There are a couple of articles in the Carroll Daily Times Herald about the IKM-Manning district’s discussions over the past year. I think there’s a little bit of time-stamp garbling as they are dated three months ago but show up in the newspaper’s recent story list, which is why I’m just writing about it now. (Or the newspaper wants to keep them fresh, which is appreciated.) Either way, the first plan was to close Manilla but then the school board wanted options.
The school board’s decision March 6 (PDF) closed the school in Manilla. Here is what was decided for next year, copied from that list: Preschool in Irwin and Manning; grades K-3 in Irwin; grades 4-12 in Manning; central office in weight room by New Gym in Manilla; JH basketball/volleyball practices and JH basketball games in Manilla New Gym; baseball in Manilla; softball in Irwin.
Each grade K-12 will now be at one site in the district. The main Manilla building, a classic three-story structure from 1915, will be torn down, with probably also everything that isn’t part of the “New Gym” area. The “New Gym” was built in 1974, according to the link below. The “Old Gym,” not mentioned, is a WPA/bond project from the mid-1930s.
Iowa Schoolhouse Construction and Planning Services prepared a full report on the district and area for presentation to the board; its report is available online (PDF). There are thorough reports on the history and status of each school building and district but the demographic information was cribbed from Wikipedia. The graph lines are universal for western Iowa: Down, down, down. IKM-Manning has lost 30% of its student population that IKM and Manning had separately in 1999-00.
The trend of declining enrollment in rural Iowa continues unabated, with hard decisions like this coming somewhere almost every year.