Voters in the Mount Ayr school district in southwest Iowa have rejected a bid to build additions onto the district’s elementary and high school buildings. Voters narrowly defeated an eight-million dollar bond issue Tuesday. It fell about 100 votes short of the 60 percent margin needed for approval. Mount Ayr Superintendent Russ Reiter predicts the school board will decide to run the issue past voters again.
"We’re going to come back again and if we need to make some changes, we will," he says. "We’re going to continue to fight…and do what’s best for our kids and our children so it’s not over. We’re going to just try ‘er again." Almost 12-hundred ballots were cast in yesterday’s vote in the Mount Ayr School District, with 58 percent voting in favor of the elementary school building project.
"We need to wait six months so we’ll have some time through the spring and through the summer and we’ll make a decision sometime this fall to come back before the voters again and, you know, give ’em the same question," Reiter says. About 650 students are enrolled in the Mount Ayr School District, which is the state’s fifth largest — geographically — covering 336 square miles and serving students from eight small towns surrounding Mount Ayr, too.