Yeah, Starmont consolidated with the merger of Strawberry Point, Arlington and Lamont in 1964. I believe at one point they were the largest school in the state as far as area of the district. Now they still have a large area but are pretty tiny in enrollment. Having to merge again and add area would be pretty difficult.
Few good paying jobs in the rural areas, and farms keep getting larger and larger, pushing more people out of the land. The population in rural areas is going down all over the midwest, and there is there is not going to be some miracle to stop it. County wide schools slow the process down by keeping enrollment up, but give it 10 to 15 years and they are right back to where they were before they merged class size wise. Davis Co. 20 years ago was graduating classes around 110 kids, now they are in the high 80's. Small schools like Moulton have 10 to 12 in most classes and graduated 8 this past spring.
There's probably a dozen of those small schools that could/should be bumped up a class. Parity is a good thing in my opinion, especially at the high school level and should be one of the goals of the sanctioning body in my opinion. You see attempts at parity in the pros with things like a salary cap so I never understand why there isn't more effort (other than looking at enrollment numbers) put into it at the high school level.
Its not just that they arent having 10 kids, there are way less families and small farms. Used to be you would drive a country road and there were several small farms every mile. Now they are all giant farms, no houses for miles, every building sight has been bulldozed for a few more acres. So no more acreages to live on, just giant corporate farms.
We made a few trips past that school on the way up to Decorah the last couple years while my son was getting recruited to swim for Luther. Every time we drove by there I kept asking myself why is that still a school.
Class and enrollment can be a little deceiving. I graduated with 50 at lake mills. We were a smaller class for them and were a small 2A. They have been graduating low 50s now (so similar sized) but are an A school.
| District | 1996-97 | 2012-13 |
|---|---|---|
| South O'Brien | 921 | 628 (-32%) |
| Audubon | 895 | 579 (-35%) |
| North Polk | 887 | 1,438 (+62%) |
| Gilbert | 846 | 1,378 (+63%) |
They did just move to Rolling Valley Conference where BED numbers are under 100 so they must expect some downward movement.
