The Orient-Macksburg school district in southwest Iowa will cease to exist at the end of the 2024-25 school year. The district made the decision Monday.
WOI, KCCI, and Iowa Starting Line all have stories. The last goes into the most detail. However, the latter two need a correction/clarification: Only voters in the dissolving district vote on its dissolution. A soon-to-be-appointed dissolution commission will get in communication with neighboring school boards on what areas the surrounding district would be willing to take. The commission will also take residents/property owners’ input and then draw lines. See Iowa Code chapter 275.53 and 275.55.
If the attempted Gladbrook-Reinbeck dissolution is any example — and given its circumstances, it may not — the school boards will be in favor of whatever land OM will offer. North Tama’s letter said it would work with GR and AEA 267 “to reach an appropriate solution.”
If Clearfield’s dissolution is any example — and I really hope it isn’t — residents of OM will want to go every which way and create a crazy quilt.
Right now, the Winterset and Nodaway Valley districts do not spill out of their county lines at all. If they did, that could cause administrative headaches, including extra ballot styles created for just those outlying portions in elections. Those boards could specify that they do not want anything outside their counties. Orphaned land, should there be any — and in the modern era, I don’t think there has been — would be the state’s responsibility to figure out.
The last district to dissolve was Corwith-Wesley in 2015, but 87% of the school territory went to LuVerne and CWL had been together for decades. No district in the modern era has voluntarily dissolved in the summer following its last high school graduation; Boone Valley came close, shutting down one year after its last senior class. Russell and Hedrick were both forcibly shut down by the state over funding issues.