Grinnell-Newburg is the most lopsided school district name in terms of population disparity: one near 10,000, and the other unincorporated. Newburg, just east of the intersection of F17 and T38 in Jasper County, is typically ignored in the sports team names.<\/p>\n
Newburg has been a part of the district since 1958, and it had a school. However, nailing down the year the building was shut down has been hard. The gymnasium was destroyed in a fire in July 1978. Voters did not approve a sale of the building, which dates to 1925, until September 1982. The school was the subject of a Des Moines Register<\/em> article in July 1992, when the new owners were restoring the building. Or I should say were attempting to restore, because it … isn’t<\/a>.<\/p>\n A concrete answer on the closure comes from an unattributed history of the Grinnell-Newburg district<\/a> that was compiled around the turn of the century and resurfaced while the school district was seeking a bond issue two separate times<\/a> in 2018 (it failed\u00a0both times<\/a>).<\/p>\n This history also reveals that the oldest school currently in use in Grinnell is Davis Elementary, from 1917, and it was completely renovated in 1998. A time capsule was found in the cornerstone<\/a> in 2017. That 2018 bond issue would have replaced Davis and two other elementaries at one combined site.<\/p>\n I came across most of this information through reading an article originally at Grinnell College’s student newspaper and then reprinted at the Iowa Capital Dispatch<\/a> about Grinnell-Newburg’s struggles with finances and morale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Grinnell-Newburg is the most lopsided school district name in terms of population disparity: one near 10,000, and the other unincorporated. Newburg, just east of the intersection of F17 and T38 in Jasper County, is typically ignored in the sports team … Continue reading