Iowa Department of Education map
A finger of the Audubon school district touches the city of Kimballton. More than half a century ago, that finger tied two K-12 school districts, multiple county school boards, and the Iowa Supreme Court up in knots for more than a decade.
This story starts in the middle, as I waded through archives of the Harlan papers that end in 1969. “High court decisions in Kimballton School,” Harlan News Advertiser, June 12, 1967, had this parenthetical: “(By this time, it’s obvious that Elk Horn-Kimballton Community Schools is a misnomer; the town of Kimballton is not a part of the EH-K district.)”
Whoa, hold on there. Back the school bus up.
In 1956, voters in three township areas plus Elk Horn voted to form the Elk Horn-Kimballton district. The problem is, Kimballton — specifically, voters in the city limits — opposed the plan. The plan was to have rural areas attend elementary classes in Kimballton, which suddenly was not an option. According to the September 21, 1956, Harlan Tribune, opposition was “believed to have come from parents who want their children to go to school in Audubon.” If that finger of 3/16 of Section 20, Sharon Township, Audubon County, had been included, Kimballton Independent would have been left an island and have nowhere else to go.
Ten years later, the situation had not changed, and with the new K-12 school law Kimballton had to go SOMEwhere. I’m not going to go through every step, and you’ll see why in the next few paragraphs.
Kimballton Independent was still around in fall 1966, one of the statewide stragglers looking for a K-12 home. The following year it became a district without a building, but not without another injunction preventing a commitment to “tuitioning out” all students to Audubon (Atlantic News-Telegraph, 8/12/67). Elk Horn-Kimballton and Kimballton finally voted for reorganization in January 1970 (Atlantic News-Telegraph, 1/28/71), only to have Audubon immediately seek an injunction.
The end came in the unhelpfully named Iowa Supreme Court case “Board of Education v. Joint Board of Education,” decided April 13, 1972. It was the fourth time the Kimballton situation had reached the high court. The court allowed the new Elk Horn-Kimballton School District, now actually including Kimballton, to stand.
Four decades later, EHK started whole-grade sharing with Exira, and the two merged in 2014.