June 18, 2015: The Bernard school was built in 1960. The lettering outside, presumably original, says “West Dubuque” instead of “Western Dubuque” — a name that would have brought it in line with all the other “West”s in Iowa.
The Western Dubuque school district could shut down Bernard Elementary at the end of the school year, KWWL reports. The district says it costs twice as much to operate and has fewer than three dozen students.
Western Dubuque overall is a growing district — it passed 3000 in 2015 and WDHS was promoted to Class 4A in 2015. But the growth is mostly along US 20 — remember, Western Dubuque is a two-high-school district and about a third of its students go to Cascade — and that puts Bernard in a tough spot.
The news story mentions that an addition was built to Cascade Elementary this decade, which is endemic of another trend — an addition gets built in a larger/more centralized part of a school district and an outlying building gets shut down.