Should schools be closed for low
attendance or economic factors?
By Gordon Garnos
AT ISSUE:
Members of the South Dakota Legislature are expected next year to
open the door again for more school consolidations. A task force
recommended that schools with less than 200 students should be
forced to consolidate with another school or close its doors. The
Legislature bounced this around quite a bit, but finally settled on
the magic number of 100 students are needed to keep a school open.
Prior to this legislation, a school's future was primarily based on
economic factors, whether or not a school district could get a tax
limit opt out passed by the voters.
CALL IT WHAT
you want, school consolidation or a "kinder" word, "reorganization,"
is going to take place in South Dakota for a long time, a former
legislator recently said. There are legislators now saying the
minimum number of students for a school in the state may be raised
from 100 to 300. While this may be no big deal for the larger towns
in South Dakota, many people look at this proposal as being
catastrophic for the people and communities where such
reorganization would be mandated by state law.
According to the law
passed in the 2007 session of the Legislature that mandates schools
of less than 100 students would either have to close or merge with
another district. The following nine schools will have to either
close or consolidate with another school district within two years:
Carthage, Conde, Greater Scott (mailing address, Akron, Iowa),
Greater Hoyt (mailing address, Hawarden, Iowa), Harrold, Northwest,
Pollock, Polo and Wood.
THEN, IF THAT
magic number is only increased to, say, 125 or 150 students, 12 more
schools in the state will be forced to close their doors. They are
Big Stone City, Bonesteel-Fairfax (already consolidated once),
Bowdle, Edmunds Central, Herreid, Oelichs, Oldham-Ramona (already
consolidated), Roslyn, Rutland, South Shore, Stickney and Summit.
If this minimum
number of students for a school district is raised to 200 or the
rumored 300 by legislative mandate that list is going to at least
double in size.
Tax cap opt-outs for
several school districts have saved their schools, at least for the
short term. However, successful opt-outs can also eventually break a
school district.
IS THERE NO ANSWER
to all of this? Oh, there are answers alright, but answers that
don't bid well with a lot of the populations of these communities. I
don't know how many times I have heard that the closing of a school
is the death of the community. In a lot of ways that is tragically
true. However, I am reminded of a wise old professor who once told
me the education of children in a community is more important than
the community itself.
One could argue that
point until hell freezes over and the only conclusions to that
argument would be determined by what side of the fence you were on.
Whenever the subject
of school reorganization rears its head, I am taken back to the
legislative mandate back in the 1960s. All common, or country,
schools in the state had to merge with an independent school
district, one with a high school. And it was up to the county school
boards to get the job done. The ink had hardly dried on that piece
of legislation when all hell broke out. I know. I was on one of
those county school boards.
Before that mandate
was issued the most controversial issue we had was when to set the
date for rally day. Wow! When that bomb dropped rally days became
rather secondary.
CODINGTON COUNTY
had five independent school districts with dozens of country
schools. Those dozens of country schools had to be pushed into one
of the five districts. It was an almost impossible task as families
very often related to another community than what was the closest
town to their farms. In many cases it pitted family member against
family member. Of course these high schools were very competitive in
sports and even the idea of merging high schools was a dirty, dirty
notion and talking about high schools or country schools merging
could easily lead to a fight.
An example of this:
About this time of reorganization, the entire school at Summit
burned to the ground. The communities of South Shore and Waverly
were not many miles away. Guess what happened. The Codington County
School Board had the audacity and the tenacity to suggest these
three schools merge into one. The logic was there. With all the farm
land within these school district boundaries, finances would not be
a problem. In fact, such a school would be rolling in clover, so to
speak.
Well, to make a long
story very short, members of the county school board were actually
threatened by folks from these three communities. Only two of us are
still alive and that might be doubtful today if we stopped in a
couple of those towns for any length of time.
IS THERE A MESSAGE
here? Yes. Any school reorganizing still to be done has to come
from Pierre. So, know your legislators very well before you send
them out there....
Gordon Garnos was long-time editor of the Watertown Public Opinion and
recently retired after 39 years with that newspaper. Garnos, a
lifelong resident of South Dakota except for his military service in the
U.S. Air Force, was born and raised in Presho.
