Community Corner

Iowa City School Board to Discuss New Diversity Policy that Could Affect Future Redistricting: Iowa City Daily News Links, Dec. 18

A quick roundup of local news.

So who is ready for a blizzard?

On to the Links

Gregg Hennigan of the Gazette writes that a new Iowa City School District diversity policy would try to eliminate outliers with extremely high or low concentrations of free-and-reduced lunch.

Find out what's happening in Iowa Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Hennigan also reports that Superintendent Steve Murley says he is very excited to be staying in Iowa City after not getting the Omaha Superintendent job Monday night.

Speaking of impending snow, officials in Nebraska and Iowa are warning of the heavy storm lumbering this way, set to arrive Wednesday and Thursday.

Find out what's happening in Iowa Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Kirkwood Community College was named a leading study abroad program. (Press-Citizen)

A nice story on the annual shop with a cop program. (Press-Citizen)

The University of Iowa's Paperback Rhino improv group is making a name for itself at the national level. (Press-Citizen)

You can now view Johnson County inmate booking information online. (Press-Citizen)

The budget debate at the national level effects all sorts of random things, like fighter planes in Des Moines for example. (Des Moines Register)

Here are some winning recipese of a holiday cookie contest. Mmmm. (Des Moines Register)

Daily Links Excerpt of the Day

School board member Karla Cook said the policy would result in significant changes she thinks would be good for the district. As a retired City High teacher, she said she knows firsthand that students who live in poverty face bigger obstacles to learning. When large numbers of these students are in one school, there are increased challenges for all students and teachers, she said.

“I think they will be more capable of learning if they are in classes where there is not a high (free-reduced lunch) number,” she said.

Cook, however, said she was adamantly opposed to forcing students to go to new schools to meet the proposed guidelines.

She and other board members noted that the district wants to build two new elementary schools in eastern Iowa City. That would require redrawing boundary lines at several schools, and a few of those have among the highest poverty rates in the district. This would offer a chance to more evenly distribute students socioeconomically, they said.

Daily Links Featured Directory Listing of the Day: Billion Honda

 


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