The Farragut school district could be forcibly dissolved because its locker rooms, showers, and weight room are not compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
That is what the 200-student school in far southwestern Iowa is up against after the nine-vote failure of a PPEL the day after Labor Day. Granted, it’s a slight oversimplification because the district also got dinged for not having its nondiscrimination policies posted online, lacking a few required classes, and for teacher licensing/evaluation issues. (Oh, and the vo-ag space the district is using in Sidney after having to close its existing vo-ag space for ADA issues also has been judged non-ADA compliant.) But the crux of the matter is, Farragut is not engaged in a $1.2 million construction project right now, and that’s a problem. The school has since turned off the showers and locked up the weight room.
The issues individually may be small, but they’re stacked up with the school district’s negative unspent balance, which was a trigger for the potential loss of accreditation in the first place. And if Farragut overspends again, then don’t worry about the PPEL because you won’t have a school.
Anything that happens in (or to) Farragut will have direct effects on Hamburg, which is in whole-grade sharing with Farragut and already rejected consolidation once. Hamburg also got cited in the report for the lack of a nondiscrimination statement.
The Department of Education report from the September meeting is available as a PDF.
UPDATE: New vote scheduled for Feb. 3.