Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

There are plenty of sad stories about abandoned Iowa schools, so when there’s a success, we should give credit where it’s due.

East Monona hasn’t been a school district since 2004, and the building in Moorhead soon had problems, but the gym and nearby areas have been restored enough to host a wedding reception, the Sioux City Journal reports. The building got new owners in 2011.

The description of what happened to the building in the intervening decade is a warning sign of just how fast a once-proud building can fall past the point of no return. This one, at least part of it, was saved in time.

This turned into an all-school week without me quite realizing it! Anyway, here are a couple little items of note:

• Although I don’t typically track big-city buildings, Iowa City is tearing down a school built in 1917-18.
• Also on the big-city end, Mason City doesn’t know what it’s going to do with its closed Madison Elementary — but neighbors don’t want it to become apartments.
• Williamsburg Elementary, the original high school, was torn down this summer.
• A call to New Providence confirmed that the school there was torn down in August 2012. (Aerial photos from summer 2012 are not currently available, and so it was a question of whether it happened in ’11-12 or ’12-13.) The “Roundhouse” gym remains.

In other demolition news, the abandoned Econo Lodge at the I-80/US 151 interchange is gone.

The Benton Community school district is not necessarily small for Iowa, in either size or population, but it has endured enrollment declines like any other mostly-rural district. After absorbing Norway in 1991, the district covers about the southern half of Benton County (PDF) except for the corner township (Belle Plaine) and the town of Walford on the Linn County line. (Also, Elberon in Tama County, which is kind of weird, but they got NFL player Chad Hennings out of it.)

The Benton school board now proposes closing the elementary school in Van Horne (PDF), a separate building from the 7-12 school also in town. Students up to third grade would be distributed to Atkins and Keystone, while grades 4-6 would all be in Norway. In this manner, the district can close a school but no town currently with a building would be completely out.

I am a little surprised by the move, since Benton County posted its highest population ever in 2010 and parts have become exurban for Cedar Rapids. But the numbers don’t lie, and Benton Community enrollment has fallen by 15% in a student generation (13 years).

Last week had more bad news for the Farragut and Hamburg school districts in far southwest Iowa. KMA and the Omaha World-Herald both have stories. Both say the state has given the districts a 30-day deadline to explain how they will solve their financial issues. KMA says there is a hearing tonight (Wednesday) in Hamburg about putting a proposed consolidation up for a vote. Should that not happen, or if the vote fails, both districts could be dissolved and neither town would have any school.

The OWH article mentions the districts “lacked facilities compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines.” So here’s the second blog post in a week about what I call the three A’s that impede reuse of schools: Asbestos, adaptability, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. In this case, though, it’s about buildings that are still being used as schools.

Here’s a follow-up to an earlier blog post, with more follow-ups to come. KTIV covered the first meeting about potential sharing between Remsen-Union and Marcus-Meriden-Cleghorn. Marcus would get the high school and Remsen fifth through eighth grades.

Remsen-Union’s teams are the Rockets, a rare nickname in Iowa; I know at least Eddyville-Blakesburg-Fremont has that too. Roland used to be — which is how ISU basketball star Gary Thompson got his nickname — but Roland-Story teams are the Norsemen.