July 5, 2013: Grand Junction school.
In less than a decade, the East Greene school district will go from a full K-12 community to nearly erased from the face of the earth.
The entire complex in Grand Junction, with a 1915 building at its core, will be demolished after the city council determined it could not maintain it. The small town doesn’t need a community center, because a smaller one was built not too long ago. (I suspect, but cannot prove, that “school closes within 5-10 years of a community center being built” has happened a few times in Iowa.) According to the Jefferson Herald, a $1.5 million renovation was done in 2012 but the facility needs upgrades to the heating system.
This decision follows East Greene’s consolidation with Jefferson-Scranton and closure of this building (as Greene County Intermediate) last school year, with an addition built at Jefferson instead. The only piece of East Greene that will be left is the gym in Rippey, after the main building there was torn down.
It is an absolute crying shame that this building is going to be lost, but there’s no way of getting around it.