Submitted Photo Fifth- and sixth-graders at Sawyer Elementary work on a Picasso art project on April 11. Sawyer will close its high school in the fall and many of its students will attend Max High School under a cooperative arrangement.

The history of North Dakota schools is also the history of school districts closing or consolidating with other nearby districts or forming cooperative partnerships.

The most recent area school district to ponder a cooperative agreement with another district is Sawyer, which will send its high school students to Max High School this coming fall. Principal Tom Warman said the district will retain its elementary school and possibly a preschool in the coming school year.

“(Loss of) enrollment is huge,” said Warman. “Kids have been flocking (from the district) left and right.”

In a letter to patrons this spring, Sawyer superintendent Wayne Trottier said enrollment in the district started to decline about six to eight years ago. The financial state of the district had become serious enough that it became necessary to form the cooperative agreement with Max.

Two years ago there were enough students attending the high school for the district to keep it open, said Warman.

Unfortunately, the district also has lost a number of students in the past two years.

Warman took over as school principal during the 2016-2017 school year. He had previously been a teacher at Sawyer between 2008 and 2012 and then worked in the oil business for awhile before returning to education. He will remain as school principal next year.

Warman said the district held community meetings during planning for the coming consolidation and also met with area school boards. They had first approached Velva about the possibility of a district consolidation, but weren’t able to reach an agreement. Max, some 30 miles away, has been very welcoming, said Warman.

About nine current Sawyer students plan to attend high school next year in Max. In return, Max will receive foundation aid payments for those students and a $40,000 lump sum payment from the Sawyer district that will cover incidental expenses. Max will also pay for transportation for its students who will be attending classes in Max.

Some other current Max students also intend to enroll in Velva, South Prairie or Minot Public Schools, said Warman.

There are currently about 16 sixth through 11th graders who will be affected by the closure of the high school. Sawyer is graduating five high school seniors this spring.

There are currently 28 children in grades kindergarten through sixth grade at Sawyer.

Warman said the district will hold an open house at Max High School sometime this spring to help introduce current Sawyer students to their new school and teachers.

One of the hardest things Warman has had to do is to non-renew the contracts of five high school teachers at Max, all of whom will lose their jobs because of the merger.

Other details are also being worked out, such as special education services. Fortunately, both Max and Sawyer school districts are under the umbrella of Souris Valley Special Services.

Pat Windish, the superintendent at Max, emphasized that the arrangement between Max and Sawyer will be a cooperative agreement rather than a consolidation. Sawyer will still maintain its district boundaries and ownership of all its land.

In order to make a cooperative agreement work between school districts, one district has to be attached to a district with a high school. That is what Sawyer is contemplating. Windish said he won’t know exactly how many students from Sawyer will be attending Max until the first day of school, since parents still have the option of open enrolling students in other area schools.

Windish said he sees the arrangement as “small rural school districts working together.” He understands Sawyer residents’ desire to maintain their school and their identity.

“A school is a focal point of your small town,” said Windish.

This arrangement will also mean that elementary students in Sawyer won’t have to be bused 25 or 30 miles away to a neighboring town to attend school. While elementary schools sometimes close after a high school closes, that isn’t always the case. Windish said his own hometown school district of Tower City in the eastern part of the state kept an elementary open for about 20 years after its high school closed.

Consolidation was a positive event for another school district that merged some 16 years ago, said TGU-Granville principal Tonya Hunskor.

Hunskor said the combined school system has been able to offer more educational opportunities to its students and more efficiently share staff and resources.

When the districts first chose to consolidate, Towner and Granville each maintained their own K-12 schools. Upham initially had a K-6 elementary, then reduced that to a K-3 elementary, and finally chose to close altogether about three years ago.

But Upham’s past is still maintained in the name of the district, even though students attend either Towner or Granville schools.

The district shares one sports team. The district buses kids to sports practices and other school district activities. Towner and Granville are 22 miles apart.

During the consolidation process, the schools chose a new school mascot and new school colors as well as adopted a new school handbook.

A successful merger requires involvement from the surrounding community, the parents and students, said Hunskor.

“Now we have a whole new generation growing up being the TGU Titans, not being the Eagles or Orioles or Cardinals,” said Hunskor.

Other districts in the reading area have also merged over the past decades. Among them are Lewis and Clark, which merged North Shore and Berthold school districts, and the Mohall-Lansford-Sherwood school district, which merged in 2005.

South Prairie and Nedrose, both rural Minot school districts that built their own high schools in the past two years, are an exception to the trend. Both schools had previously paid tuition to send their high school students to schools in surrounding towns such as Minot or Sawyer. Two other rural Minot school districts – Eureka and Bell School – changed in different ways. Eureka School District was dissolved and its students are now attending mainly Minot schools. Bell School remains open but is now one of Minot’s several elementary schools. Middle school and high school students from the former Bell District now attend classes in Minot.