Rep. Spencer Gosch (R-23/Glenham) trots to the rescue of maybe a few small school districts—or maybe none at all—with House Bill 1215. While the bill is mostly style-and-form edge-frittering (e.g., replacing “fall enrollment… less than one hundred” with “fewer than one hundred”, which sounds fancy but may be incorrect, since we seem to treat “fall enrollment” as a singular mass noun), Gosch also adds a new exemption from the school consolidation requirements.
Right now, schools with fall enrollment less than or equal to 100 must consolidate with a neighbor. Currently exempt from forced consolidation are “sparse” school districts—i.e., large, low-population districts whose high schools are at least fifteen miles from the nearest high school in an adjoining district—school districts that get no state aid and are at least 25 miles from the nearest high school in an adjoining district, and districts in a consortium. HB 1215 would exempt “a school district that is the only school district remaining in the county in which the school district is located and is at least twenty miles away from any other school district.” I assume that, somewhere, statute defines the location of a school district as its main administrative office; absent such a definition, Gosch’s language would apply to zero school districts, since every school district abuts several other districts, meaning that, at the boundaries, the distance between any district and another is zero.
According to the 2017-2018 school district map, there are four school districts that cover entire counties: Harding, Bennett, Todd, and Stanley. Harding and Bennett are already safe from consolidation, since they are sparse. Todd and Stanley have enrollments far above the consolidation threshold, so they’re safe. Rep. Gosch thus appears to have written a bill that affects no current school districts.
Hmm… unless I’m missing some nuance of existing statute or demographic trend not already covered by the sparsity exemption, Rep. Gosch appears to be joining his caucus in writing solutions to problems that don’t exist.
Whatever he is trying to accomplish, that’s a carcass in-waiting. There might be some amendment someone will want to reveal at some point, regarding consolidation.
Has anyone ever bothered to explain the Four Color Theorem to the Department of Education? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem#Proof_by_computer
Does this apply to elementary schools? Because in the already consolidated school district of Bon Homme (Tyndall, Tabor, Springfield) the high school is consolidated and located in Tyndall, but there are elementary schools in each town. And if I am not mistaken, I don’t think Springfield or Tabor have more than 60 kids in Tabor or Springfield (I know for a fact that Tabor teachers actually teach multiple grades – ie. kindergarten and first are grouped, as are second and third, etc.).
SmallTownSD, No, this would just apply to the district size, not the size of individual schools.
I volunteer to do that, Nick. I’m 69.5 years old. I suspect I could fill my remaining spare time pretty handily with a project like that.
Nick, the software used to create that map (ESRI’s ArcMap) has a “color ramp” which by default either has a gradation of color (think thermal map), or an allotment of colors along a scale (as seen in the pastel panoply above). There’s not an easy, out-of-the-box solution to creating the four-color map; you have to download and integrate an extra tool.
Thanks Wayne. I see at least 14 map colors in this map and possibly more, some to the shades are difficult to differentiate between unless they are side by side.
I’m not positive, but I believe the case may be Campbell County. Every district that serves that county, except Herreid, is based in another county.
Ah! That would make sense. Funny that, on the map, the majority of the Mobridge-Pollock District is in Campbell County, but the school itself is in Mobridge, in the southwest corner of the district, in Walworth County.
According to DOE’s fall 2017 enrollment count, Herreid is at 113.That includes four homeschool kids. They’ll graduate 11 kids this year. Their current six elementary classes currently average 8 kids.
But if Gosch is targeting this District 23 school district, he’s going to have to reword his bill. There are four school districts in Campbell County; the attendance centers of Mobridge-Pollock, Eureka, and Selby are all outside Campbell County.
It looks like Charlie Hoffman and the D-23 delegation fought this battle for Herreid back in 2009, after Pollock consolidated with Mobridge.
Charlie’s bill that year passed, but Governor Rounds vetoed it, and the House failed to override. Charlie knows how to write bills: “The provisions of this section also do not apply to any school district that operates the only public high school located within the boundaries of any county.” Bang! Done! Spencer! Call Charlie next time to try to write a bill.
Herreid had 132 kids back then. They could have avoided this predicament by consolidating with their neighbors in Pollock, which would have been a more geographically logical consolidation than Pollock going down to Mobridge—Pollock is only 17 miles from Herreid and 37 miles from Mobridge—but apparently some personal/community bitterness kept them from doing what was logical.
So one could say that Charlie then and Spencer now are asking all of us taxpayers to subsidize a dwindling school district that hangs on not by rational decision making but due to some petty local feud. How do we feel about that?
According to an AAN article on the Mobridge-Pollock consolidation, the feud that kept Herreid from consolidating with Pollock was mostly dead by 2008:
Goll dang, I wrote about Rounds’s veto of Charlie’s bill nine years ago! Rounds vetoed Charlie’s save-Herreid bill, saying that county boundaries are “arbitrary” and shouldn’t have any bearing on where we draw school district boundaries or where we apply our standards for consolidation.
The roots of the Pollock-Herreid feud go way back to a county seat fight between Mound City and Herreid. Mound City won that fight despite being the smaller town. Herried got the USDA offices as a consolation prize. When Mound City school closed sometime after that they choose to consolidate with Pollock despite the fact that they were much closer to Herreid and the school buses going to Pollock drove on the street through Herried that ran right in front of the school there. Apparently the animosity lingered when this second round of school consolidation happened.
We must remember that any student from Pollock that wanted to attend school in Herried could have through an open enrollment provision. If they didn’t maybe Herried really wasn’t their first choice anyway.
Thanks for that history, Nick! Great context!
Greg, that’s also an important point. Parents in every district have the right to make their own “consolidation” decision. Apparently more students in the original Pollock district think its better to truck all the way down to Mobridge than save 30 minutes a day and go to school in Herreid.
Last year, Mobridge-Pollock received 57 open enrollees. Herreid received 18, Selby 0, and Eureka 21.
Gosch has a backup plan: HB 1298 would allow a district subject to consolidation to refuse state funding and become (by majority vote) a “nonpublic” school district.
Yeah, sure, that’ll work well. State aid to Herreid this year is about $208K. Last year’s Herreid K-12 budget was $1.44M. Can Herreid come up with that cash or cut its school budget by 14%?
It’s going nowhere. It violates the SD Constitution. It would be even worse, financially, if they become “nonpublic.” They wouldn’t have access to public financing through the property tax, either, and I expect federal funds would be gone. Essentially, they would start out at $0.00 in funding.
Donald, good point! If Herreid kisses state and federal funding goodbye, their school faces some serious budget shortage. I assume they’d have to ask parents to supplement the budget with tuition, at which point I’d guess at least half of the parents would take the cheaper option of open-enrolling in a neighboring public district.
Corey the State of South Dakota led by Conservatives consistently parlay out “Local Control” as a mandate of conservatism. In reality that platform is a myth with forced State Mandated reorganization; even after local school districts get local voter approval for higher self taxation. In reality the SD Legislature makes school funding and local control both only good if they follow the rules set forth be Pierre in conducting State Approved education. Local Control my A__!
Hi, Charlie! Now that HB 1215 has been amended to refer to attendance centers, not just the district, and now that it’s gotten a unanimous vote in committee is goes to the House, will the Legislature be able to pass it on a veto-proof vote?
Cory it is hitting the floor “On Consent” but I highly doubt it stays silent without discussion. And the discussion is what might be the main object of the bill. Knowing how well large school districts were taken care of with the 1/2 cent sales tax increase over small schools we have some good discussion coming up.
This bill is only for Herreid. Apparently one of the only districts in the state that can’t seem to get along with anyone but themselves. Hoping for a VETO again!!
Did the Senate pass HB 1215 this afternoon?