Category Archives: Schools

For a while now, I have been basing what I know about the Blairsburg school building on a student newspaper article. However, it turns out some of it was faulty, but in a potentially interesting way: I knew that its … Continue reading →

Multiple bond votes in the 2010s to replace Bellevue Elementary failed. This time, the Bellevue school district has scaled back its construction proposal, and the complex with a building from 1848, where school has been held since 1861, would remain … Continue reading →

The Benton Community School District, one of a declining number of districts operating sites in more than two towns, is proposing to centralize most of its elementary students. A $48.5 million bond referendum to be voted on in March covers … Continue reading →

In my 2014 Des Moines Register column about Manilla’s school, I invoked the evolution of a “typical” school complex in small-town Iowa. At the core, you have a two- or three-story symmetrical brick structure from 1913-28. An elementary wing comes … Continue reading →

July 25, 2012: The cornerstone of the Boxholm school. I have no idea if it was preserved. Boxholm’s school, which closed in 2014, was torn down earlier this year. In March, the Fort Dodge Messenger ran a retrospective — or, … Continue reading →

The final assimilation of what used to be the shared but unmerged Corwith-Wesley-Lu Verne schools into Algona will happen next year. Voters last month overwhelmingly approved the merger of Algona and Lu Verne, KICD radio reports. The latter had officially … Continue reading →

The Davenport school district is considering changes to the grade configuration in Walcott. KWQC and WQAD both reported last week that the K-8 school there could become a middle school for grades 5-8 or 6-8. Younger students would go to … Continue reading →

Every once in a while for a long time I would check the Eldora newspaper’s website to see if there was any progress on demolition of the 1916-17 school building. Nothing kept happening, so I let it slide. But after … Continue reading →

A vote in September will turn what 25 years ago had been five official school districts, and 2½ high schools, into the largest one-high-school consolidated district in Iowa. Algona and Lu Verne have spent the past year going through the … Continue reading →