The Des Moines Register wrote about the failure of the consolidation vote between Odebolt-Arthur and Battle Creek-Ida Grove. Fear of an eventual closure of the school in Odebolt — the “OA” part would be about a third of the new district, with “BCIG” having the majority — was a major cause.
I agree with David Else, who went across the state with his wife photographing now-closed school buildings across the state, saying that such division may be a precursor of things to come. Consider what happened in Gladbrook-Reinbeck the past year, and the financial difficulties that caused the state to nuke the Farragut school district, and Iowa Falls telling Alden it was ending the two-way sharing there, and there’s a good argument it’s happening already.