Bill would close four Plymouth County schools

Senator Matt McCoy, a Des Moines Democrat, is pushing to introduce the bill, which would cut two-thirds of Iowa's school districts.

In Plymouth County, That would mean closing the schools in the Akron-Westfield, Hinton, Kingsley-Pierson and Remsen districts.

"The only one to survive in the whole county would be Le Mars," said Remsen-Union Superintendent Ken Howard.

McCoy's reasoning, according to Sen. Randy Feenstra, who represents parts of Plymouth, Sioux and Lyon counties, is that millions of dollars would be saved, including the savings of having only one superintendent for each county.

Currently the state has 362 school districts. If this bill came to the floor and was eventually passed into law, that number would drop to 144.

For Plymouth County, one of Iowa's largest counties geographically, students are spread a great distance apart, from rural Akron in the northwest to Kingsley in the southeast.

"Because of the size of the county it just becomes a logistical nightmare," Howard said. "I see some efficiencies with doing that, but the disadvantages to people in given localities outweigh whatever kind of efficiencies that would produce."

Only one county he knows of has a single school district -- Davis County in Southern Iowa.

"Their population is quite a bit less than ours," he said. "Bus routes and things are just ridiculous."

One way McCoy suggests consolidating the districts would help is to cut the number of superintendents and therefore cut administrative costs.

"That's the huge issue, too many superintendents, too many principals," Howard said. "But to be honest, in small districts like ours, administrators just aren't superintendents any more. They're elementary principals, they're curriculum directors, so they're saving a lot of the administrative costs we once had in-house."

The Remsen-Union district used to have four administrators. Now it has two. Howard serves Remsen-Union in those three administrative roles plus special education director and Title 1 director.

"In those enlarged districts, those are separate individuals," Howard said. "(With the consolidation) you'd end up with a similar amount of administrators, you wouldn't have as many superintendents, but you'd have as many administrators."

Howard, who has worked in small and large schools, sees the benefits of both sizes of districts.

"In large schools you can offer more courses and those kind of things, but in small schools you're able to have more one-on-one interaction with kids, teachers, administrators," Howard said. "I mean, I know the kids by name. Not often in a large school would a student not only recognize a superintendent but be able to know them by name."

Several Iowa school districts share superintendents or have tried it. For some districts, Howard said, that worked. For others, they've gone back to having a part-time superintendent specifically for each district.

"If you have somebody, even a part-time, in the district as superintendent who takes on other roles, then you can be just as efficient or more," he said.

Howard said he understands the logic behind McCoy's proposal.

"But I also understand the benefits of having small school districts," he said. "We just need to make ourselves more efficient. If you can't, you find a way to collaborate with schools that are adjacent to you."

McCoy's proposed bill hasn't actually become a bill yet, nor has it been debated on the Senate floor.

"It's just craziness," Senator Randy Feenstra said in a phone interview from Des Moines.

He wrote a position paper on the topic, strongly coming out against McCoy's proposal.

Smaller schools, he argued, spend about $70 dollars less per student to educate them each year.

Dropout rates in schools of less than 750 students are less than half of those in schools of 750 or more, he said.

Not only that, he said, small schools have a big economic impact on the town they are in.

"If you pull a school out of a community, the community will slowly die," he wrote.

Students population in school districts: