The Oldham-Ramona-Rutland school board is throwing in the towel. After consolidating two school districts just a couple years ago to preserve some semblance of community in the lonesome factory-farmland of northern Lake and southeast Kingsbury counties but facing persistent opposition to the practical implementation of consolidation, the ORR school board at its August 27 meeting put in motion a plan to dissolve the district:
The plan was first approved on Aug. 27 by the ORR school board, including a district map indicating how ORR property would be absorbed into neighboring districts, all land valuations within the district and all ORR assets among others, due to some disputes with the DOE the plan had to be reapproved at their meeting in October.
During their meeting in October, Dawn Hoeke, superintendent of the ORR school district discussed the updated project stating that the DOE had requested updated valuations for Moody County and reviewing where playground equipment will go.
…Now, ORR will resubmit their plan to the districts that would absorb it, followed the South Dakota Department of Education; if the state approves, the reorganization/dissolution plan would be decided by ORR voters, after which an election date would be set for the district. According to the document, if passed, the dissolution of the ORR school district would be effective June 30, 2026 [Michael Doorn, “Oldham-Ramona-Rutland Moving Ahead with Dissolution Plan,” KELO-TV, 2025.10.09].
At stake in this carve up are 317 square miles of taxable property valued at $537 million dollars. The dissolution plan compares the value of its taxable property with the adjoining districts that will absorb its bits:
- Oldham-Ramona-Rutland School District 39-6 = $536,774,379
- Arlington School District 38-1 = $326,442,189
- Chester School District 39-1 = $502,865,092
- Madison Central School District 39-2 = $1,364,847, 364
- Colman-Egan School District 50-5 = $307,881,110
- Brookings School District 05-1 = $2,422,001,278
- Howard School District 48-3 = $787,524,003
- Sioux Valley School District 05-5 = $546,366,835
- Lake Preston School District 38-3 = $408,093,127
- DeSmet School District 38-2 = $611,303,815
Brookings, Desmet, and Chester will get the smallest bits of ORR; Arlington, Howard, and Madison, the largest:
After receiving a petition in March from 190 district residents demanding dissolution, the school district sent a letter to all district landowners asking what district they preferred to be drawn into. The result was this gerrymander (I have overlaid the ORR boundaries in cyan):
I appreciate the school board’s continuing and magnanimous effort to please its recalcitrant and disunited constituents, but now is a good time to file off the rough edges of those districts and create some sensible, straight boundaries. I propose this alternative map, distributing ORR to adjoining districts in nice, contiguous, rectangulated chunks:
My alternative map shows a little more respect for county lines: Howard gets the Miner County sections of ORR; the Kingsbury sections go to DeSmet, Lake Preston, and Arlington along straight extensions of their existing boundaries; and Colman-Egan gets ORR’s Moody County sections. Madison gets all of ORR’s holdings in northwestern Lake County. I break county lines to send the northeast/Nunda chunk of ORR in Lake County up to Volga/Sioux Valley and the eastern square of ORR in Lake County north of Wentworth to Colman-Egan, though I could be persuaded that Madison should just take the whole north half of Lake County. My straight lines cut Brookings and Chester out of the dissolution completely, since they’re both farther away than other potential attendance centers.
Madison will take on the duty of retaining all of ORR’s official educational records. Madison also stands to gain both of ORR’s old school buildings, in Ramona and Rutland, unless those two towns choose to take those properties. ORR will donate some portion of its remaining funds to those towns for utilities and maintenance, but if Ramona and Rutland decline, ORR will give the buildings to Madison without any cash. What Ramona, Rutland, or Madison would do with either of those properties is anyone’s guess, since if those towns can’t sustain a school district, they probably can’t sustain any sort of industry or residential interest that would make those buildings anything but money losers.
ORR also plans to transfer eleven buses to its absorbing districts, playground equipment to the City of Ramona, and school technology equipment to the absorbing districts. As a lovely parting gift, staff and students will get to keep one-to-one computers and tablets issued to them during this last school year. Other school vehicles will be sold to the highest bidders.
Now, if Oldham-Ramona-Rutland can accede to its local forces of disunion, can we turn to breaking up South Dakota to save the federal government some money? Or how about thinking bigger and breaking up the United States of America into coastal allies of Canada that retain faith in science and democracy and a vast inner hinterland that prefers ignorance and autocracy?
Awww … That’s too bad. My great grandfather on my mother’s side, Paul Case, operated a butcher shop in Oldham in the early 20th century. I guess states decline from the bottom up.
Many friends here in CO are from several Ramona families.
They’ll be disappointed but the tales of high school basketball games between those towns will continue always.