KEEPING SPORTS SEPARATE IS KEY ISSUE
A large group of concerned citizens met face to face with the East Greene Community School District board of directors at a public meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 30, at the high school gym in Grand Junction.
The meeting was scheduled after a group of 15 concerned parents and patrons showed up at the school board meeting two weeks before (Nov. 16) to voice their concerns about the pending whole grade sharing agreement (WGS) with Jefferson-Scranton. The sharing agreement is due to take effect on July 1, 2012, for the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years.
The agreement stipulates that all East Greene 7th through 12 graders (middle school and high school students) will attend classes in Jefferson for the two school years, but it was agreed upon signing the arrangement that the two districts would maintains separate middle school and high school sports programs.
However, a snafu has occurred in that plan as state high school athletic officials say only high schools can offer sports, and as of July 1 this summer, East Greene will not exist as a high school, due to the fact its high school and middle schools students will be attending all classes in the Jefferson-Scranton middle and high schools.
Superintendent Mike Harter told the board at its October regular meeting that he had just been appraised of this interpretation by the Iowa High School Athletic Association (IAHSAA), which oversees boys high school athletics, and the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Association (IGHSAU), which sets policy and administers girls sports, but he assured them that this was just a minor setback and he had communicated with various individuals within both associations who told him East Greene could continue to offer sports next year even though its academic programs would be folded into Jefferson-Scranton.
Apparently, as word of “no sports at EG next year issue” percolated throughout the school district, along with concerns on why the school board had stopped publishing the proceedings of its regular and special meetings since summer, a group of concerned parents and taxpayers showed up in force at the meeting on Nov. 16, which usually draws about three visitors and offers visitors’ seating for about five. At issue, besides sports, was lack of communication from the board to the district, said some parents, and to others, a concern over the amount of miscommunication.
Harter appraised the situation at the Nov. 16 meeting for the concerned patrons, which included former board member Kevin Fouch, who completed a term on the board in September, having chosen not to run for re-election. Because of the number of questions and concerns, and an already full agenda, it was agreed by the board to schedule the special meeting two weeks later in the gym.
A crowd of about 75 interested parents and district patrons were at the Nov. 30 public meeting, where Harter again outlined the situation. Many of those present at the meeting are parents of students in middle and high school. Much of the discussion focused on the pros and cons of maintaining sports here while all the students in grades 7-12 will be attending classes in Jefferson.
Bruce Wessling of Grand Junction, who has a daughter in high school and one in middle school, pointed out that his seventh-grade daughter “is the only seventh grade girl out for basketball.” She is one of just six members of the EG junior high basketball team, which additionally consists of just five eighth graders. “What is the situation for next year when the 6th graders come up to play in junior high?” he asked the board. He indicated the sensible thing to do would be for East Greene students to participate with Jefferson-Scranton students, noting the low numbers for East Greene.
However, one issue with the East Greene enrollment is a disproportionate number of boys to girls in high school and middle school. While there just six girls on the junior high girls basketball team, there are more than 20 on the boys team—enough to divide into separate seventh and eighth grade teams with reserves to spare. The girls are at bare bones with just one reserve available at any game.
A similar situation exists at the high school level—there are enough boys to field varsity and junior varsity teams with reserves but only 10 girls available to play varsity and JV. The girls varsity is more along the lines of a JV team as there on no seniors, two juniors, four sophomores and four freshmen. A similar situation occurred with girls softball during the summer, with just 10 girls total on a team with and nine positions to fill.
The parents of boys have a different outlook on the situation, and many expressed concern about not keeping our teams here and the diminished chances of their sons to play sports in a combined Jefferson-Scranton and East Greene athletic program. Others repeated a phrase often heard in the East Greene area “that they won’t play my kid in Jefferson because they will only play their kids.”
East Greene does have enough boys to continue with a separate program, but that opens up some difficult issues—several parents noted—of needing to combine girls sports with Jefferson, but then keeping boys only a as separate program which would result in a lack of cohesiveness in what is purported as a program about “sharing.” (This is a two-way sharing arrangement as Jefferson-Scranton will send all its 5th and 6th grade students to attend classes in the Grand Junction building the next two school years).
Dean Lansman, Jefferson-Scranton football coach and a familiar figure here as he grew up in Rippey and is an East Greene graduate, spoke on behalf of participation levels and said there is room for everyone in a combined program. Tim Christensen, Jefferson-Scranton, superintendent, was also in attendance and supported Lansman’s statements.
Also at issue is why this problem surfaced after the whole grade sharing agreement with Jefferson-Scranton was signed, but not before.
Harter told the crowd that he was given information from the State Department of Education last year that East Greene could continue to offers sports while in a whole grade sharing arrangement. “It’s the Department of Education who said we could do this,” he said, noting that the state athletic associations take the lead of the state DOE. When asked who specifically he got the information for sports approval from at the state DOE, Harter said it was Carol Greta, who is an attorney in the office of Jason Glass, DOE executive director.
Harter has said since the October school board meeting that East Greene will fill the requirements of being a high school “if we offer one class a day in the Grand Junction building taught by an East Greene teacher.” He and Christensen have been working to create such a class and work it into the daily schedule of East Greene high school students. “We will offer a class, which could be a reading class, either at the beginning of the school day or at the end.” The scheduling will be worked out with the overall daily schedule of high school classes in the Jefferson building, to accommodate the new East Greene-specific class at the Grand Junction building.”
The administration will most likely need to identify a teacher in the Grand Junction building who is certified to teach high school in addition to fifth and sixth grades.
Space and time would need to be created in the Grand Junction building for the approximately 80 East Greene high school students who will travel to Jefferson each day next to attend this special class. Harter did not indicate if the class needs to be offered a full class period like the other high school curriculum courses or if it could be an abbreviated period.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Making Donations for Garreans-Walsh Family
FIRE DESTROYS JEFFERSON HOME, KILLS SON
Donations are being accepted for the Garreans-Walsh family, whose home in northwest Jefferson was destroyed by a tragic fire early Tuesday. Cody Garreans-Walsh, 18, a senior at Jefferson-Scranton High School, died in the fire. His brother, Nicholas, 14, sustained burns to his hands and feet and is hospitalized in Iowa City.
Donations can be made at Wells Fargo Bank, 200 W. State Street, Jefferson. Clothes and Christmas presents can be donated to Community Opportunities. Clothing sizes needed are boy’s size 14 pants and large shirts; women’s size 14 pants and large tops; and men’s size 34/32 pants and XL tops.
Community Opportunities is located at the Greene County Family Development Center, 200 E. State St., Jefferson, 515-386-2179.
Funeral services for Cody Garreans-Walsh are pending at Slininger-Rossow Funeral Home, Jefferson.
Donations are being accepted for the Garreans-Walsh family, whose home in northwest Jefferson was destroyed by a tragic fire early Tuesday. Cody Garreans-Walsh, 18, a senior at Jefferson-Scranton High School, died in the fire. His brother, Nicholas, 14, sustained burns to his hands and feet and is hospitalized in Iowa City.
Donations can be made at Wells Fargo Bank, 200 W. State Street, Jefferson. Clothes and Christmas presents can be donated to Community Opportunities. Clothing sizes needed are boy’s size 14 pants and large shirts; women’s size 14 pants and large tops; and men’s size 34/32 pants and XL tops.
Community Opportunities is located at the Greene County Family Development Center, 200 E. State St., Jefferson, 515-386-2179.
Funeral services for Cody Garreans-Walsh are pending at Slininger-Rossow Funeral Home, Jefferson.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Deadly Fire In Jefferson Early This Morning
VICTIM, AGE 18, WAS FORMER EAST GREENE STUDENT
An 18-year-old died in a fire in Jefferson early this morning. The fire broke out in the early hours at 707 West Head Street, which is in northwest Jefferson. The story, as reported by KCCI this morning: http://www.kcci.com/news/29931409/detail.html.
A posting on the East Greene Hawks Facebook page by East Greene school administrators identified the victim as Cody Garreans-Walsh, a former EG student who was currently enrolled in Jefferson-Scranton.
The young child who suffered injuries, as noted by the KCCI story, is identifed by the EG Hawks Facbook posting as Nicholas, the younger brother of Cody Garreans-Walsh. The Facebook item also noted, "some of our former students may remember his sister Samantha Walsh. Very sad and keep the family in your thoughts."
The KCCI story notes that fire officials believe a space heater may have been the cause of the fire.
An 18-year-old died in a fire in Jefferson early this morning. The fire broke out in the early hours at 707 West Head Street, which is in northwest Jefferson. The story, as reported by KCCI this morning: http://www.kcci.com/news/29931409/detail.html.
A posting on the East Greene Hawks Facebook page by East Greene school administrators identified the victim as Cody Garreans-Walsh, a former EG student who was currently enrolled in Jefferson-Scranton.
The young child who suffered injuries, as noted by the KCCI story, is identifed by the EG Hawks Facbook posting as Nicholas, the younger brother of Cody Garreans-Walsh. The Facebook item also noted, "some of our former students may remember his sister Samantha Walsh. Very sad and keep the family in your thoughts."
The KCCI story notes that fire officials believe a space heater may have been the cause of the fire.
Friday, December 2, 2011
The Eye Guy Remains ‘Frozen in Time’
FIRST COLUMN AS EDITOR OF FFA SPOKE OF GRAND JUNCTION
Editor’s Note: The following column is reprinted from the very first issue of Frozen Food Age magazine that I edited six years ago, September 2005, and it speaks to the grocery Thompsons of Main Street and East Hager Street in addition to the Hillmans and other Grand Junction families.
Being named editor of Frozen Food Age the previous month (August 2005) was somewhat the “pinnacle” of my business journalism career in New York. I had made it “up” to editorial management. From there it was sort of a non-stop, whirly-gig, ongoing roller coaster of writing, editing, traveling, speaking, pleading, begging, crying, ranting, raving and just plain surviving in the dog-eat-dog world of business-to-business (B2B) media over the course of the next 3 years and 3 months.
And like a captain of his ship, I went down with the "SS Frozen Food Age" as it was sunk by its own fleet commander (Cygnus Business Media) in late November 2008. Meaning: the company shuttered the magazine.
Much of my writing work from FFA is still housed in a few boxes in a friend’s apartment back in New York, but for some reason I held on to this very first column of nearly three dozen columns while relocating back to GJ in the spring; most likely because it addressed life in Grand Junction and my early-day connection to the grocery industry. As you probably surmised, Frozen Food Age covered the frozen food industry, but it specifically covered frozen foods at retail, a rather narrow niche of the overall grocery industry but a lucrative one (think $5.99 pails of ice cream and $4.99 frozen pizzas compared with 29 cent tomatoes and bagged baby carrots for $1.19 that have a limited shelf life, called “shrinkage” in grocery store parlance). FFs don’t shrink—they have a longer shelf life than other perishables (fruits, vegetables, dairy) but there are considerable costs for transport, storage and distribution.
Covering frozen foods at retail meant primarily addressing the relationship between the manufacturers (Birds Eye, Totino’s, Blue Bunny, etc.) and the grocery retail buyers and merchandisers (folks at Hy-Vee, A&P, Supervalu, Kroger, etc.). The former were the advertisers; the latter, readers. The fun part came in covering the next step in the shopping-at-retail continuum—the consumer. It was always a “check it out” moment when I would come across a print magazine ad in Better Homes & Garden or People or spot a 30-second TV commercial on a major network—usually for a product like Lean Cuisine or DiGiorno or the mighty ho-ho-ho Green Giant, a proud product of our neighbors to the north, Minnesota.
It was an interesting and challenging position. The people in the industry were respectful of our efforts in publishing Frozen Food Age and were just as disheartened as we staff members were when it was closed.
Well, anyway, I wanted to share this with the readers of Eye on Grand Junction, which was launched shortly after FFA was shuttered. Like I said, just think of Thompson family members from old GJ. Doesn’t have to big the Jack Thompsons but could be the big Morse/OJ/ Grandma “Hattie” Thompson clan of GJ and Rippey and environs or the Scotty Thompson and sons of a more recent GJ vintage. Either way, think warmly of a Thompson and hearken back to a pleasant memory of life back in GJ and eastern Greene County. Hello folks near and far, natives and newcomers alike: come visit us! Corner of Highways 30 and 144, Heartland, USA…we’ll put the coffee pots on and whip up some tasty pans of “bars” for nibbling.
“Freezing Point” column, September 2005, Frozen Food Age Magazine
From Fareway to Fairway and All Points in Between
Shortly after taking this position, I took a really close look at how pervasive the supermarket or grocery store has been in my life. Along with writing about food, I spent the last three years talking about it in meeting room discussions with Weight Watchers members. The topic of “what’s good to buy and where to buy it” came up often.
Yet my exposure to the grocery industry has been deeper, more pervasive. I grew up in a rambling, white frame house on the edge of small farm town of just shy of 1,000 people in central Iowa. The Thompson family, when they had about eight of their 10 kids, had lived in our house before they moved down the street to an even bigger house.
I had an older brother and sister and they, along with all the Thompsons, Gannons, Rowles, Dobsons and a sprinkling of Kerseys, Kennedys and a few other families, were the students of St. Mary’s Academy, which was just down the street from where we lived. St. Mary’s and the rectory were just across the street from the Thompsons. St. Brigid’s, our beautiful old brown brick church with the soaring steeple, was in the next block to the east and the cemetery was on a slight rise behind our church and school “campus.” I was the last of two students to enroll in St. Mary’s, which, regrettably, closed after my one and only year there.
It’s a heritage I take very seriously, however, as I was the last of a continuum of students from 1888 to 1962. For many of its years, St. Mary’s was a girls-only high school and many of the girls boarded in local homes, as they did in ours, which was then owned by Rose Bridget “Aunt Bridgie” Gannon. We are just the second owners in the house’s history, which dates back to the early days of St. Mary’s.
Looking back, I guess the Thompsons owned the local Foodland on Main Street. Ownership doesn’t seem like the right word, though. The Thompsons were the Foodland. Jack ran the store, Faye took care of the house and all those kids, plus her two brothers and her younger sister who came to live with them, and she was also the gatekeeper to the church and the activities going on there. All 10 kids worked “up at the store” during their high school and college years and all went on to college and then some.
I remember how my mom kept “suggesting” that I go speak to Jack about becoming a box boy up there, but I resisted. Too shy. Look at me now!
We were close to the Thompsons through church, school and the neighborhood, but our truly close friends were the Hillmans. My best friend was Dave Hillman, a year older than me and a grade ahead in school. His parents, Doris and Rolland, were my parents’ best friends and Rolland was a meat-cutter at the main Fareway store over in Boone, about 20 miles east of Grand Junction, my hometown.
Years later, while a student at Drake University in Des Moines, one of my classmates was Scott Beckwith, son of the owner and grandson of the founder of the Fareway chain.
Because I had gone to college with Scott Beckwith of the Fareway Beckwiths of Boone, Iowa, and a close family friend had spent his entire working career with the main store in downtown Boone, I was always on the lookout for the other Fareway stores, which was then a small chain of about a dozen stores in Iowa. One newspaper job took me to Storm Lake in northwest Iowa where I shopped my first Fareway store. It was no frills but it still had the signature meat counter just like the main store in Boone and was closed on Sundays.
The Fareways (and the Beckwiths) are still out there flourishing. Since my time in Iowa in the early 1980s, Fareway has expanded into Illinois and now has 80 stores. A web site covering grocery history architecture, www.groceteria.com, notes that Fareway has recently opened two stores in Omaha, one across the street from a Wal-Mart.
My move from Iowa to the Carolinas in the mid 1980s exposed me to a whole new group of supermarkets: Kroger, Winn-Dixie, Harris-Teeter and Food Lion. I remember the excitement while living in the growing coastal community of Pawleys Island in South Carolina when the new A&P supermarket plaza opened. With the memory of our recent hurricane on the Gulf Coast, I distinctly remember shopping at Pawleys A&P just before (provisions I eventually took to an overnight shelter) and after Hurricane Hugo hit the South Carolina coast in September 1989.
Of course, that was then. Then was Jack Thompson dying much too early from a heart attack and no successive owner ever having the knack and know-how that he had. It was a great store. Sadly, Grand Junction has not had a supermarket in many years.
And this is now. Now is shopping along the “Miracle Mile” of Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan—the Whole Foods Market in the glitzy new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle to Citarella at West 75th Street to Zabar’s at West 80th.
In between is Food Emporium at Lincoln Center, a Gristede’s in the lower level of the architecturally stunning Ansonia, between 73d and 74th, and of course, New York’s very own Fairway, “Like No Other Market,” at 75th and Broadway.
These same three stores—Fairway, Citarella and Zabar’s—have been included as a side excursion at the Fancy Food Show in New York. And with good reason: they are a “foodie” heaven.
So if you are coming into the city on business or pleasure sometime soon, give me a call. I would love to show you my incredible neighborhood of stores.
Editor’s Note: The following column is reprinted from the very first issue of Frozen Food Age magazine that I edited six years ago, September 2005, and it speaks to the grocery Thompsons of Main Street and East Hager Street in addition to the Hillmans and other Grand Junction families.
Being named editor of Frozen Food Age the previous month (August 2005) was somewhat the “pinnacle” of my business journalism career in New York. I had made it “up” to editorial management. From there it was sort of a non-stop, whirly-gig, ongoing roller coaster of writing, editing, traveling, speaking, pleading, begging, crying, ranting, raving and just plain surviving in the dog-eat-dog world of business-to-business (B2B) media over the course of the next 3 years and 3 months.
And like a captain of his ship, I went down with the "SS Frozen Food Age" as it was sunk by its own fleet commander (Cygnus Business Media) in late November 2008. Meaning: the company shuttered the magazine.
Much of my writing work from FFA is still housed in a few boxes in a friend’s apartment back in New York, but for some reason I held on to this very first column of nearly three dozen columns while relocating back to GJ in the spring; most likely because it addressed life in Grand Junction and my early-day connection to the grocery industry. As you probably surmised, Frozen Food Age covered the frozen food industry, but it specifically covered frozen foods at retail, a rather narrow niche of the overall grocery industry but a lucrative one (think $5.99 pails of ice cream and $4.99 frozen pizzas compared with 29 cent tomatoes and bagged baby carrots for $1.19 that have a limited shelf life, called “shrinkage” in grocery store parlance). FFs don’t shrink—they have a longer shelf life than other perishables (fruits, vegetables, dairy) but there are considerable costs for transport, storage and distribution.
Covering frozen foods at retail meant primarily addressing the relationship between the manufacturers (Birds Eye, Totino’s, Blue Bunny, etc.) and the grocery retail buyers and merchandisers (folks at Hy-Vee, A&P, Supervalu, Kroger, etc.). The former were the advertisers; the latter, readers. The fun part came in covering the next step in the shopping-at-retail continuum—the consumer. It was always a “check it out” moment when I would come across a print magazine ad in Better Homes & Garden or People or spot a 30-second TV commercial on a major network—usually for a product like Lean Cuisine or DiGiorno or the mighty ho-ho-ho Green Giant, a proud product of our neighbors to the north, Minnesota.
It was an interesting and challenging position. The people in the industry were respectful of our efforts in publishing Frozen Food Age and were just as disheartened as we staff members were when it was closed.
Well, anyway, I wanted to share this with the readers of Eye on Grand Junction, which was launched shortly after FFA was shuttered. Like I said, just think of Thompson family members from old GJ. Doesn’t have to big the Jack Thompsons but could be the big Morse/OJ/ Grandma “Hattie” Thompson clan of GJ and Rippey and environs or the Scotty Thompson and sons of a more recent GJ vintage. Either way, think warmly of a Thompson and hearken back to a pleasant memory of life back in GJ and eastern Greene County. Hello folks near and far, natives and newcomers alike: come visit us! Corner of Highways 30 and 144, Heartland, USA…we’ll put the coffee pots on and whip up some tasty pans of “bars” for nibbling.
“Freezing Point” column, September 2005, Frozen Food Age Magazine
From Fareway to Fairway and All Points in Between
Shortly after taking this position, I took a really close look at how pervasive the supermarket or grocery store has been in my life. Along with writing about food, I spent the last three years talking about it in meeting room discussions with Weight Watchers members. The topic of “what’s good to buy and where to buy it” came up often.
Yet my exposure to the grocery industry has been deeper, more pervasive. I grew up in a rambling, white frame house on the edge of small farm town of just shy of 1,000 people in central Iowa. The Thompson family, when they had about eight of their 10 kids, had lived in our house before they moved down the street to an even bigger house.
I had an older brother and sister and they, along with all the Thompsons, Gannons, Rowles, Dobsons and a sprinkling of Kerseys, Kennedys and a few other families, were the students of St. Mary’s Academy, which was just down the street from where we lived. St. Mary’s and the rectory were just across the street from the Thompsons. St. Brigid’s, our beautiful old brown brick church with the soaring steeple, was in the next block to the east and the cemetery was on a slight rise behind our church and school “campus.” I was the last of two students to enroll in St. Mary’s, which, regrettably, closed after my one and only year there.
It’s a heritage I take very seriously, however, as I was the last of a continuum of students from 1888 to 1962. For many of its years, St. Mary’s was a girls-only high school and many of the girls boarded in local homes, as they did in ours, which was then owned by Rose Bridget “Aunt Bridgie” Gannon. We are just the second owners in the house’s history, which dates back to the early days of St. Mary’s.
Looking back, I guess the Thompsons owned the local Foodland on Main Street. Ownership doesn’t seem like the right word, though. The Thompsons were the Foodland. Jack ran the store, Faye took care of the house and all those kids, plus her two brothers and her younger sister who came to live with them, and she was also the gatekeeper to the church and the activities going on there. All 10 kids worked “up at the store” during their high school and college years and all went on to college and then some.
I remember how my mom kept “suggesting” that I go speak to Jack about becoming a box boy up there, but I resisted. Too shy. Look at me now!
We were close to the Thompsons through church, school and the neighborhood, but our truly close friends were the Hillmans. My best friend was Dave Hillman, a year older than me and a grade ahead in school. His parents, Doris and Rolland, were my parents’ best friends and Rolland was a meat-cutter at the main Fareway store over in Boone, about 20 miles east of Grand Junction, my hometown.
Years later, while a student at Drake University in Des Moines, one of my classmates was Scott Beckwith, son of the owner and grandson of the founder of the Fareway chain.
Because I had gone to college with Scott Beckwith of the Fareway Beckwiths of Boone, Iowa, and a close family friend had spent his entire working career with the main store in downtown Boone, I was always on the lookout for the other Fareway stores, which was then a small chain of about a dozen stores in Iowa. One newspaper job took me to Storm Lake in northwest Iowa where I shopped my first Fareway store. It was no frills but it still had the signature meat counter just like the main store in Boone and was closed on Sundays.
The Fareways (and the Beckwiths) are still out there flourishing. Since my time in Iowa in the early 1980s, Fareway has expanded into Illinois and now has 80 stores. A web site covering grocery history architecture, www.groceteria.com, notes that Fareway has recently opened two stores in Omaha, one across the street from a Wal-Mart.
My move from Iowa to the Carolinas in the mid 1980s exposed me to a whole new group of supermarkets: Kroger, Winn-Dixie, Harris-Teeter and Food Lion. I remember the excitement while living in the growing coastal community of Pawleys Island in South Carolina when the new A&P supermarket plaza opened. With the memory of our recent hurricane on the Gulf Coast, I distinctly remember shopping at Pawleys A&P just before (provisions I eventually took to an overnight shelter) and after Hurricane Hugo hit the South Carolina coast in September 1989.
Of course, that was then. Then was Jack Thompson dying much too early from a heart attack and no successive owner ever having the knack and know-how that he had. It was a great store. Sadly, Grand Junction has not had a supermarket in many years.
And this is now. Now is shopping along the “Miracle Mile” of Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan—the Whole Foods Market in the glitzy new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle to Citarella at West 75th Street to Zabar’s at West 80th.
In between is Food Emporium at Lincoln Center, a Gristede’s in the lower level of the architecturally stunning Ansonia, between 73d and 74th, and of course, New York’s very own Fairway, “Like No Other Market,” at 75th and Broadway.
These same three stores—Fairway, Citarella and Zabar’s—have been included as a side excursion at the Fancy Food Show in New York. And with good reason: they are a “foodie” heaven.
So if you are coming into the city on business or pleasure sometime soon, give me a call. I would love to show you my incredible neighborhood of stores.
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