{"id":10959,"date":"2019-05-20T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T15:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=10959"},"modified":"2019-05-19T02:13:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-19T07:13:28","slug":"essex-holding-on-to-its-high-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2019\/05\/essex-holding-on-to-its-high-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Essex holding on to its high school"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a update to <a href=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2019\/02\/essex-school-district-could-be-in-trouble\/\">this post<\/a>, there has been a change in the Essex school district&#8217;s strategy.\u00a0In a series of KMA stories:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A school board member <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kmaland.com\/news\/essex-board-member-rydberg-resigns\/article_7ab2ca7a-3ec3-11e9-9095-1335e85e0e22.html\">resigned in early March<\/a> because he felt he was &#8220;going in a different direction than the rest of the board.<\/li>\n<li>Later that month, residents <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kmaland.com\/news\/petition-drive-seeks-stop-to-essex-school-sharing-talks\/article_ad27901e-4b87-11e9-9150-9b9f16ba82d6.html\">presented a petition<\/a> &#8220;demanding that the board halt its exploration of sharing with contiguous school districts&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>That came to a head at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kmaland.com\/news\/essex-sharing-talks-stir-emotions\/article_257d2f3e-5c85-11e9-bad9-2bf9940e795f.html\">April school board meeting<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>It must have had an effect, because earlier this month the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kmaland.com\/news\/essex-red-oak-boards-start-school-sharing-talks\/article_dd5415f8-7078-11e9-acfd-174fb9453661.html\">Essex board and Red Oak board met<\/a> to discuss operational sharing, rather than grade sharing.<\/li>\n<li>Essex still needs a superintendent, and a couple other positions, after <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kmaland.com\/news\/essex-board-faces-superintendent-question\/article_ef97d704-5c14-11e9-b55b-5f17cbc1c824.html\">terminating some agreements<\/a>\u00a0with East Mills.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A <em>Valley News Today<\/em> (Shenandoah) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.valleynewstoday.com\/news\/supporters-review-ideas-to-save-essex-school\/article_f25e8966-4b24-11e9-aea2-9b3d396b087c.html\">article in March<\/a> reported that the state had suggested the district be looking to cut $500,000 from its budget. Apparently not on the table \u2014 or at least not mentioned anywhere I&#8217;ve seen \u2014 is increasing the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grad.uiowa.edu\/news\/fri-10042013-202pm\/school-district-income-taxes-new-revenue-or-property-tax-substitute\">local income surtax<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/tax.iowa.gov\/sites\/files\/idr\/forms1\/2018SchoolDistrictSurtaxRates%2841027%29.pdf\">Essex&#8217;s surtax is currently 9%<\/a>, while the highest rates in the state aren&#8217;t too far away in Sidney (20%) and Fremont-Mills (17%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a update to this post, there has been a change in the Essex school district&#8217;s strategy.\u00a0In a series of KMA stories: A school board member resigned in early March because he felt he was &#8220;going in a different direction &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2019\/05\/essex-holding-on-to-its-high-school\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10959"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10992,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10959\/revisions\/10992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}