{"id":5329,"date":"2014-09-25T10:10:19","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T15:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=5329"},"modified":"2014-09-22T14:17:06","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T19:17:06","slug":"benton-community-considers-closing-van-horne-elementary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2014\/09\/benton-community-considers-closing-van-horne-elementary\/","title":{"rendered":"Benton Community considers closing Van Horne Elementary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.benton.k12.ia.us\/District%20Info\/School%20Board\/Board%20Info\/Benton%20CSD%20Director%20District%20Map.pdf\">the district covers about the southern half of Benton County<\/a>\u00a0(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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/H\/HennCh20.htm\">NFL player Chad Hennings<\/a> out of it.)<\/p>\n<p>The Benton school board now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.benton.k12.ia.us\/District%20Info\/Preparing%20For%20Change\/Preparing%20for%20Change%20-%20JulyAugust%202014%20Benton%20Connection.pdf\">proposes closing the elementary school in Van Horne<\/a>\u00a0(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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t lie, and Benton Community enrollment has fallen by 15% in a student generation (13 years).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2014\/09\/benton-community-considers-closing-van-horne-elementary\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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-5329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5329","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=5329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5330,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5329\/revisions\/5330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}