North Winn students take part in Future City regional competition

Five North Winneshiek sixth graders have been honored by the Iowa regional Future City competition. The five created a Brazilian city, "Nova Manaus," which received the award for "Outstanding Effort in Designing a Socially Responsible City."

Team members Andrew Heine, Abby Towne, Ruby Langholz, Meg Sessions and Jordan Sabanish will show their model and give a presentation at the North Winneshiek School Board meeting at 4:30 p.m. next Monday.

The competition consists of five components: creating a city using SimCity software, researching the theme "Tomorrow's Transit," writing a research paper and city narrative, and building a to-scale model. The North Winn team chose to build their city in the heart of the Brazilian rainforest. As part of their research, they met with Brazilian international students, visited Decorah's wastewater treatment plant, and toured Luther's solar array and wind turbine. Erdman Engineering employee Jake Hildebrand volunteered to be the team's mentor.

Future City is part of North Winneshiek's Challenge Program for gifted and talented students.