A schoolhouse divided will not stand

Last week, the Nashwauk-Keewatin School Board voted to dissolve its shared services agreement with the Greenway School District on the western Mesabi Iron Range. Days later Greenway also backed away from most elements of the partnership. This marks the end of an experiment exposing many hard truths about the future of school and community collaboration on the Iron Range. The reasons for this are, on the surface, complicated. For instance, shared superintendent Mark Adams is going through a personal legal problem that has both districts wondering if he’ll be able to serve either district for much longer. But fundamentally, the reason the deal fell apart was because the two school boards at N-K and Greenway could not get along. This was wholly and entirely a human relations problem. You’ll find as many fingers pointed at someone else as there are board members and district administrators. I have family in Nashwauk and Keewatin, so I also got to hear some of the parent perspectives. To be honest, those aren’t much better. Rampant, oftentimes irrational distrust of people from a few towns over rules the day. Neither board had any interest or ability to see beyond the specific local concerns of their towns, and no one was willing to give up anything for a broader goal. That’d be fine if the districts had a clear financial plan to survive on their own. They don’t. One bump in the road and both districts could be scrambling to get out of debt all over again. But I’m not writing this to scold the school boards. This is all part of a much bigger process, and important lessons exist even in the failure of N-K/Greenway collaboration. Another example, the botched attempt to build a shared high school for the Virginia, Eveleth-Gilbert and Mountain Iron-Buhl districts last spring, happened differently, but also shows the same problem. The Iron Range won’t be able to reform itself until communities and school boards actually *feel* like they are part of something bigger than the shriveled remains of the bigger, more vibrant communities that existed here in the late 1970s. A couple years ago I wrote this piece, “Iron Range 1969,” about an elaborate Iron Range regional economic planning document released that year. That document showed that even at the dawn of the taconite age, the communities and schools of the Iron Range faced many of the same problems we do now; in fact, most of the demographic changes predicted in the report came true. The authors had one solution that I have come to believe is inevitable, perhaps even preferable. The idea? Elite high schools offering college preparation and technical education in Grand Rapids, Hibbing and Virginia. Regional middle schools. Local, community elementary schools. Is that the right solution? Well, it’s worth studying and I’m not going to tell you that I know everything. But I do know that half-hearted commitments to passive-aggressive collaborations won’t allow anything resembling necessary reform and innovation on the Iron Range. Some local political fiefdoms will need to fall. They’re going to fall anyway. What’s not known is if there is enough leadership and vision in Iron Range localities to plan beyond the next budget or election cycle. What serves students? What prepares kids for college and careers? If your response involves referring to sports rivalries or stereotypes of people from Coleraine or Keewatin, you’re doing it wrong.