The Townsend School in northeastern Farmington Township was built and opened for the 1897-98 school year to serve the students of Joint District #1, serving the district for 59 years, through the 1955-56 school year. In 1996 the IHS built a reproduction of that structure, having for years sought unsuccessfully to acquire a one-room country schoolhouse that could be moved to the complex. The schoolhouse bell atop the structure was salvaged from the Twin Grove School, which stood in the town of Helvetia on the north side of State Hwy. 161 about a mile east of Iola.