Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

December 28, 2008: Every window in the Russell school building was boarded up shortly after the district was forcibly dissolved. Students in Russell now go to Chariton, which encompasses about 85% of Lucas County.

Lucas County was the home of John L. Lewis, longtime leader of the United Mine Workers of America. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that the Lucas County town of Russell would become the canary in the consolidation coal mine.

On March 11, 2008, the State Board of Education de-accredited the Russell School District because the district had exceeded its spending authority in multiple years and had issues with teacher certification. (A state audit later found $300,000 of local sales tax revenue had been siphoned off to pay salaries, which is expressly forbidden under Iowa Code.) Russell became the second school district in Iowa history to be forcibly dissolved, following Hedrick in 1991. Because 94.5% of the district was in Lucas County, the state simply gave all of that to Chariton (an additional 5% went to Wayne, 0.5% to Albia). In fall 2008, Chariton High School became the ninth in Iowa to cover an area larger than 350 square miles.

In 2009, the wave rolled through northwest Iowa and hasn’t abated since. Battle Creek-Ida Grove and Odebolt-Arthur engaged in whole-grade sharing, a consolidation that has yet to be finalized. Ten. Pocahontas Area and Pomeroy-Palmer did the same. Eleven. When consolidation followed three years later, Pocahontas Area — just barely — became the fifth district in the state to exceed 400 square miles.

In 2010, the last class graduated from Lineville-Clio High School and the Wayne district in Corydon gained that area. When that happened, that little bit of Russell ended up nudging Wayne past the 350 mark, too. Twelve. Also in 2010, South Clay dissolved. It was down to a K-6 district but other students went to multiple surrounding districts. Part of South Clay went to Sioux Central. Since Albert City-Truesdale had been sending grades 7-12 there since 2004, the high school in Sioux Rapids was now covering 372 square miles. Thirteen.

A year later, Titonka and Woden-Crystal Lake went their separate ways, and Titonka’s 91 square miles were attached to Algona’s 283. Fourteen.

Also in the Kossuth County area, where the population decline is especially steep, three districts negotiated the most ambitious whole-grade sharing plan since the formation of North Iowa in 1989. North Kossuth and Sentral of Fenton began whole-grade sharing in 2008 as North Sentral Kossuth, and then in 2012 Armstrong-Ringsted was folded in. Fifteen.

Their resulting three-way sharing agreement, called North Union High School, is a geographic giant, one-seventh larger than the Davis County district, covering 540 square miles. It runs 32 miles along the Minnesota border and extends down to US 18 just north of Whittemore. It brings together seven towns, none of which has a population above 1000.

There were two other large-area whole-grade sharing agreements in 2012: Southern Cal and Rockwell City-Lytton (South Central Calhoun), and East Greene and Jefferson-Scranton (Greene County). Five years earlier, they would have been notable for their size, but were now just thrown on the pile.

In those five years (2008-09 to 2012-13), any informal idea of just how big a school district should be changed. Forget 350 square miles. Rural areas were now looking at 400 — and beyond.

Area figures are based on numbers received from the Iowa Department of Management.

First in a series on the geography of, and changes to, rural Iowa school districts in the past 55 years, with emphasis on the last 15.

For nearly 50 years the number of places in Iowa where one high school served an area greater than 350 square miles could be counted on two hands. But as rural counties were drained of population and schools continually told to do more with less, whole-grade sharing and consolidation would send this number soaring in the early 21st century.

In this series, here are some things to keep in mind: A township is 36 square miles, a “3-by-4” county like those along the second-southernmost tier in Iowa is ideally 432 square miles, and a square “4-by-4” county is ideally 576 square miles. When the state of Iowa was first settled, a one-room school would typically serve one township. For more background on that era, there’s “Remembering One-Room Schools,” The Goldfinch, Fall 1994.

In one fell swoop in 1960, Davis County went from 62 districts including 48 one-room schools to one covering 474 square miles. Because Western Dubuque is actually a two-high-school district (Cascade is the other), the high school in Bloomfield covered the most geographic space in the state until 2012. Other long-lived large districts are Howard-Winneshiek (1960), Allamakee (1960), and Fairfield.

Maple Valley-Anthon-Oto broke the 350 barrier with a whole-grade sharing agreement in 1993. Mount Ayr followed in 1998 by absorbing part of Grand Valley and Van Buren did the same in 2002 with all of Fox Valley.

In 2005, a rarity in the whole-grade sharing process happened: The tiny CAL and Dows school districts, unable to make whole-grade sharing continue, went their separate ways. Dows searched for a new partner and ended up with Clarion-Goldfield. The new CGD was bigger than Fairfield. In the following decade, breakups of long-term whole-grade-sharing districts would become more common.

On July 1, 2006, 46 years after Davis County formed, the number of high schools covering 350-plus square miles stood at eight.

Then the floodgates opened.

Some information about Davis County’s consolidation comes from an October 1961 Associated Press article. UPDATE 1/21/22: Corrected year of Davis County’s formation.