By DOUG SCHMITZ
Iowa Correspondent

AMES, Iowa — For 36 years, Iowa’s smaller school districts have been disappearing across the state’s rural landscape, mostly through population shifts, which, according to an Iowa State University sociologist, has often forced many rural school systems to gradually – and often reluctantly – consolidate.

“Generally speaking, the decline of rural schools and student numbers are not likely to turn around,” said David Peters, ISU assistant professor of sociology and extension rural sociologist. “The exceptions to this are rural districts where there are suburbanization or ex-urbanization from core metros, natural amenities driving growth, like lakes, mountains, et cetera and colleges or universities.”

Other major factors contributing to what Peters called a “demographic hole” in rural areas are “the ongoing industrialization of agriculture, enabling fewer workers to farm the same amount of land, and an influx of retirees to rural areas with natural amenities, such as scenic northeast Iowa,” he told the Cedar Rapids Gazette in April.

A recent Gazette survey found that eastern Iowa school districts – Midland in southeastern Jones and three other neighboring counties, for example – have suffered the sharpest decline in total residents (13 percent during the past 10 years), while certified enrollment has dropped 30 percent that same decade.
In the western two-thirds of the state, at least 20 school districts plan to merge into 10 larger ones in the next 18 months, the survey indicated.
While Peters said it is hard to pinpoint exactly when this trend began, since it differs across other states, he estimates rural school consolidation in Iowa started in the late 1960s and early 1970s “as the Baby Boom I and II cohorts graduated high school.

“In many states, you saw the first round of consolidations in the 1970s as a result of population loss,” he said. “Another consolidation round happened in the mid-1990s as a result of the Farm Crisis.”

In the Corn Belt and Great Plains, Peters said this “demographic hole” exists primarily among young people of childbearing years. In Iowa, rural areas have seen the population age 19 and younger drop by 42.9 percent since 1950, while it has grown by 32.2 percent in metro Iowa, he added.

Moreover, adults between the ages of 20-44 have also dropped in rural Iowa by 37.6 percent, while metropolitan areas have grown by 55.3 percent.
“This means two things,” Peters said. “First, the trends suggest fewer rural children to attend schools. Second, young people of childbearing age are leaving rural Iowa and taking any future kids they may have with them, which leads to a ‘demographic echo’ in the under-19 age population.”

While rural areas are losing school-aged children, Peters said metropolitan areas are gaining them, which, he added, will subsequently shift state K-12 resources to these urban areas, “putting pressure on rural schools to consolidate so savings can be directed to growing urban districts.”

One qualifier, however, is that when districts choose to consolidate, outcomes are generally better than when districts are forced to consolidate, said Robin Lambert, editor of Rural Policy Matters at the Rural School and Community Trust in Harlan, Ky.

“But even here, consideration should be given to whether school districts ‘choose’ to consolidate because they have been backed into a corner (i.e., lower state support for smaller schools; unfunded mandates; temporary incentives, etc.),” she wrote in an email reply to questions.

“The most recent research I know of that looks at what actually happened post-district consolidation comes from Arkansas, where the state mandated a minimum district size. Smaller districts had several options for getting bigger (i.e., annexation, consolidation, etc.).”

As a result, Lambert said some district administrators believe consolidation would then be cost-effective since they think “it will save money, therefore it must be done.” But she said the research doesn’t support the claim for either districts or schools – “There are hidden costs taken into account when ‘studies’ are done for states or districts to demonstrate how much savings would occur.
“Generally, the cost-savings argument is followed by an argument that consolidation will improve educational offerings and outcomes,” she said. “Sometimes the educational improvement argument is offered when the cost-savings argument is debunked.”

In the end, when districts eventually do merge, the identity of the smaller district often gets lost, Peters said. “Schools are one component that make small towns a ‘place’ and not just a ‘space,’” he said.

That’s why Lambert said “the evidence is clear that student outcomes of all kinds are better in smaller schools, so if academics are the main concern, the goal should be finding ways to improve offerings in existing smaller schools.”
(This is the first of a two-part series; next will be a breakdown of rural school consolidation in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. –Ed.)