Corning-Villisca: Squeezing out Stanton?

School districts in southwest and north-central Iowa are feeling the most pressure from the continued decline of student enrollment. As districts explore their options, we get reports with numbers that will make your eyes either glaze over or tear up, depending on your interest/opinions about curriculum offerings, financial positions, and enrollments of particular districts.

But first, a map. Outlined are Montgomery and Adams counties, tied for eighth-smallest in Iowa at 424 square miles each. Also outlined are five school districts, west to east, with 2010-11 enrollment: Red Oak, 1217; Stanton, 198; Villisca, 362; Corning, 450; and Prescott, 94. Towns with schools are marked in yellow.

(Disclaimer for this and all future posts: “Enrollment” will refer to the certified enrollment numbers from Department of Education statistics, unless I have reason to note otherwise.)

The colors in the outlines are loosely based on the Department of Education’s maps, in which enrollment under 250 is red. Red is an apt color, because these are the most endangered. This blog post centers on the center three districts, but the other two will come into play later.

Corning, Stanton, and Villisca had studies done about the feasibility of sharing. Articles are here (Adams County Free Press) and here (Red Oak Express).  Villisca has posted PDFs of the studies for Corning and Stanton.

The news wasn’t good for Stanton. The key sentences come at the top of the last page: “Ultimately, it is the opinion of the feasibility study team that any kind of whole grade sharing between these two districts is problematic. Under no scenario would this major concern for the feasibility team be addressed: The combined academic programs would not be sustainable over a significant period of time.” While the prior pages acknowledge there would be advantages, they wouldn’t be enough in the long term.

For Corning-Villisca, meanwhile, the team not only calls it viable, but suggests a breakdown of grades 6-8 in Villisca and 9-12 in Corning. A triple merger was not studied, although I think that it could have been.

So it’s possible that Stanton will be left without a partner – at least, a partner that would let it hold on to a school building. Red Oak is much bigger, and the chance of Stanton keeping its own elementary would be questionable.

And what about Prescott over there? While the certified enrollment was 94 in 2010-11 and 88 in 2009-10, in the latter year the school only actually had 23 students. Junior high and high school students go to Corning or Orient-Macksburg to the northeast. A combined Corning-Villisca-Prescott would appear to be the size of a county and be one of the largest in the state. (But that assumes that in the event of Prescott closing, the district would be kept intact when it could be divided up.) Of course, both Prescott and Stanton could continue independently for years. We will just have to see.

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