May 22, 2014: The entrance to the 1915 school building at Manilla. Here is a photo gallery from that day, including pictures from the inside.
In 2014, I wrote for the Des Moines Register that the IKM-Manning school board had voted to close the school in Manilla and that demolition was inevitable. By the end of that calendar year, though, it was still up. In 2019, when I passed through Manilla again, I decided that maybe someone had been able to give the facility a second chance after all. Perhaps my column had something to do with it; I wouldn’t know.
Early last month, I got an e-mail from someone who had read my column and had bad news: The Manilla school was gone. Its destruction was confirmed by a Facebook post from someone who claimed the school was haunted.
On top of that, the IKM-Manning school district is having a bond referendum next week (via KCIM) that would build an addition at Manning and close the elementary in Irwin — which itself was the baby-boom replacement for the original school in that town and is pushing two-thirds of a century.
That means that a few months after I finally got around to updating the IA 45 page with a “standing correction” to my column, I have to update again, with the news that what I expected just took a little longer to come true.