Platte, South Dakota

The second town on our tour was Platte. It is a great town boasting an historic downtown that is still graced with beautiful buildings including the old bank and a three-storied hotel, today home to Fergie's Pub. Founded in the late 1880s by Bernard Pratte, the town was spelling challenged from inception. An early typo turned the town to Platte from Pratte and the mistake stuck.



The High School and Elementary School are located just east of downtown within a block of one another. Like their fellow pilot sites they work together sharing resources, personnel, space. In fact, the National Guard share space with the Elementary School.


Annalies and I got the chance to meet and plan with Tony, Steve and Joel the district's Superintendent, High School Principal and Elementary School Principal. They gave us great tours affording us the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with teachers we worked with over the summer and see a number of the kick-off projects in action. Sandy's Science Safety Rules Project is in full swing. Steve showed us the Fab Lab with its shopbot and 3D printer. What a remarkable asset, one that made our eyes twinkle as we considered projects at Springs, Armour and Bonesteel, as well as Platte that might take advantage of such and educational gem.

Not that Annalies and I are afraid of cafeteria lunches but let's just say our memories are long enough to take us back to our school days, so off we went to explore Platte and find a lunch spot. It took no time at all to discover the hotspot -- Boom's Drive In. We are not sure but it is possible that we just may have seen half of the town's 1200 resident's at lunch.

Early in the evening we had the pleasure of meeting a number of parents at a meeting called by Superintendent Glass. Dr. Melody Schopp joined the evening speaking about STEM and South Dakota's Innovation Labs, as did Sam Shaw from the Curriculum Division of the Department of Education in Pierre. There were lots of great questions about the process and some of the things that have been published in the Argus Leader. What a great opportunity to hear what is going on in the community. Joel noted that Platte would like to further tailor the name of the program to better express Platte. He put forward Project Connect.

After a long day we made it back to the King's Inn where we found a note on the room's mirror that motel towels were not to be used to clean boots, guns, motorcycles or boats. Makes perfect sense to us.



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