South Clay district planning to dissolve following 2009-10

A longtime area school district will see its last students next fall.

A group of area residents finds itself preparing to advance through a dissolution process for South Clay School District. The district's dissolution is scheduled to take effect following the 2009-10 school year.

"Next year will be South Clay's last year of having an attendance center in Gillett Grove," Superintendent Dave Schulz confirmed Wednesday morning. "The duty of the commissioned committee is to bring back a proposal to the board so that it can redraw the lines of South Clay, approve them and go through the public hearing process. It will then go before South Clay voters sometime in the near future. I'm guessing probably in February, March or April of 2010."

The new lines being drawn are for the district's taxpayers and property owners. When South Clay has officially been dissolved, its redrawn property lines will benefit the neighboring school districts of Sioux Central, Laurens-Marathon, Clay Central-Everly, Spencer and Ruthven-Ayrshire.

"Once those lines are formatted, they will be voted upon by the district after each of those neighboring school districts has a chance to see what is being drawn up," Schulz explained.

Schulz, who just completed his 20th year at South Clay and his seventh as the rural district's superintendent, acknowledged that staff and board members had unofficially broached the topic of the district's pending dissolution this school year, which concluded for students on Tuesday and teachers on Wednesday.

"But nothing's been publicly said. We wanted to make sure we were making the right decision and basing it on the right reasons," the South Clay superintendent said. "We've had a couple sessions with Bill Garner, a retired AEA and school administrator and consultant in the areas of finance, reorganization and the dissolving of districts. We also talked with Area Education Agency and Department of Education people when we were going through the (standards-based report card) proceedings."

But a continued declining enrollment, in combination with an increasing number of students expected to open enroll out of the prekindergarten through sixth grade building, is what prompted South Clay board members to consider the district's dissolution.

"We have had the preschool through sixth grade school in Gillett Grove ever since it formed in 1993. At that time, we had 110 students in preschool through sixth grade," Schulz said. It was then that South Clay began sharing its middle school and high school students with the Ruthven-Ayrshire, Sioux Central, Spencer and Laurens-Marathon districts.

The district certified 167 students last October and projects 149 this next year. In-house, the number will be below 50.

The seven-person commissioned committee from the area, meanwhile, includes South Clay school board members Barry Anderson, Joe Hoffman and Amy Burkhart, as well as community members Gary Johnson and Jim Wischmeyer of Webb, Mary Jo Smith of Dickens and Marcia Langner of Ayrshire. Even though this group has not yet met officially, it will soon in order to discuss expectations and what committee member duties will be.

Either an AEA or DE representative is expected to facilitate the first meeting so that the requirements and ground rules are met to specifications of the state code.

When South Clay's final school year commences on Aug. 20, its teaching rolls will be short two from the 2008-09 year. Paula Klein, the district's preschool teacher, took an early retirement option and the fifth grade position held by Donna Hemann has been reduced. The northwest Iowa district will instead have a combined preschool/kindergarten and fourth/fifth grade classrooms.

"The board's stand has always been that it wanted to provide the best quality education for our elementary students. We feel we've done that and will continue to do that next year. It's just the fact that when we're talking about combining grades and not having enough kids to support a single section for an elementary grade, you're getting into the question of, 'How small is too small' and providing that well-rounded, quality education for your elementary students," Schulz said. " ... But we knew this day was coming. When we formed the preschool through sixth grade and we did the one-way sharing with neighboring districts in grades seven through 12, we anticipated going two to three years. That two to three years has led to 16 years. So, it's been a good run for South Clay and I think it's set a lot of precedents for some other districts to do something similar to us."