Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

The Creston News-Advertiser says that a consolidation vote with Prescott will be in April assuming petitions are gathered and the AEA approves. It’s a merger in name only, as the reality is the Prescott school will close and be a district without students in 2015-16 and the Creston district will continue.

These articles from the Le Mars Sentinel and Sioux City Journal point to the same difficulty: The Remsen-Union and Marcus-Meriden-Cleghorn boards could not agree on which town would get (and who would lose) the high school. Both articles also say the MMC elementary in Cleghorn will close, which likely would have happened regardless. Both districts are facing steep and practically immediate budget cuts as a result.

The inability to come to a mutual decision is neither unexpected nor petty. Remsen doesn’t want to be one of the highest-population non-suburbs in Iowa without a high school, which was the way the wind was blowing. Cases like this, where each district has a decently-sized (for Iowa) population center, are bound to occur more and more often.

There was a reversal of expectations in Gilman Monday night, as East Marshall’s school board voted to keep both the K-4 building in Laurel and 5-8 building in Gilman open.

However, the Benton Community school board did proceed as expected, voting to close the (separate) Van Horne Elementary and redistribute those students to other sites.

Counting a Catholic elementary in Worthington, Iowa has had three announced school closures this month alone.

This story from the Norfolk Daily News is interesting and shows that Nebraska suffers the same problems with declining rural schools, only more so. The five towns involved are about 75 miles west of Sioux City.