Yes, we’re apparently doing this all over again.
Short recap (all back to old blog posts): The Gladbrook-Reinbeck school board voted to close the Gladbrook center, residents petitioned to dissolve the district, MANY meetings were held, a map was drawn, and then the entire thing was thrown out because the signatures appear to have predated the petition itself.
To show how hot this issue is running, a new petition was prepared within weeks and presented to the board Oct. 25. There will be a meeting for this round March 8 in Reinbeck, and a vote will need to be held this calendar year. The map drawn up last time can still stand unless a district has a change of mind.
All previous statements remain true: The decision of a K-12 district to self-immolate would be unprecedented in Iowa history and there’s only one semi-close analogue.
(In mostly unrelated news, I see the Times-Republican’s website has been redesigned but the weeklies’ sites haven’t.)