Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

Reinbeck, Iowa, March 28 — The most recent meeting of the Gladbrook-Reinbeck dissolution committee was full of people who would rather not be there. Although there were more than two dozen speakers during the comment period, nearly all were opposed to the dissolution process in the first place. Others had questions/comments that were out of the control of either the committee or the Iowa Department of Education, who sent representatives.

The main cause of the process, Gladbrook citizens upset about the closure of the school there, was only referenced a few times, the first in a question asking if the dissolution petition had any backing besides spite.

Only the first 10 minutes of the meeting had new information —responses given from surrounding school districts about their non-binding interest in receiving land from GR. Only three — Dike-New Hartford, Grundy Center, and Hudson — expressly showed interest in gaining the Reinbeck area, and only DNH and GC offered the possibility of an elementary remaining there. As for Gladbrook, no district wanted an attendance center there, and in fact Green Mountain-Garwin said it would not reopen the closed school (which negates a major cause for the dissolution action in the first place).

I was disappointed in the response from North Tama’s school board, which is committed to keeping a K-12 school in Traer but otherwise simply offered to help in any way possible. While this was a nice answer, the correct answer was “No, we would not reopen the Gladbrook school, but yes, we will take any territory offered, say, north to the county line and west to T55 or even Gladbrook itself.”

To cover some of the questions and comments:

• No lines have been drawn, but they will by August.
• No, there cannot be a counter-petition to stop the process (despite the outbreak of applause in the gym). Challenges to the validity of the petition should have happened earlier in the courts.
• If the dissolution vote passes, all employees of the Gladbrook-Reinbeck school district would be unemployed. While teachers “shall” get “preferred” treatment for hiring at surrounding districts, there is nothing that says any district has to hire anyone.
• If the dissolution vote fails, nothing changes, and that includes the simmering resentment and continued loss of hundreds of thousands of budget dollars to open enrollment.
• The state has nothing to do with this unless the district were to run severe negative balances for consecutive years. Even if the district found itself in the red five years from now, it can take its own corrective measures first. Jeff Berger, deputy director of the Department of Education, said Farragut was $1 million negative on a $3 million budget.

I praise the dissolution committee for sitting through this. By the end I felt much like I did a month ago at Tama Livestock Auction waiting for the bull to be sold. (Metaphor alert? — Ed.)

I am confused by the (apparent) lack of attendance at this meeting from those who set all this in motion — if there’s a complaint the school board isn’t listening, closing off communication isn’t the answer. Maybe they’re merely biding their time, waiting until the map comes out and then voting for dissolution. If that’s the case, my feeling is they’re going to be disappointed.