{"id":5126,"date":"2014-07-22T09:26:51","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T14:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=5126"},"modified":"2014-07-22T01:42:20","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T06:42:20","slug":"southeast-valley-continues-trend-toward-vague-district-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2014\/07\/southeast-valley-continues-trend-toward-vague-district-names\/","title":{"rendered":"“Southeast Valley” continues trend toward vague district names"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OLYMPUS
\nJune 4, 2014:<\/strong> Prairie Valley Elementary School (K-4) is not in Farnhamville itself, but rather at the intersection of P41 and D26<\/a>, a couple miles southeast of Somers. It is one of only two schools in Iowa I am aware of with its own sewage lagoon; the other is West Lyon, halfway between Inwood and Larchwood on IA 182.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Prairie Valley and Southeast Webster-Grand announced plans for whole-grade sharing<\/a>, I wondered how geography would be handled, if at all, in the new name. There’s now an answer: vaguely. The schools picked a fragment of each existing name to create “Southeast Valley”, much like “Central Springs” took from North Central<\/em> of Manly and Nora Springs<\/em>-Rock Falls. Both are spiritual kin with “West Fork”, SCMT plus Rockwell-Swaledale, and “Easton Valley”, a true portmanteau<\/a> of East Central and Preston. The sheer size and spread of each district, and the multiple towns involved, make the sense of place looser out of necessity.<\/p>\n

The Southeast Valley name is not to be confused with the recent Corning-Villisca merger, which is going by Southwest<\/em> Valley<\/a>, referring to its location in the state.\u00a0“South Webster” could have been problematic for a name because a good chunk of Prairie Valley (including the site photographed at top) is in Calhoun County and the “-Grand” was for the Boxholm-Pilot Mound area in Boone County.<\/p>\n

The combined teams will be known as the Jaguars, the second new school in Iowa to take that nickname after Ankeny Centennial. It wouldn’t be the first time for such a coincidence. At the beginning of the decade, we got two separate programs in western Iowa with a purple-black-silver color scheme known as the Titans: South Central Calhoun<\/a>\u00a0(2010<\/a>) and Graettinger-Terril\/Ruthven-Ayrshire<\/a>\u00a0(2012<\/a>).\u00a0I mean, seriously, that’s\u00a0weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Southeast Valley name got a head start this summer. The Jaguars are playing tonight against Maple Valley-Anthon-Oto for a spot in the state baseball tournament, something that can go a long way for community cohesiveness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

June 4, 2014: Prairie Valley Elementary School (K-4) is not in Farnhamville itself, but rather at the intersection of P41 and D26, a couple miles southeast of Somers. It is one of only two schools in Iowa I am aware … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5126"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5135,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126\/revisions\/5135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}