Montana
Minnesota public school consolidation: Factors most influential when voting in favor of consolidation
By Lowell A. Haagenson
I
In the late 19th century, Minnesota’s population began to shift from rural areas to more urban areas, fueling the public school district consolidation movement (Bard, Gardener, & Wieland, 2005). Given catalysts for consolidation, Minnesota County Commissioners began to exercise their legislated authority. In 1902, Minnesota school district 137 agreed to consolidate with district 140 as an “experiment.” In 1911, the Holmberg Act formalized the process of Minnesota public school district consolidation (MDE, 1911). As defined in the Annual Report of the State Treasurer of Minnesota for the Fiscal Year Ending July 31, 1918, “The passage of the Holmberg Act of 1911 marked the beginning of formal consolidation of rural public school districts.” The first formal public school district consolidation under the Holmberg Act was Doran Consolidated School in Doran, Minnesota (Laken, 2008). Minnesota public school district consolidations continued to occur at an increasing rate between 1912 and 1917. By 1917, the focus of public school district consolidation remained as originally framed, “a means of solving the
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rural school problem and giving the boys and girls of the countryside equality of educational opportunity” (MDE, 1917). In 1967, Minnesota Statutes 122:42-51 created the basis for large-scale school consolidations and closings. The statutes stipulated that school districts not offering grades 1–12 programming within the next 3 academic years would be forced to consolidate or face involuntary dissolution. The 1967 law resulted in the elimination of all one-room schools in Minnesota and the reduction in the number of school districts to less than 500 (Foster, 1975). Andrews et al. (2002) asserted that consolidation remains a frequent recommendation of state governments seeking to improve educational cost effectiveness, particularly in rural school districts. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect school district consolidation will continue to occur, and that proponents and opponents of such reorganization will debate and disagree about the value of these proceedings. The researcher of the present study believed that beneficial information may be derived from a