August 31, 2008: The Charter Oak school building opened in the fall of 1916. It became part of the Charter Oak-Ute school district in 1961. Its time as a high school may be done after its 101st class.
Iowa’s largest single-high-school area is on the verge of being relocated once again.
In a story from the Mapleton Press and a letter from Steve Oberg, the superintendent of the Maple Valley-Anthon-Oto school district, continued plunging enrollment and squeezed state funding are too much (or, if you think about it, not enough) for Charter Oak-Ute to handle. COU will consider sending its high school students to MVAO, the favorite option after a survey. MVAO will consider the whole-grade sharing at a meeting Wednesday, the superintendent’s letter says.
MVAO has lost a third of its students in the past decade, and even adding back the seven dozen or so COU high schoolers wouldn’t quite get back to the 2006 number. COU is 60% of the size it was in 1980-81, the Press article noted.
A combined MVAO/COU would be in four counties and include the towns of Anthon, Castana, Charter Oak, Danbury, Mapleton, Rodney, Soldier, and Ute (but not Smithland, which is the east end of the Westwood district, or Ricketts, which is part of Schleswig). It would stretch from a few miles away from US 20 to a few miles away from US 30. It would be an area of 558 square miles — a shade larger than Western Dubuque and 10 square miles larger than Algona-plus-LuVerne after the dissolution of Corwith-Wesley.
In order for COU to send students to MVAO next school year, an agreement must be in place by the end of this month.