.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} Des Moines Area Community College and Warren County school district officials are looking into building a career academy to serve high school students south of Des Moines.

Last week, representatives from each of the six school districts in Warren County visited DMACC’s Story County Career Academy-Hunziker Center in Ames for a firsthand look at the facility and the programs it offers. The year-old center, located near the intersection of Interstate 35 and U.S. Highway 30, offers career and technical programs to high school students from Story County’s seven school districts. Hunziker is also used to provide evening classes for DMACC students who attend the Boone campus.

Having such a center in Warren County would enable the county’s districts to offer students programs that would otherwise be too expensive for the districts to offer on their own, said Michael Tiegland, superintendent of the Indianola Community School District. Among the programs Hunziker offers are auto collision and automotive technology, building trades, criminal forensics, culinary arts, health, information technology and manufacturing technology.

“We’re just looking for a location that would make the most sense,” Tiegland said. “We’re hoping to get far enough south to serve some of the smaller rural communities.”

At the same time, the districts don’t want to have a center much farther than a 20- to 30-minute drive from Warren County’s growing cities, he said. “Looking out 20 to 30 years into the future, we realize most of the growth in the county is going to happen in Norwalk, Carlisle and Indianola, so we don’t want to go too far south.”

With a combined enrollment of about 10,000 students, Warren County is similar in size to Story County, which formed a consortium of districts that have agreed to send students to the Ames career academy.

Hunziker, which opened in August 2006, has already registered 380 high school students for the upcoming fall semester, said DMACC President Rob Denson.

“It is just a great model where high schools can come together to provide programs, find equipment and technology they couldn’t find on their own and give high school students a chance to gain skills and earn college credit while still in high school,” Denson said.

Warren County school administrators must first decide what programs they would like to have, how many students they think would use the programs and where it should be located, he said.

“Once we know what they want, we’ll work with them to design a facility,” Denson said. “Each of the schools interested would sign an agreement with DMACC, generally for 10 years, to provide students.” Through a state initiative known as supplemental weighting, the schools involved would receive additional Iowa Department of Education funding for each participating student, he said.

Similar to the $6.5 million Ames project, which raised about $1 million from Story County businesses as well as $400,000 in federal grants, the Warren County center would seek private money from local companies and individuals as well as federal funding. The size of the facility would be scalable to Warren County’s needs, he said.

DMACC has already secured a $100,000 federal grant for a career academy it plans to open in Newton, using 40,000 square feet of space donated by Whirlpool Corp. in the former Maytag Corp. plant. Denson said that center probably won’t be operational until sometime in 2009.

School officials in Perry and Pella are also discussing potential career academies with DMACC.

“Warren County seems to be progressing ahead of Perry and Pella at this point,” Denson said. “It’s whoever’s ready first.”