October 1, 2015: The Pisgah school building, now a community center, was once part of the West Harrison district.
Besides newspaper archives, there is another, more time-consuming method to find closures. The Iowa Department of Education has a yearly breakdown of enrollment by buildings, which tells us exactly how many students were in each grade level at each site. This method is not foolproof; you have to kind of have an idea of what to look for. The same location may be broken up into different lines, and older datasets don’t include the city unless it’s part of the school name. North Tama, for example, is broken into “North Tama High School” and “Traer Elementary,” suggesting that the data went far enough back there was once a line for Clutier Elementary. Through this method I found out:
- Minden’s school closed in 1992, as it is not on Tri-Center’s 1992-93 building list.
- Allison had two entries for elementaries until 1994, when they were condensed into “Elementary Wing High School Building.” This jibes with the original school site on the north side of the present school being torn down in the 1990s.
- Arispe (grades 3-6) and Lorimor (K-6), despite initial expectations they would close in 1993 (Winterset Madisonian, 3/24/93), did not until the following year, because they still have entries in 1993-94.
- West Harrison went from two elementary entries to one in 1995, which has to mean the closure of Pisgah’s school. Also confirmed by ad in Onawa Sentinel, 7/6/95.
- Yarmouth’s school (4-6) closed in 1996, because the entries for Mediapolis have “Yarmouth Elementary” in 1995-96 but not 1996-97. I received further confirmation of this via e-mail.
- My long speculation that Parnell (4-6) closed in 1997 was half-upended by surrounding areas having junior high basketball games there later (Belle Plaine Union, 12/24/97; Keota Eagle, 1/20/99). Now, I know I was wrong, because based on the spreadsheets, Parnell’s school closed in 1999.
- Northwood “West Elementary” (of two buildings next to each other) was active until 1998-99, and in an extremely quick turnaround, was demolished that June (Northwood Anchor, 6/17/09).
- “Different lines but actually the same site” caught me with WACO’s mystery building. Records had two lines for elementary schools, K-1 and 2-6, and in 1999-00 the K-1 line was blank yet had 68 students. It turns out there was a “K-1 pod” of four rooms in Wayland built after the school in Olds closed and used until 2000 (Mt. Pleasant News, 12/29/89; Winfield Beacon and Wayland News, 5/4/00).
- Otho’s last appearance was in 2002, matching what I originally had.
- Central Decatur had an elementary in Decatur City (grades 5-6) until 2003. Then “North Elementary” was built, and aerial photos show an addition to the Central Decatur JH-HS site in Leon. The old one was torn down the following school year.
- Ferguson’s school closed in 2007. In this case, East Marshall went from having “Elementary” and “Primary” to just “Elementary”.
- The Marshall County Assessor’s Office shows the land was given to the city July 31, 2008 — after the original school had been demolished.
- The databases may not be completely error-proof, but I will call them authoritative unless I get direct contradiction. Such a situation happens with the former Wapsie Valley Junior High in Oran. Waterloo Courier coverage from 2000 (2/3/00, 3/8/00) and the inevitable Iowa Department of Education hearing show it definitely closed that year, despite having a line in the 2000-01 building list.
- The second link goes to the Wayback Machine because a number of links that Google says exist on the IDOE’s site don’t anymore. It’s not quite as bad as the IHSAA … yet.