However, as the years went on and new educational additions popped up in State Center, other towns began to lose their school buildings.

The formation of the current district didn’t immediately spell the end for local school buildings in the other towns. Rhodes and State Center combined in 1961, just before the final 1962 formation of West Marshall. Minerva Consolidated School combined with State Center in 1945, and LaMoille did the same in 1955. Another wave of consolidation came in the post-World War II period. That was the way of things in western Marshall County for a few decades. The same happened in State Center in 1909 and in LaMoille and Melbourne around 1914-15, according to “Continuing History.” Rhodes Consolidated Schools started in 1883, combining students at several area schoolhouses. After that, a first wave of school consolidation began in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The first small schoolhouses appeared in the district in the 1860s in Rhodes and State Center. The modern district came to be in 1962 after an election was held to consolidate several independent area districts into West Marshall, according to “Continuing History.” Today, the black-and-gold of West Marshall Community School District covers State Center, where all of its education buildings are located, as well as Melbourne, Rhodes, St. Krob said looking at historical population data can sometimes be difficult because methods of collecting information were different than they are now. The arrival of the Baby Boomer generation also contributed to the growth of the state’s population. He said international immigration from places like Germany and Ireland was a key to that population growth in the early- and mid-20th century like it is today. “Iowa’s population in general has always just had a slow and steady population increase,” he said, noting that was prior to the farm crisis in the 1980s. Gary Krob of the State Library of Iowa’s State Data Center said the state’s population experienced steady growth throughout those time periods. In the 1940s and beyond, she said consolidation saw schools in smaller towns lose out in favor of those in larger towns, like State Center, Le Grand and, in her case, Marshalltown. She said the first wave of consolidations in the late 1800s and early 1900s came as a result of country schools banding together. Lang said Van Cleve, just like some communities in the West Marshall, East Marshall and GMG school districts, could not keep up with the educational and facilities needs required by the state for student success.

That small town was eventually added to the Marshalltown School District and its local building closed.

Lang said she grew up in Van Cleve, east of Melbourne. “There are pros and cons like there is in everything.” “The small town people, like we were … thought consolidation was probably not good for us because we would lose our school,” said 34-year Marshalltown Schools teacher and current Green Mountain-Garwin substitute teacher Julie Lang.

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