The Department of Education has approved the Oldham-Ramona-Rutland school district’s revised plan to dissolve and set an election date of December 16. At a special meeting October 27, the ORR school board approved that election date, with a snow-day make-up date of December 23. Early voting started October 31 and runs through December 15 at the Rutland school during regular school hours and by appointment.
This December election culminates a process launched by 190 district voters who petitioned to dissolve the district last spring. Oldahm-Ramona and Rutland consolidated just two years ago but failed to win public consensus on building a new school building to replace the two 100-plus-year-old school buildings in which they had separately operated. Oldham and Ramona consolidated in 1990.
DOE stats show that eleven South Dakota school districts have dissolved since 1990. Additionally, in 2004, Tea split from Lennox to form its own school district. In 2024, Colome ended its weird discontiguous 2010 consolidation with the Wood and Witten areas and split its northern island between White River and Winner.
The ORR school district fact sheet notes that dissolving the school district will eliminate 42 jobs. These jobs won’t reappear in other districts: splitting 193 kids among nine adjacent, absorbing districts probably won’t require any of those schools to add teachers or support staff:
- By ORR’s projections, Arlington stands to see the largest enrollment increase by percentage, with 38 ORR kids adding 14% to their Fall 2024 enrollment of 277. (DOE will publish Fall 2025 enrollment next month.) That’s roughly three kids per grade, which might justify hiring and additional teacher or two if those newcomers land in a grade that’s already over capacity.
- Lake Preston would see a 12% enrollment boost from ORR refugees, 20 more kids adding to the current 164. That’s maybe a couple kids per grade, again not likely to justify a new FTE in any one grade.
- ORR projects Madison will see the largest number of new students, 46. But Madison already has 1,172 K-12 students. Spread those kids across the grades, each of which are already spread across multiple classrooms, and teacher workload will hardly change.
At best, I’d estimate that each school district might add one FTE—maybe a teacher, maybe a special ed aide—so maybe nine new positions, leaving a net loss of 33 jobs. If we count those jobs as part of Lake County’s workforce, that loss would be enough to raise the county unemployment rate from 2.0% in August to 2.5%.