G-R board declares dissolution petition invalid

In the end, it was all for naught.
 
An almost 18-month process that began in response to the Gladbrook-Reinbeck school board’s decision to close the campus in Gladbrook and move all classes to Reinbeck came to a screeching halt at last Tuesday night’s regular meeting, as the board voted 7-0 to throw out the petition for the dissolution of the school district on the advice of its legal counsel, primarily citing the fact that a majority of the signatures were signed before the final petition was presented last May.
 
“The establishment of the dissolution was illegitimate,” dissolution commission chairwoman Anne Boyer said. “Most of us believe that there’s reasonable doubt that many if not all (of the signatures) were not legitimate.”
 
In keeping with state law, at least 20 percent, or 613, of the 3,061 registered voters in the school district were required to sign the petition in order to bring the matter to a commission and eventually a public referendum, and those in favor of the move collected 726 signatures.
 
At the meeting, however, the board, in conjunction with attorney Kristy Latta from Ahlers and Cooney, P.C., of Des Moines, determined that 180 of those signatures were signed on the same day—March 5, 2015, when a group named “Citizens to Keep a School in Gladbrook” met—and over half of them were signed in the month of March. Because the petition was not finalized until May and had no actual way of keeping a school open in Gladbrook (it simply would have dissolved G-R altogether and divided the territory among neighboring districts), school officials felt that they could no longer move forward with the process.
 
Read more in this week's Grundy Register.