Our speaker on Feb 9 was Doug Fern who talked about the Faith Academy located in SE Iowa City at 1030 Cross Park Ave.
 
Announcements
 
Please sign up for the Grants Reception which will replace our morning meeting on Feb 23.  It will be held in the Kirkwood Room at 6 pm.  Pay $25 per person into the envelope going around at our meetings and BYOB.  The Board will be using our morning time for a planning retreat on Feb 23.
 
The IA MOST team is in Guatemala.  The Knapps and Brad Langguth are among the participants.
 
Nancy Pacha has tickets for the Interact Dance for Humanity which will be held on Feb 28.  Tickets are $10 each.  This year it is being held at City High cafeteria.
 
Happy Bucks:  Among the many happy bucks were Jim Peterson's happiness for the Central America Project Fair in Teguchigalpa, Honduras and his time in Guatemala with Juan Forrester.
 
Speaker
 
Frank Juvan introduced Doug Fern, who last spoke to us a few years ago about the Parkview Church's "The Spot" program for teens.  What they learned from that program is that kids need to receive educational opportunities and social and values development much earlier and so the church embarked on a new program a few years ago starting with just kindergarten and first grades and zeroing in on families that are below the level required for free and reduced price lunches for school aged children.  They have been expanding one class per year and this next year will be adding the 4th grade.
 
The testing that they have done mirrors that of the public schools so they can compare progress with the same standards as for public school and the results indicate that reading levels are improving among the kids who attend Faith Academy so that the students can compare favorably with Iowa City school results as a whole.
 
To learn more about Faith Academy see their website at http://www.faithacademyiowa.org/