Voters in the Oldham-Ramona-Rutland school district have decided not to dissolve their rural district. The final vote, canvassed Wednesday by the board, was 363 votes for dissolution and 367 against, 49.7% versus 50.3%. 730 of the districts 1,051 registered voters cast valid ballots, a turnout of 69.3%.
The vote revealed a geographical split in commitment to maintaining the district. Ballots from the polling stations in Oldham and Rutland leaned strongly in favor of dissolution, while ballots from the Ramona polling station were overwhelmingly against breaking up:
The Oldham-Ramona-Rutland school district thus remains in the untenable position of having a sharply divided constituency can’t muster sufficient voter support to build the new consolidated school building to replace its Ramona and Rutland schools and produce the efficiencies that would make their recently consolidated district fiscally viable. Since combining, the district has seen enrollment decline 40%, despite the fact that population has increased in the Oldham and Rutland zip codes since 2020. The dramatic drop in ORR students comes from open enrollment. The Department of Education stats from 2023, the first year of ORR consolidation, the district had 106 students from other districts open enrolling and just 13 of its own resident students open enrolling out. This year, the DOE counts 62 students from outside the district open enrolling at ORR and 108 resident students open enrolling out. In two years, ORR has gone from an open-enrollment gain of 93 students to a loss of 46.
According to DOE expenditure data, In the year before consolidation, the 2022–2023 school year, Oldham-Ramona was spending $15,061 per student and Rutland was spending $12,111, both above the state average of $11,020. Average the two districts together in their final year apart and you get average per student spending of $13,419. In the first year of consolidation, SY 2023–2024, ORR spent $14,002, above the state average of $11,766. ORR’s first-year per-student spending increase of 4.3% was lower than the state’s increase of 6.8%, but $14,002 was higher than the average per-student spending of $12,625 at 15 other schools with enrollment within 20 students of ORR’s 308 that year.
The Oldham-Ramona-Rutland school district has survived this week’s dissolution vote. But it may not survive students and parents voting with their feet unless it can rally public support for a truly consolidated school district with one efficient learning center that will reduce operating costs and make more funds available either for property tax relief or greater educational opportunities.
Oh Ramona, do you feel like the world is too much for you.
Have you had too much exposure? Take a little time from the world there’s no use in tryin to be part of a world that don’t exist
If the school board has learned anything from the last two years of controversy and they well not have, they will pause their building plans and concentrate on rebuilding trust with the patrons of the district. The Rutland building can be utilized for a few more years but is in no way a long-term solution. A building site on the Rutland corner on Hwy. 81 halfway or so between 81 and the Norwegian Blvd. should be continued to be sought providing trust can be restored. A school of 150 students is not cost effective anymore and the idea “if you build it, they will come” only works in baseball movies.
Rambler: people know what school they will be attached to as per the plan had it been approved. Do you think those who favored dissolution, especially those from Rutland and Oldham, might open enroll to those schools?
I wonder, SuperSweet, if the votes for dissolution already include most of the 105 students already open-enrolling out of the district. Is it possible the ORR district has already sorted itself down to the die-hards who will keep sending their kids to ORR no matter what?
I also wonder how many of those die-hards stick with ORR out of local loyalty, how many out of a desire for starting time on whatever sports teams are left, and how many out of the simple practicality of not being able to drive the extra miles to Arlington, Madison, or Brookings for more educational and extracurricular opportunities?
That’s all very possible. It will take a (short) while for it to get sorted out. In matters of reorganizing school districts, history will show that it can get rather ugly before it gets done.