The East Side School has been closed since 1999. (Residents for Responsible Renovation)

Is an old school in northeastern Iowa worth saving? Let the people decide, a judge said last week.

On Aug. 1, District Judge Margaret Lingreen ruled that voters in Decorah, Iowa, can decide in September whether or not to allow a local group to lease an 1896 school that has been closed since 1999. The decision annulled the local school board's decision to keep the motion off the ballot, despite a petition that 1,030 people signed in favor of taking the issue to the polls.

"In a town of 8,000 people, that's a lot of signatures," says Mary Jorgensen, program chair of the East Side School Development Committee, a preservation group that formed to save the school. "It's in the hands of the community now."

The school board, which owns the Romanesque revival building, voted in May to demolish it. Last year, the board gave Jorgensen's committee a May 1 deadline to raise $3.24 million for the building's renovation. Although the committee has raised $1.4 million and counted another $2 million in pledges and historic-tax credits, the school board voted 3-2 in May not to extend its fundraising deadline.

In 2003, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the school as one of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places; this year, it is still endangered. With the help of the National Trust's Midwest Office, the group helped convince the school board to renovate an adjoining 1922 middle school, and voters passed a $4.5 million bond referendum to pay for the project.

If the town votes yes next month, the committee will sign a two-year lease, give the school board a gift of $50,000, stabilize the building, and propose new uses for the structure.

"If we hadn't done what we're doing, the building would be gone by now," Jorgensen says. "Every day it's standing is a victory for us."

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