West Bend–Mallard Community School District (WBM) is a rural

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

school district A school district is a special-purpose district that operates local public primary and secondary schools in various nations. North America United States In the U.S, most K–12 public schools function as units of local school districts, wh ...

headquartered in a single K-12 (all years) campus in

West Bend, Iowa West Bend is a city in Kossuth County, Iowa, Kossuth and Palo Alto County, Iowa, Palo Alto (originally) counties in the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 791 at the time of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. History West Bend got its ...

. The district is mostly in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

and Kossuth counties, with sections in

Pocahontas Pocahontas (, ; born Amonute, known as Matoaka, 1596 – March 1617) was a Native American woman, belonging to the Powhatan people, notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of ...

and Humboldt counties. In addition to West Bend, it serves

Mallard The mallard () or wild duck (''Anas platyrhynchos'') is a dabbling duck that breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Eurasia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Arge ...

and Rodman.

History

In the mid-1980s, the West Bend and Mallard school districts began sharing some classes with each other, including geography, advanced math, Spanish, and economics. In 1990, an agreement was reached between the two districts to move toward consolidation on a two-year time scale. Starting with the 1991-1992 academic year, the West Bend-Mallard school district was established under the combined name. The school mascots had previously been the West Bend Bulldogs and the Mallard Ducks. Despite the

Des Moines Register ''The Des Moines Register'' is the daily morning newspaper of Des Moines, Iowa. History Early period The first newspaper in Des Moines was the ''Iowa Star''. In July 1849, Barlow Granger began the paper in an abandoned log cabin by the junction ...

's suggestion that the new mascot be the "Grotto Ducks" (given the well-known presence of ducks at West Bend's

Grotto of the Redemption The Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption is a religious shrine in West Bend, Iowa, in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sioux City. A conglomeration of nine grottos depicting scenes in the life of Jesus, it contains a large collection of minerals a ...

), the students of the newly combined school district elected to call themselves the West Bend-Mallard Wolverines. The merger also combined one color from each of the schools' previous

school colors School colors (also known as university colors or college colors) are the colors chosen by a school as part of its brand identity, used on building signage, web pages, branded apparel, and the uniforms of sports teams. They can promote connectio ...

to produce the new school colors: purple (from West Bend's previous purple and white) and gold (from Mallard's previous black and gold). The consolidation process was fully finished and finalized as of July 1, 1995. For the first decade of the West Bend-Mallard school district's existence, each town maintained its own elementary school and middle school buildings, while Mallard students commuted to the West Bend building for high school. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, West Bend middle schoolers would attend classes during the first half of the day at the West Bend building and would then be bused to the Mallard building to attend classes during the latter half of the day. In the mid-2000s, all middle school operations were moved to the West Bend building, so that Mallard middle school students now also began commuting to the West Bend building. This left, in the Mallard school building, only the elementary classes for Mallard resident students. In 2019, the declining population and enrollment in the town of Mallard caused the district to decide to move all Mallard students and teachers, for all grades, completely to the West Bend building. After some community debate, it was decided that the now-empty Mallard school building should be demolished, to prevent it from dilapidating and becoming an eyesore or a safety hazard. The demolition of the 103-year-old Mallard school building occurred in March 2020. By 2011, the West Bend-Mallard school district began a grade-sharing agreement with the Gilmore City–Bradgate Community School District in which GC-B sent its high school students to WB-M. By 2012 the two districts were in talks to also have GC-B send middle school grades 7–8 to WB-M, as GC-B only had 11 students in those grades.

Schools

The district operates three schools, all in West Bend: * West Bend-Mallard High School. * West Bend-Mallard Middle School. * West Bend-Mallard Elementary.

West Bend-Mallard High School

Athletics

The Wolverines compete in the Twin Lakes Conference in the following sports: *Cross Country *Volleyball *Football **4-time Class A State Champions (1994, 1998, 1999, 2004) *Basketball *Wrestling *Track and Field ** Boys' 2-time Class 1A State Champions (1993, 1994). *Golf. *Baseball *Softball *Archery

References

External links