UNION — Between 60 and 70 people filed into the BCLUW Middle School gymnasium in Union on Thursday night to take part in a public meeting on a proposed $8.8 million bond issue for facilities improvements at the elementary and high school campuses in Conrad, but the primary topic of concern for most of those in attendance was the fate of the building they were sitting inside of and its potential closure.

The meeting was the second held this week related to the bond after a separate one in Conrad on Tuesday, and as expected considering the location, Superintendent Ben Petty, School Board President Adam Probasco, Board Vice President Mindy Ashton and Nick Hildebrandt from Emergent Architecture of Cedar Falls faced a decidedly tougher crowd this time around, many of whom were skeptical of the plan to at least partially demolish the middle school building.

As Probasco explained after he thanked the audience for showing up, the impetus for the change from a three to two building district — which, he added, will likely happen regardless of whether or not the bond issue passes — is simply numbers. BCLUW has seen a 31 percent drop in enrollment since 2000, and most classes at the elementary level are now between 25 and 30 students. Within the next five years, the total number of students served is projected to drop to around 400.

“There’s gonna be some hard decisions that we have to make in the coming years, whether it’s staffing (or) whether it’s building wise,” he said.

If the bond passes, the district would spend a total of $13.4 million, including $4.6 million in SAVE penny sales tax funds that would not impact the levy, to renovate the two buildings in Conrad, including adding a new lunchroom at the elementary and a second gym at the high school along with additional classroom space. Grades five and six would move to the elementary building, while grades seven and eight would go to the high school.

When Ashton took over, she addressed “the elephant in the room” — a comprehensive review of the state of the district’s facilities and recommendations on how to proceed — and said it led the board to hire Hildebrandt back in June of 2022.

“That’s how we got here today, so now we’re presenting it to you guys,” she said.

It was then Petty’s turn to take the microphone as he reiterated the enrollment situation, noting that smaller communities that aren’t within commuting distance of Iowa’s major metropolitan areas aren’t seeing much if any growth, but framed the bond issue as a chance to position BCLUW for the future.

“I don’t think it’s a doom and gloom thing. I think it’s the reality of where we’re at right now, and I just believe that we have to be able to take that on. We have to be willing to adapt to that in order to maintain strong and viable rural school districts going forward,” Petty said.

The goal for the middle school, he added, is to salvage the gym, library, office and cafeteria and maintain it for up to five years before possibly transferring ownership to the city of Union or a private entity interested in developing it. Hildebrandt broke down the details of each current building by square footage, describing the interior of the middle school, which is the oldest of the three and was constructed in 1961, as “not up to snuff” with the others and noting that he recommended the separate fifth grade building be vacated immediately when he visited it.

Once Hildebrandt had wrapped up, Petty explained the tax impact of the bond. It would raise the levy by $1.95 per $1,000 of valuation annually with the caveat that it would be partially offset by a management levy reduction from $1.10 to $0.40 and essentially amount to an impact of $1.25, and he used a tool on the BCLUWbond.org website to show how anyone could plug in the valuation of their property and find out how much more they would pay both for residential properties and agricultural land — on 300 acres of land, the estimated impact was about $888 annually. At $10.73 per $1,000, BCLUW currently has the third lowest levy rate of the districts in the Central Rivers AEA, higher than only Gladbrook-Reinbeck and West Marshall.

About halfway through the two-plus hour meeting, attendees began to make comparisons to a situation that unfolded at G-R after the school board there voted to close its Gladbrook campus and move all classes to Reinbeck in 2015, eventually leading to a mass exodus of students from the Gladbrook area open enrolling to GMG and a petition for a vote to dissolve the district, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Longtime teacher Barb Schwarck contended that G-R lost more money than it was hoping to save by closing the Gladbrook campus, and she also expressed concern about seventh and eighth graders being in the same building as high schoolers.

“You can’t tell me that’s not gonna happen here because I know you’re gonna lose kids to open enrollment. (G-R) has gone down to eight-man football. They were, at one time, 1A or 2A,” she said.

For Union-Whitten area students, the most likely open enrollment destination would be South Hardin as Eldora is just nine miles northwest of Union. Petty was quick to note that regardless of what happens with the bond, BCLUW will soon be playing eight-man football anyway.

“To me, we’re a very different district than Gladbrook-Reinbeck. I’ve talked a lot about this with the board. I think we’ve had great conversations about it. It was an outlier in how these happen because there have been lots and lots of schools that have lost their buildings over the last couple of decades,” Petty said. “It’s hard for me to talk about. I think, in a way, we would’ve talked about it sooner, but it’s just a really, really tough conversation to have. But I do think, for a lot of reasons, I think that district’s an outlier as far as the number of kids that left and the reasons why and the private bus and a lot of other things… It’s not the way it happens in most schools, even though it’s not unusual for some people, if they get upset, to go to a different school.”

Some also wondered if making such a large investment in facilities made sense if enrollment would only continue to decline, but Petty responded that the numbers have held fairly steady around 25 to 30 students per class over the last several years. He also touted the district’s high marks on the state’s school performance profile as a reason students and families should consider BCLUW.

Others thought the ask, which is less than half of the maximum allowable amount of $4.05 per $1,000, was simply too large and suggested that district leadership instead consider smaller, more incremental improvements to the facilities or even seek additional estimates from other architects while considering a way to keep the Union campus open.

Mary Pieper, another longtime educator who lives in Union, drew the first applause line of the night when she asked why district leadership felt the need to build four classrooms and a gym in Conrad when they have classrooms and a gym at the middle school “that are still in pretty good condition.” One audience member predicted that Union would turn into “a ghost town” if the middle school was closed and thought Conrad and Union should be working together to help both communities survive and succeed.

Dianna Haywood, a lifelong resident of the Union-Whitten area, drew more applause when she thanked Petty and the school board members for putting themselves out there and facing an audience with plenty of questions and comments, and she did not believe the board came to the decision lightly. On the other hand, she felt that the bond was a large ask considering the current economy and the ever-increasing valuations of residential and agricultural properties, noting that the last bond issue for the high school around the turn of the century was only a $0.23 per $1,000 tax impact.

“In this economy, I think it’s gonna be hard to sell it to us,” she said. “As far as getting two or three estimates and stuff, I think the board did their homework to choose who they thought would give us the best options at this point. Do I want the Union school closed? No, my heart is here, but we, at one point or another, have to trust our school board also.”

Before the meeting was adjourned, Kristi Myers of Union, a parent of BCLUW students, lamented that Petty and the board had not distributed materials about the proposed bond sooner.

“You need to rally a community if you want something passed, if you want to better our community, our district, you can’t give people 28 days notice and expect us to say yes,” she said. “That’s an emotional standpoint, but emotions are high because we’re all community members… You missed the mark.”

After the meeting, Petty acknowledged that the proposal wouldn’t be an easy sell in Union but was glad that he, Probasco, Ashton and Hildebrandt had a chance to go into further detail on the bond issue and make their case before the vote on Nov. 7.

“We realize the idea of closing a school building as part of a large project, we realize that that’s a very emotional, very difficult thing. It is for myself and it is for our board members. But our conversations kept coming back to (the idea that) we’ve gotta do what’s best for our students, and we’ve gotta make BCLUW a very strong, very viable district going forward in the long term,” he said. “And so we’ve gotta keep looking forward as far as what’s best for our students. I realize there are folks in a town where the school is going to close that have a very emotional, very visceral reaction to that, and I certainly understand and sympathize with that and I’m hopeful that the folks in our community can really look forward to what’s the best thing at BCLUW because rural areas across Iowa are facing some of the same type shifting population dynamics that we’re dealing with, and I think we have to be willing to adapt to those as a community.”

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.