In my piece last year about school districts in north-central Iowa (linked at right, and here), I mentioned the Corwith-Wesley and LuVerne school districts, which have been together for years but are technically still independent, were going to enter grade-sharing with Algona in 2015. Left unclear in that plan was how Corwith-Wesley could be a continuing school district without a building in use.
Now, instead, the Corwith-Wesley school district, the fifth-smallest in enrollment in the state, will dissolve. It will be the fourth voluntary dissolution in Iowa in a decade. The Algona Upper Des Moines and Mason City Globe-Gazette both have articles. LuVerne will go into a sharing program with Algona, but retain its own elementary building.
On CWL’s website, which is one of the homeliest you’ll see in the second decade of the 21st century, there’s a form for landowners to voice an opinion on which bordering school district they prefer. It is possible that through a dissolution, much of the district would be attached to LuVerne (which, eventually, would be absorbed by Algona). It’s also possible that instead of clean lines, we’ll have a Clearfield-style crazy quilt, although the most realistic options in this case are LuVerne or West Hancock.
Like Clearfield, Corwith-Wesley is ready to pay for its own burial.
“We’ve saved a lot of our Local Option Sales and Service Tax money to be reserved for demolition costs for the Corwith High School building,” assistant administrator Tom Fey told the Algona Upper Des Moines. “We’ll be meeting with the Corwith City Council to see what portions of the building they’d like kept, but the last thing we want to do is leave a building to rot in this community after we’re no longer using it.”