EAGLE GROVE — The Eagle Grove Community School District has been facing a unique problem that many central Iowa schools aren’t — rapid increases in enrollment.

In fact, in the last three years, the district has welcomed 111 additional students, Superintendent Jess Toliver said.

To help alleviate some of the space constraint issues that increased enrollment brings, the district is currently working on a $1 million renovation project of the district administration building, which is located across the street from the high school.

“Our eighth grade class has about 90 kids and our freshman class has about 90 kids,” Toliver said. “Our senior class has about 50 kids.”

The high school will go from about 220 students to 320 students in the course of two years, he said.

The renovation project will add seven high school classrooms to the second floor of the administration building and is expected to be complete in time for the 2021-2022 school year.

“It’s an old junior college and it was given to us a long time ago and has been just sitting empty as storage,” Toliver said. “We’re putting in the stuff to make it fire marshal approved, sprinkler systems and those types of

things.”

This project comes two years after a $6 million building addition to Eagle Grove Elementary School was completed, adding eight new classrooms.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A growing number of Republican senators say they oppose holding an impeachment trial, a sign of the dimming chances that former President Donald Trump will be convicted on the charge that he incited a siege of the U.S.

Capitol.

House Democrats, who will walk the impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection” to the Senate on Monday evening, are hoping that strong Republican denunciations of Trump after the Jan. 6 riot will translate into a conviction and a separate vote to bar Trump from holding office again. But GOP passions appear to have cooled since the insurrection, and now that Trump’s presidency is over, Republican senators who will serve as jurors in the trial are rallying to his legal defense, as they did during his first impeachment trial last

year.

“I think the trial is stupid, I think it’s counterproductive,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.. He said that “the first chance I get to vote to end this trial, I’ll do it” because he believes it would be bad for the country and further inflame partisan divisions.

Arguments in the Senate trial will begin the week of Feb. 8. Leaders in both parties agreed to the short delay to give Trump’s team and House prosecutors time to prepare and the Senate the chance to confirm some of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees. Democrats say the extra days will allow for more evidence to come out about the rioting by Trump supporters who interrupted the congressional electoral count of Biden’s election victory, while Republicans hope to craft a unified defense for Trump.

An early vote to dismiss the trial probably would not succeed, given that Democrats now control the Senate. Still, the Republican opposition indicates that many GOP senators would eventually vote to acquit Trump. Democrats would need the support of 17 Republicans — a high bar — to convict him.