October 17, 2021: The chimney of the Beaconsfield school building is visible at a distance. It’s about all that’s readily visible up close, too, because the deteriorating building is hidden in a grove of trees.
In a follow-up to this post from September, here’s even MORE about Ringgold County schools you never knew and didn’t know how to ask, via the Mount Ayr Record-News:
- A vote to form Grand Valley passed in August 1957 that included not only Grand River and Kellerton, but also Beaconsfield and Ellston. The latter two towns voted against joining the district. (8/22/57)
- However, before the district officially took effect, Beaconsfield and Ellston were taken out. “An important question at issue was the fact that the proceeding for the formation of the Grand Valley Community School District was commenced under one law and concluded under another.” (3/27/58) Beaconsfield graduated its last class in 1958.
- But not before sending a girls’ basketball team to state in 1956, losing to New Sharon (3/1/56).
- Grand Valley kept high schools in both Grand River and Kellerton for two years before going with the latter (7/23/59).
- The first Mount Ayr Community School District — or, as they’d say across the Missouri state line, Mount Ayr R-1 — formed in 1958 (8/7/58). This district included Benton, Delphos, Maloy, and Redding.
- Mount Ayr R-2, adding Beaconsfield and Ellston, followed the next year (3/26/59). That, plus the formation of East Union to the north, put Tingley in a pinch, and its high school shut down in 1959 (5/7/59).
- But not before sending a girls’ basketball team to state in 1952, 1954, and 1957.
- Mount Ayr R-3 only added Tingley, but it was enough to create the second-largest district in the state behind Eastern Allamakee (2/11/60).
- Or, it would have, if both the Davis County and Western Dubuque reorganizations hadn’t blown them out of the water four months later. (Diagonal Reporter, 6/16/60; Cascade Pioneer-Advertiser, 6/16/60)
- Beaconsfield’s school closed in 1961; the IAGenWeb page is a year off. Delphos’ school closed at the same time (3/16/61).
- Although Mount Ayr did not have a vote in either, dissolutions of both Grand Valley and Clearfield added significant areas, so you could think of them as R-4 and R-5.
- Through all of that, no one considered a rename to Ringgold County Community School District.