School District Boundary Changes

School districts deal with unique situations because they exist in the real world. Nowhere is that more true than when it comes to school district boundaries. Combine school district mergers and dissolutions with districts’ legal ability to exchanging territory and people can get confused about where the boundaries exist. Here are three scenarios where Mapping Strategies helped districts.

North Kossuth Gets More Land It Did Not Know About

North Kossuth CSD had an update to its District’s Census Boundary used for redistricting between 2011 and 2021. The Census added pieces of territory from 48 quarter sections, including 7 whole sections (Public Land Survey System) – a hunk of land. The CSD, whose superintendent is a bus driver, said the district had never sent a bus into that area. After some research of the CSD’s legal description Mapping Strategies was able to help the CSD connect with the Iowa Department of Education and get all affected parties to recognize the new territory.

North Tama gets to Keep School Board Member

After the 2013 school board elections the Tama County Auditor did not want to recognize one of the newly elected members because that person, in the Auditor’s opinion, did not live in the North Tama CSD. The 2010 Census Map displayed by the Iowa Secretary of State did not include the territory where the newly elected member resided. Again, Mapping Strategies did some research using old school board meeting records of land transactions and proved the area was part of CSD.

Reorganizations and Mergers mapping for over a decade

Reorganizations and mergers have many needs for geographic information systems – a.k.a. mapping. Mapping Strategies has been helping CSDs, AEAs, and law firms in this area since its inception. Mapping Strategies provided elections maps for the East Central CSD and Preston CSD reorganization that were used by the County Auditors as far back as 2012. During the Eddyville-Blakesburg CSD and Fremont CSD merger, Mapping Strategies drafted maps for the AEA so petitioners to be excluded from the newly formed CSD.