Amid pressure from Galva-Holstein, S-C consolidates to Schaller
Next year will be Early school’s last
The next year will be the last the Schaller-Crestland School Board operates the Early building as a middle school.
The school board voted 4-1 earlier this month to vacate the 40-year-old building and move all of its elementary students in Schaller-Crestland to the newly-renovated Schaller building for the 2026-27 school year.
Cory Tiefenthaler of Early cast the lone vote against the move.
The remainder of the board — including Vice President Steve Mason of Early — voted in favor of the change. Minutes of the June 3 board meeting showed that Tiefenthaler wanted a roll-call board vote on closing the Early building. The school board has been discussing consolidation of the district into one building for years. Schaller-Crestland’s enrollment is declining; and it’s having problems with staffing in Early.
"Our priority as a district is to become as efficient as we can," Supt. Adam Bisenius told the Times Pilot on Thursday. "It's a great building that has a future, but it's not the direction we're headed as a district."
District dissolution?
Tiefenthaler believes the future of Schaller-Crestland could be on shaky ground.
In an interview with The Storm Lake Times Pilot on Monday afternoon, Tiefenthaler speculated that enough residents in Early and Nemaha could petition to dissolve the school district. Tiefenthaler asserted the two communities will be forced to shift their property tax dollars westward to Schaller. He also claimed the Schaller community and the district’s sister school district, Galva-Holstein — with whom Schaller-Crestland shares multiple whole-grade sharing agreements — stand to benefit from the closure of the Early building.
But Early and Nemaha don’t, he said.
“To me, it doesn’t make sense because you’re pushing everything to the extreme edge of the district,” Tiefenthaler said. “You’re decentralizing the district and you’re taking away any reason really for Crestland to want to be a part of the district.”
Tiefenthaler stressed that he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the school board. Instead, he was speaking for the frustrated residents of Early and Nemaha. Tiefenthaler owns a house in Early and a business on Main Street in Early.
He suspects a dissolution petition could soon be in the works, if one isn’t already. He said he wouldn’t start one. He believes it wouldn’t be right for him to do so as a member of the school board.
“I don’t know if I would start one,” Tiefenthaler said. “I would definitely support it.”
But he believes such a petition could generate enough signatures so the school board would be forced to grapple with it. A petition would need at least 20% of the district’s registered voters to be presented in front of the school board. Tiefenthaler believes 350 signatures would be sufficient for a petition to be formally presented to the school board.
A combined 771 voters from Early, Nemaha and Schaller turned out in November 2023 to shoot down a $15.75 million bond that would’ve expanded Schaller-Crestland’s Schaller building. Residents in Early and Nemaha felt the bond election was a precursor to closing the Early building.
They were also frustrated with Galva-Holstein allegedly influencing the district to raise taxes in Early and Nemaha by as much as 40%.
Tiefenthaler claimed the district’s upcoming operating arrangement serves more benefit to Galva-Holstein than residents in Early and Nemaha. By 2026, Nemaha’s proximity to its home school will be equidistant to neighboring schools in Storm Lake and Newell. Residents in Early, he argued, will be forced with a choice: send their children to Schaller or to a district with which they have a stronger connection, like East Sac, Storm Lake or Newell-Fonda.
Galva-Holstein, by contrast, will have access to a newly-renovated middle school in Schaller. The school board signed a $1.745 million contract with Badding Construction of Carroll to renovate the Schaller building. It’s expected to be finished by the 2026 school year or sooner.
“However you want to put it, all of these decisions stem from doing whatever it takes to maintain a sharing agreement with Holstein,” Tiefenthaler said.
Galva-Holstein President Jamie Whitmer didn’t respond to a phone message seeking comment on Monday of Tiefenthaler’s claims.
A failed bond election
Pressure from Galva-Holstein
Tiefenthaler believes the rift between the districts metastasized after the 2023 bond vote that he thinks was a clear signal from voters.
Residents of Schaller-Crestland wanted to keep the Early building.
But Galva-Holstein insisted that the district provide a middle school that was closer to the sister school district.
After the bond failed, the school board found another way to fund the Schaller building renovations that, Tiefenthaler claims, primarily interested Galva-Holstein. The contract the district signed with Badding Construction is around 10% of what voters were asked to approve in the 2023 election.
“I think there has been a lackluster effort on part of the school board as to re-engaging with the community and trying to figure out what they want,” Tiefenthaler said.
His point stands with the fact that after they shot down the sales tax bond, voters barely rallied to pass the proposed revenue purpose statement — which did not affect taxpayers at all. The vote for the revenue purpose statement was 93-74 last November.
“That didn’t cost the taxpayers any money. That was just the tax we were already levying,” Tiefenthaler explained of the narrow approval of the sales-tax revenue purpose statement. “If that doesn’t show you that the people aren’t on board with what you’re doing, I really don’t know what would.”
Tiefenthaler believes Galva-Holstein has been pressuring Schaller-Crestland to its aims for years. He believes that Galva-Holstein is particularly frustrated with Schaller-Crestland’s athletic facilities. He claimed Galva-Holstein’s demands of Schaller-Crestland intensified after Galva-Holstein renovated its high school gym in Holstein nearly a decade ago.
The demands came to a head June 2023, when Galva-Holstein threatened to end all sharing agreements with Schaller-Crestland — around the time the bond election was proposed. A Galva-Holstein board member described its issue with Schaller-Crestland as discussions over “possible efficiencies and improvements to benefit students.” Galva-Holstein is one of the largest per pupil spenders on transportation among any school district in the entire state.
It was also becoming clear to Schaller-Crestland that it didn’t have a future in operating two buildings.
Schaller-Crestland offered a renovation campaign that achieved both goals; Galva-Holstein could operate more efficiently and save on travel costs. And the district would have a newly expanded Schaller building.
Shortly thereafter, Schaller-Crestland pursued a bond campaign that aimed to satisfy Galva-Holstein’s desire for efficiency. That summer, the district unveiled their multi-million dollar bond campaign that aimed to expand the Schaller building’s west wing with 12 classrooms that’d operate as Galva-Holstein and Schaller-Crestland’s middle school. The bond proposal included a renovation of the Schaller building’s special education classrooms and restrooms.
Sliding enrollment, impatient Galva-Holstein
Less than a month after the bond vote failed, the Schaller-Crestland board was empaneled for a work session to sort out how the district would move forward.
The board discussed a timeline for the closure of the Early building in “efforts to help with the district’s staffing shortage and district efficiency,” according to a copy of a December 2023 work session minutes obtained by the Storm Lake Times Pilot.
The board held another work session the following month.
Supt. Bisenius warned the board of a “financial cliff” of operating the district status quo until 2029. The district’s enrollment was declining. In the last five years, their enrollment has slid by 6.7%. The Iowa Department of Education is projecting a flat enrollment trend of around 350 students over the next five years.
The district was also operating on a feasibility study by its architect, FEH of Sioux City, that recommended the district consolidate to one building. The study cited retiring teachers, a lack of qualified certified teachers to replace them and growing needs from its special ed students. The school board viewed consolidating to one building as the only sustainable option. And there wasn’t enough money to consider a renovation to Early. FEH estimated that such a project would’ve cost $26.5 million, far more than the district had in bonding capacity.
Tiefenthaler described the district’s strategy and FEH’s recommendations as a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“You’re alienating half of your district by closing this school in their town,” Tiefenthaler said. “Well, of course the people in that town are probably going to go to a closer district so you’re going to have lower enrollment. You’re just creating the problem you’re trying to avoid.”
Tiefenthaler also wondered how the district could’ve arrived at closing Early, a newer school building that’s in better shape than its Schaller facility. Tiefenthaler believes the board weighed Galva-Holstein’s demands for efficiency over its own students in Early. He noted that students in Early had to travel just as far to Holstein as students from Holstein had to travel to Early.
Yet the Galva-Holstein school board was the only party that expressed dissatisfaction with the apparent inefficiency, he noted.
The current facility in Early was built in the mid-1980s after a fire destroyed the original building just a few years earlier. According to Tiefenthaler, the original gymnasium was not saved following the fire and when the new building was constructed, a gymnasium was omitted from the design completely.
Thus, the board opted to pursue relocating its middle school to Schaller and engaging FEH Architects of Sioux City to provide a cost breakdown of the renovation to the Schaller building. The board agreed to prioritize the locker room, classrooms and special education rooms.
Bisenius noted the renovation would be financed by the district’s sales-tax collections and physical plant and equipment levy.
Tiefenthaler wasn’t persuaded, though. He said during the work session that the citizens of Early felt they were “misinformed and rushed” by the decisions the board was making. He also expressed reservations on a demand Galva-Holstein lodged with the Schaller-Crestland board on moving the district’s shared middle school to Schaller. And he wondered whether families in Early would see any reason to enroll their children at Schaller-Crestland.
The board resolved in January 2024 that its goal was to consolidate the Schaller building in “the next few years.” The board noted in its official minutes that Board President Matt Cress and Supt. Bisenius met with members of the Galva-Holstein board on giving more time to sort out how the districts would arrange operational sharing.
Galva-Holstein told them that the middle school should transition to a newly renovated Schaller building.
“President Cress stated that because (Schaller-Crestland has) already been given the extension of moving the middle school to Schaller, they were not open to discussing any additional year extension,” reads the minutes of a Jan. 3 work session of the Schaller-Crestland School Board.
Galva-Holstein moved its middle school from Early to Schaller last year. The Early building isn’t used as a shared education building with Galva-Holstein anymore. It is listed on the district’s website as an elementary school for just Schaller-Crestland.
What next?
The board has expressed various designs on how it would proceed with the Early building in 2026.
Under the terms of the Schaller-Crestland board vote, the district will use athletic facilities for its junior high. Mason, one of the board members from Early, suggested that the district use a building as a consortium for school districts needing access to trade schools. Laurens-Marathon converted its high school into a career academy after it inked a whole-grade sharing agreement with Pocahontas-Area School District nearly a decade ago.
Tiefenthaler expressed that the departure of Schaller-Crestland from Early could present the town with a chance to bring in other education opportunities, such as charter or private schools.
“We could take hold of that school and market it as a private school to the county, go to every small town around and say ‘hey, if you’re unhappy with public education, we’re looking to turn our school into a private school’,” he said. “I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for something like that.”
The board promised it’d hold public hearings to hear feedback on the closure and determine a possible use.
A statement on the closure of the Early building couldn’t be located on the district’s website or social media pages.
