A group of citizens cast doubt on the future of the Oldham-Ramona-Rutland School District when it filed a petition to dissolve the district.
And if the dissolution plan is passed, neighboring school districts, including Brookings, would be impacted.
An opt-out vote to fund a new school in ORR last fall resulted in a lawsuit to halt the construction project and spurred the petition efforts.
After the petition was filed, the South Dakota Department of Education required the district to develop a reorganization/dissolution plan.
Adjacent school districts have been asked to sign off on the plan. ORR will then submit the plan to the state education department; if the state approves, the reorganization or dissolution plan would be decided by ORR voters.
The plan has been posted on the ORR schools website.
At its September meeting, the Brookings School Board voted to accept the ORR reorganization/dissolution plan.
At the meeting, Brookings Superintendent Summer Schultz said the impact of ORRs plan on the Brookings district would be minimal.
Brookings has a very small area of it. Its very minor, Schultz said at the meeting.
ORR Superintendent Dawn Hoeke declined to comment on the issue.
The plan posted on the ORR website lists how the districts land would be attached to adjacent school districts:
- The Brookings district would receive 0.6% of ORRs land.
- The Arlington School District would receive 25.3% of the ORR land.
- Colman-Egan and Sioux Valley would take over 6.6% and 11.8% of the ORR district respectively.
- The Lake Preston School District would receive 12.5%.
- Other districts and the percentage of the ORR district they receive are De Smet, 1.6%; Chester, 2.8%; Madison, 17.7%; and Howard, 21%.
According to the document, if passed, the dissolution of the ORR school district would be effective June 30, 2026.
The reorganization/dissolution plan also states that seven vehicles belonging to the ORR district would be sold through a sealed bid process and all money would be distributed to accepting school district proportionally to the land being attached to those districts.
According to the ORR plan, the districts fleet of buses would also be distributed to neighboring districts. The Lake Preston, Colman-Egan and De Smet school districts would receive mini-buses for 15 or less passengers.
The Sioux Valley, Brookings, Lake Preston and Chester districts would receive the larger school buses with 50-plus seating capacity.
The reorganization/dissolution plan also states that the technology equipment currently housed in the Rutland school would be distributed to adjacent school districts.
And, if the school district is dissolved, the task of retaining both physical and electronic student records will fall on the Madison School District, according to the ORR plan.
Contact Doug Kott at [email protected].
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