As the good people of the Oldham-Ramona-Rutland head to the polls today to decide whether to dissolve their dwindling rural school district, I notice that Joe Kirby wrote last month that Sioux Falls should consider a monster school consolidation plan: merge the nine school districts in the Sioux Falls metro area into one!
The nine districts that functionally make up the Sioux Falls region are: Sioux Falls, Brandon Valley, Harrisburg, Tea, Lennox, Tri-Valley, West Central, Dell Rapids, and Baltic. Seven sit at least partially inside city limits; Dell Rapids and Baltic are just outside.
Together they educate the 35,000 to 40,000 students in our community. But they do so separately, each with its own superintendent, business office, transportation fleet, buildings and grounds team, and governance structure. School superintendents in the Sioux Falls area make salaries as high as $260,000 a year, much more than our mayor’s salary.
…A single Sioux Falls metro area school district would not magically erase every challenge. But it would align educational governance with the economic reality of a unified metro area. It would equalize tax bases, allow for coordinated capital planning, and reduce redundant administrative overhead. Instead of nine superintendents, nine central offices, nine transportation systems and nine curriculum shops, the region could operate with one. That savings could flow to classrooms or back to taxpayers.
More importantly, it could distribute enrollment more evenly, reduce racial and economic segregation, and allow the larger Sioux Falls community to invest strategically in new schools where they are needed most, not where historical district boundaries happen to fall [Joe Kirby, “Want Lower Property Taxes? Start by Fixing School Boundaries,” Sioux Falls Joe, 2025.11.18].
Politically, Kirby’s proposal is likely impossible. Sioux Falls can’t unilaterally reach out and absorb an adjoining district. Consolidation requires mutual consent from all districts, and unlike Oldahm-Ramona-Rutland, Brandon, Harrisburg, Tea, and the other suburban districts are growing and have no reason to give up their places of privilege. Property tax reform advocates are having trouble getting traction for any of a host of smaller reforms; whatever angst exists over property taxes hasn’t built to the critical mass necessary to move Kirby’s more radical plan for massive school consolidation. The savings of school consolidation will have to come from outside the big towns, one district at a time, as places like Oldham-Ramona-Rutland decide they just can’t make the case for keeping their rural schools open.
Someday we just have to admit our current regressive tax system just doesn’t work anymore and adopt something like North Dakota’s more progressive system. There, I said it.
The Tea Party won’t give in!