Educators in Iowa say another round school district consolidation is likely in the years ahead due to dwindling rural populations and the expiration of a state provision that allows districts with declining enrollment to recoup some budget losses. The Des Moines Register reports 14 districts will merge to become seven in July. Iowa will start the 2014-15 academic year with 338 school districts. The state had 367 districts a decade ago. In 1990, there were 430.

Merging two or more neighboring school districts brings both benefits and challenges. Larger districts can offer more courses and extracurricular activities. But consolidation also can result in long bus rides for students, lost jobs at shuttered schools and weakened hometown ties. Education officials predict Iowa will see an uptick in consolidations in coming years, reigniting conversations about how to best serve rural students in a state that’s seen significant urban migration in the past decade.

Budget troubles play a big role in the reason for consolidation. In Iowa, it is illegal for a school district to operate in the red. State officials sent notices to roughly 65 districts last year that were in danger of deficit spending. Twelve of those districts — all in rural areas — recorded negative balances in the 2013 fiscal year.

Districts receive state money on a per-pupil basis. More than half of all Iowa districts reported a decrease in student enrollment last fall. Financial incentives from the state encourage small districts to share resources. Extra money is given to school systems that enter whole-grade sharing agreements, a partnership where students from two or more districts attend all or most of their classes together.

Districts that share superintendents or other key personnel are also eligible for additional state money, helping small districts stay afloat. A fiscal tool called the budget guarantee passed by lawmakers in 2001, expired this year, putting further pressure on rural schools. The budget guarantee had allowed some districts to use local property tax revenue to boost their spending authority despite declining enrollment.

Data from a 2010 report by the Iowa Policy Research Organization suggests that districts operate best with at least 500 students. Districts with 500 or more students benefit from operational cost-savings, increased course offerings and an increase in property values, the report said. The East Mills district, formed in 2011 when the Malvern and Nishna Valley districts merged, educated 494 students in preschool through 12th grade this year. The western Iowa districts had participated in whole-grade sharing for four years before the reorganization.

State officials don’t have a threshold for how small is too small, but Iowa code requires newly formed districts to enroll at least 300 students.

The summer concert season has arrived, but there are a number of dangers lurking amongst the music and the crowds that can lead to tragedy mainly for teens and young adults. A new analysis from ClickitTicket reviewed more than 200 fatalities at concerts since 1969 and about three-dozen were drug-related. C-E-O Jason O’Connor says the drugs used at concerts include cocaine, heroin, bath salts, meth and one of the most mentioned – M-D-M-A, also known as “ecstasy,” “Molly,” which can lead to hyperthermia.

“Often times, people become very dehydrated and they don’t realize what they’re doing to their body, because let’s say they’re at a concert and they’re dancing around and they’re taking this. They don’t notice that they’re thirsty. They don’t notice anything. And that’s when you start to get into
problems.” O’Connor also notes that there have been stories of bad batches of M-D-M-A, laced with dangerous chemicals. In addition to the drug-related deaths, the other leading causes of fatalities at concerts are stampedes, structural failures and violence.

While overdoses or deaths can happen at any music venue, O’ Connor points to festivals such as Bonnaroo, where there have been 10 fatalities over the past decade, at least half drug-related.
“And Phish shows do seem to have quite a bit of drugs there. That’s sort of an extension of the Grateful Dead and there were a lot of drugs in that culture. And then the other real big one that we talked about was EDM or electronic dance music.”

O’Connor says concert and festival promoters and organizers can’t ensure that all attendees are drug free, but they can take simple steps to make their events as safe as possible for young people including education, parent involvement and policing.

(Iowa News Service)