridge was blown up in an explosion. Stories and video: KWQC, WQAD.
The subject of the fourth and final demolition can be seen in this video from October, when there was a different controlled demolition. It’s the bigger hunk of concrete, which was shaved down to near river level before Sunday’s action.
*The thinner piers in the foreground of the October video will remain standing. “Some of the piers from the old bridge will remain in place due to federally protected mussels around them,” WQAD reported at that time.
The remaining I-74 bridge assembly joins a similar one for the Ak-Sar-Ben bridge on the Missouri River as reminders of transportation past.
I wrote about food! Specifically, I wrote about the tradition of churches inviting people to come eat a certain type of food at a variable date in February.
In 2016, I mentioned that Arkansas wrangled an exception into a federal highway bill that enabled a newly built four-lane road from Jonesboro to I-55 to be designated an interstate. The provision was to allow farm traffic to use a portion of the road since there was no easy alternate route. Immediately afterward, the road became I-555 and US 63 was eventually rerouted away from it.
(Much more recently, when it comes to highway designations, Arkansas has, as is its wont, again done something SO INCREDIBLY STUPID that it will have to be blogged about to be believed [at a future time]).
When the I-555 exception happened, I said that was the perfect thing for Iowa to do as well. Such an exemption is needed to get the Des Moines beltway designated an interstate with a unified number, ideally I-435. I-835 might also be an option (and a unique number in the country).
Last week, the Iowa House Commerce Committee approved a bill, House File 2145, now HF 2455. It specifically exempts farm equipment (“implements of husbandry”) from the minimum 40 mph speed limit for interstates on a specific road — US 65 around Des Moines — and allocates $250,000 from the general fund to study an alternative route for the farm equipment.
That would be one good thing to happen in the Statehouse this year.
The Iowa Newspaper Association awards ceremony Thursday night recognized newspapers for their work between October 2022 and August 2023. The winning entries can be found here.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette won 40 awards. Three I had a minor hand in are Best Sports Section, Best Headline Writing, and Best Total Newspaper Design for Class V newspapers (the largest). I suppose General Excellence could be in there, since it’s based on point totals from all other categories. The sports section and headline entries — selected issues from specific weeks — include days I worked. I laid out most of the sports section for April 30, 2023, which included Drake Relays coverage. Those categories are all team efforts, so my name will never be on them, nor on any similar award in previous years. I guess I have to buzz my kazoo about it this way.
The North Tama Telegraph won some awards too.
The official INA press release has a typo in it: “Advertisiting”.
My Substack piece this week is about the 2023-24 Iowa school enrollment numbers, with a map and two graphics. One of those graphics looks at Waterloo’s stagnant enrollment vs. Waukee’s astronomical growth.
The Des Moines Register, in its evaluation of private school enrollments and voucher use, committed a whopper of an error online: “Dallas County, which holds much of the Urbandale and West Des Moines school districts, is the wealthiest in the state, with a median household income above $90,000 — roughly the 300% cutoff for a family of four.”
Dallas County holds a good part of both cities, but precisely NONE of the Urbandale school district and a tiny piece of West Des Moines. Everyone in those cities living in Dallas County save for one subdivision goes to Waukee.
UPDATE: The DMR’s error also appeared in print.
