CCSD sharing agreement with O-M to be reconsidered

Creston’s school board is considering redefining its relationship with Orient-Macksburg School District.

Creston Community School District has had a sharing agreement with Orient-Macksburg for more than 30 years. At the monthly board meeting Monday, the board talked about the pros and cons of the relationship.

“The sharing agreement’s gone on long enough,” school board member Don Gee said. “They need to step up and do something because their district is ... struggling.”

Before COVID-19 became the most pressing concern for all school districts, CCSD and O-M staff had planned a meeting to discuss changes. CCSD superintendent Deron Stender said since it is early in the year, it is a good time to get back into that discussion as any changes would take time to implement.

Three possible scenarios could arise from such a meeting:

• Nothing could change. The sharing agreement could go on as it has.

• CCSD could ask O-M to join the district.

• The relationship could be severed entirely.

One concern with bringing O-M students into the district was a possible change in rating for Creston sports teams. CCSD superintendent Deron Stender said adding more students to the school might move Creston up a division with very few competitors actually being added to the rosters.

Creston activities director Scott Driskell said that participation in sports and activities from O-M students has dropped off in the past few years. Currently one football player and no wrestlers are signed up to play. Driskell did not have numbers for other sports and activities such as marching band.

“For activities ... it does present some situations where we might be in a class higher than where we need to be, where we’d be the smallest school in a class,” Stender said.

School Board President Galen Zumbach said that although sports are important, the change in divisions should not be a factor in the decision.

“We’re not here just to service sports,” said Zumbach. “I’m not going to set them adrift just because potentially we could have a sport that would go up one level.”

He also pointed out that many of the O-M students who live on the far edge of the district might not choose to come to Creston and those who did choose to come to Creston would bring funding.

“The positives would be their property taxes, their students would be coming to our district,” Zumbach said. “That’s almost $7,000 a student.”

The sharing agreement has allowed O-M to meet some of the educational requirements they cannot provide on its own.

“Right now, my feeling is, we’re keeping Orient -Macksburg open,” Gee said. “They can’t afford everything that they have to have.”

“I feel good about what we’ve done and we’ve had a good working relationship with them,” Zumbach said. “However, if we’re talking about continuing this sharing agreement and they don’t want to become part of our district then maybe it’s time that we sever that relationship because the benefit to us is not that great.”