THANK YOU

I do not know how to thank the readers of this page. Your interest in the items I have put up for your reading pleasure as well as my column are overwhelming, really.
This project started more than a year ago and has had more than it’s share of bumps and grinds. One we are dealing with is old technology on the page we are using.  It balks at some of the things we are trying to get done with much newer technology which means the results are sometimes less than perfect. I can assure you it is not because we are all not trying, because we are giving it our all.
If you would have told me six months ago that when we finally get everything in place we will have a baseline of viewers in September that will go up fifty percent in October, and again in November and again in December and again in January, I would have said you are in the sauce. But that is what has happened and all of us who are working on this page are grateful and thank everyone who enjoys the fruits of our labor.
We continue to ask for your input. Perhaps you have a subject or a project for us to take a look at, or perhaps you have comments or criticism about something we are doing with the page.

Please help us to make it better.
Richard Goughnour

I am beginning to think that what I believe doesn’t really matter.
I am thinking specifically of the most recent attack by our own President on the constitution of the United States. Let’s establish that I am not a scholar of history, ok?
And let me also establish, for the sake of this column, that we all eliminate the word “Catholic”. Let’s all just say our religious beliefs, whatever they are.
Now we are ready to go.
Where in the world does any person in the United States get permission to start dictating what our religious beliefs will or will not be? I don’t know. I thought the pillars our nation was founded upon, namely the constitution,

January 2012 Brief: Volume 19, Number 1

iJAG: Preparing Students for the Real World

by Deborah D. Thornton

For thirty years, a non-profit organization named Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) has worked with middle schools, high schools, and colleges to help at-risk students graduate from high school and to be “work and college ready upon graduation.”[1] At this time, schools in 34 states, including Iowa, have JAG, and in 2010 almost 27,000 students participated, at an average cost of $1,143 each.
iJAG has been in Iowa since 1999 and currently has 29 programs in 12 counties, working with over 1,500 middle school, high school, and college students in 2011-2012. Of these students, 20 percent are first-generation high school graduates. Counties with iJAG programs include Black Hawk, Dallas, Dubuque, Lee, Linn, Marshall, Polk, Pottawattamie, Scott, Wapello, and Woodbury.[2]