Gazette Daily News Podcast, November 17

This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Thursday, November 17.

Another day of predicted snowfall, although there again shouldn't be that much of it. According to the National Weather Service on Thursday there will be a chance of snow primarily between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. in the Cedar Rapids area.  It will be mostly cloudy, with a high near 29. Thursday night will remain mostly cloudy, with a low of around 17 degrees. A wind of 10 to 15 mph will gust as high as 25 mph.

After shedding students annually for more than a decade — a post-Great Recession trend aggravated by the pandemic — Iowa’s 15 community colleges this fall recorded their first collective enrollment uptick since 2010: a half percentage point bump, pushing the student tally to 82,251.

Individually, a new Iowa community college enrollment report this week shows a more nuanced divide — with seven colleges reporting an increase and eight reporting the opposite.

Cedar Rapids’ Kirkwood Community College is among those with fewer students this fall — after restoring some of its massive 2020 COVID-19 losses last year. At 12,414 students, Kirkwood is sitting 1.5 percent below last fall’s 12,607.

Those that made gains this fall include the state’s largest — Des Moines Area Community College — reporting a 5.4 percent increase to 21,637, which widened its enrollment gap with Kirkwood, the state’s second largest college.

Some of that shift involves escalating joint enrollment among students pursuing high school and college credit simultaneously. This fall, 37,123 Iowa high school students participated in at least one joint-enrollment program — up 4.2 percent.

It’s looking like Marion may extend its bus route to and from Cedar Rapids while adding micro transit vans inside the city.

Staff from Marion, Cedar Rapids and Horizons presented three transit options to the Marion City Council during its work session Tuesday night.

Marion city staffers are recommending the option that would extend the bus route along First/Seventh Avenue through Uptown Marion and loop back with a 15-minute frequency through Uptown.

The preferred option also would add three micro transit buses. And the current transfer stop at Twixt Town Road would end and Marion passengers wanting to go into Cedar Rapids would simply stay on the bus.

Marion has set aside $225,000 in federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars to buy three, 16-passenger buses for the micro-transit piece. The micro-transit buses also could pick up passengers anywhere in Marion and drop them off anywhere within Marion.