July 6, 2011: Take a bow, the night is over…
The dissolution of the Corwith-Wesley school district will be emphasized with the demolition of the school building in Corwith, The Des Moines Register reports. The board voted unanimously to tear it down, guarding against the possibility of it becoming another one of Iowa’s abandoned schools.
A correction and a clarification to the Register article: In two weeks there will be 336 school districts left, as Garner-Hayfield and Ventura are consolidating. In addition, although the figure of 4300-plus districts in 1950 looks enormous, almost 90% those disappeared before 1965, falling by the hundreds each year as town schools took in rural areas to end the era of one-room schools in Iowa. In the past half-century, Iowa will have gone from 458 school districts to 336, still a loss of one-quarter of all districts in the state.
My “longform” about the demographics in north-central Iowa remains available here.