Category Archives: Schools

Jun 11

Gardiner school has been demolished

You probably haven’t heard of Gardiner. But if you’ve driven US 169 in Dallas County, you saw the extinct map dot’s once pride and joy, a two-story brick school building. Stories, with pictures, from the Perry News and Raccoon Valley … Continue reading

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May 18

Algona, Lu Verne look into consolidation

What’s left of what once was the Corwith-Wesley-Lu Verne school system — officially never consolidated but together for three decades — is probably going away soon. Algona and Lu Verne have formed a reorganization committee, Radio Iowa reports. Realistically, this means … Continue reading

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Apr 26

Some school timeline cleanup

Connections and corrections made recently on my school timeline page: Burt and Sentral had a sharing agreement for five years (1988-93) before Burt went with Algona. Sentral had the high school and Burt grades 6-8. This is another case of … Continue reading

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Feb 24

School enrollment analysis, 2020-21

The first takeaway from the 2020-21 certified enrollment list is the most obvious: There were big drops across the board. Growing districts that had not seen decreases in years if not the century to date (Ankeny!) lost kids. There were … Continue reading

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Feb 01

What’s next for Wall Lake school?

June 24, 2017: The oldest part of Wall Lake school. I found out about the closure of Wall Lake Elementary School in late February of last year. It turned out to be one of the last things I blogged about on … Continue reading

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Jan 29

Corning-Villisca merger on hold

Corning and Villisca, which started whole-grade sharing in 2013 as Southwest Valley, last year started to make gestures toward full consolidation. But like pretty much everything else, the plague got in the way. KMA reports that the merger is on … Continue reading

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Oct 08

A matter of perspective

Here is an aerial view of most of the town of Gladbrook. IA 96 is at the bottom, 2nd Street at the top, school in the middle. Now here’s an aerial view of the campus for College Community School District … Continue reading

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Sep 21

South Tama is running out of Internet

Really. (Warning: WHO’s website autoplays video now. Additionally, the livestream now requires a reload every 20 minutes.) I don’t understand how this hasn’t been a significant topic the past few months: For significant numbers of students and school districts, it … Continue reading

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Sep 04

Manilla school has come down

May 22, 2014: The entrance to the 1915 school building at Manilla. Here is a photo gallery from that day, including pictures from the inside. In 2014, I wrote for the Des Moines Register that the IKM-Manning school board had … Continue reading

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May 15

Mallard school gone

As covered here, here, and here, the school building in Mallard was a victim of declining enrollment in the West Bend-Mallard school district in northwest Iowa. The Emmetsburg News website has an eight-paragraph story about the school, ending with the … Continue reading

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