It’s happening? Maybe? After a few votes and an extra $31 million?
Whatever the step or two is after “commencing to proceed to get started,” that’s where North Tama is right now in a master plan that would radically alter the present school complex.
In a combination public meeting and school building tour earlier this month, covered in the North Tama Telegraph, district residents and other interested parties got to see the final plan and offer their opinion on how to proceed.
The plan offers flexibility on when a second gym is constructed on the east side of the property. Opinion favored putting the replacement of the 1917 building first, according to the story. The story says the cost of replacing the 1917 building is less than 10 years of maintenance on it, although the other components raise the overall cost. A photo shows preservation of Walnut Street (and someone I’m a little familiar with).
I really hadn’t thought about the prevalence of two-gym sites in Iowa, but a Southeast Iowa Union story about how Van Buren is an outlier in its conference in not having a second gym makes me think this might be flipping from unusual to common. Each time a rural district has closed a town’s school it’s lost a gym, so it makes sense that way around.
The next meeting in the series is June 20.