Last December, the Oldham-Ramona-Rutland School District barely survived a dissolution vote. But residents have petitioned again to force the ORR school board to submit that failed “reorganization” plan to another vote:
The ORR School Board acknowledged at a regular Aug. 12 meeting a petition to vote on a previous plan to dissolve a district.
District voters will choose if they want to accept the same reorganization plan that was subject of a Dec. 16, 2025 election. That time, people voted 367-363 to keep the district as-is. Voting in favor of the reorganization plan would dissolve the district and divide its land and assets into neighboring districts, including Madison Central, Chester Area and others.
The district validated the petition, which had the required 20% of registered voters’ signatures. ORR will need at least six weeks to publish legal election notices and another six to seven weeks to handle early voting and absentee voting before the election, according to board discussion. The election must be held before Dec. 16, 2026, as a re-vote is required within a year of the reorganization’s plan failure on Dec. 16, 2025 [Wren Murphy, “To Be or Not to Be: Voters Will Decide Once More If Embattled ORR School District Dissolves,” Mitchell Republic, 2026.08.12].
The 2025 reorganization plan would have distributed the district’s territory and tax base to nine adjoining districts, with the largest shares of land going to Arlington, Howard, and Madison. Dissolving the ORR district would also have resulted in a net loss of at least 33 K-12 education jobs, as the adjoining districts would need few if any additional faculty or staff to absorb their small fractions of the ORR student body and thus would offer few job opportunities for ORR’s 42 employees.
This dissolution revote underscores the ongoing and thus far unresolvable division plaguing this consolidated district. I have to wonder what will happen first: will enough district supporters give up to cede this new vote to separatists, or will the lack of community cohesion on top of/linked to declining enrollment force the district to close?
They should read Wendell Berry like you Cory. Then vote.