By Brandon Bennett |STURGIS|
During the Superintendent’s report at the Meade 46-1 school board meeting June 8, Superintendent Wayne Wormstadt told the board he’s been in talks with the Faith 46-2 district about reorganizing so Faith could possibly assume control over some central Meade County schools.
“What we’ve discussed is that this proposal must benefit the Faith school district but also not harm what remains of the Meade school district if this were to take place”, said Wormstadt.
He pointed out that the general fund revenue net needed to run the rural schools based on 2024-2025 numbers is actual expenditures minus the overhead from the district business and Superintendent’s offices is about $700,000 and capital outlay would need to be transferred to the general fund for all rural schools east of Sturgis to make that a break even point.
So they met with Faith’s business manager and superintendent along with board members Justin Jutting and Lee Spring.
Additionally they talked with the South Dakota Department of Revenue how the tax base using agriculture valuations would be calculated for reorganization to take place. Owner-occupied and business valuations were not included because it’s such a small percentage..
“The land valuations in order to do this would have to be 99 percent ag land. So then we found out from the Department of Revenue we have an interesting caveat. We thought this should be easy, we can look at this, figure it out, but..”
They had to go back to 2015-’16 when they changed the state aid formula and they take the valuation at that point and calculate the growth rate forward all the way to 2026 payable.
This gave the group about $117 million in ag valuations which isn’t the right number. They just gave the basis for the $700,000 that had come up with. So they went back to the DOR and asked what would the number for 2026 need to be to generate that in ag valuations. So at 2.45 mills it’s $297 million in valuations and would generate $730,000 in revenue to cross fund to make this work. Wormstadt added this was about equal to the $700,000 used for the general fund in 2024 to make the rural schools whole.
The district then looked at owner-occupied and business valuations and decided that small amount didn’t justify using those valuations.
Wormstadt stated the Faith school district had this information and will decide if they want to move forward as well as the Meade school board.
If both boards decide to move forward, they both have 180-270 days to come up with a plan that would then be submitted to the South Dakota Department of Education. The DOE has 60 or 90 days to approve the plan or give another plan. Given no kinks arise, the plan must be approved by voters of both districts.
The schools that would primarily be involved are Central Meade County School, Hereford, Elm Springs and Opal.
Board President Justin Jutting stated that there have been rumors about this and a couple rural patrons heard the district wanted to keep CMCS and Hereford and let Opal and Elm Springs go.
“Those discussions haven’t happened yet, even though Mr. Wormstadt has had them. Lee and I went to Faith, and talked with them and we continue to have discussions with Mr. Wormstadt added what are we doing, where are we at, is this feasible. But at no time we there ever a discussion about getting rid of this and keeping that,” he said.
He concluded by saying they’re all just looking for a fit for rural students and whether it’s with the Faith school district or the Meade schools remains to be seen.
