(A championship no one particularly wanted to gain. — Ed.)
For months I have been waiting to find out what would happen to Charter Oak-Ute. There were rumblings back in October that COU would enter into a one-way whole-grade-sharing agreement with Maple Valley-Anthon-Oto. Now, a column from Tim Gallagher at the Sioux City Journal confirms it. Next school year, 55 of COU’s 75 freshmen through seniors will to go high school in Mapleton. (The other 20 are open enrolling elsewhere.) COU is the fourth school district in three years to start a one-way sharing agreement.
The combined MVAO-COU will dethrone OA-BCIG as the state’s longest acronym, but stay behind BCLUW in number of towns in the name (counting “Maple Valley” as one). The high school in Mapleton will serve eight communities and cover 558 square miles, enough to push it over both Algona-plus-LuVerne and the new Pocahontas Area-plus-Laurens-Marathon. A future consolidation (something that could be years out, if at all) with no loss of area would create the largest school district in absolute size — larger than Western Dubuque.
But don’t tell the Legislature about any of that, because the attention is directed elsewhere for the time being.