Area schools look into Junior High basketball co-op

WAUSA – A recent board discussion about Wausa Public Schools partnering with Osmond Community Schools on a junior high basketball cooperative agreement turned into a larger conversation about the future of the rural districts.

Members of the Wausa board of education discussed future planning at their regular meeting May 13, including a formal request from Osmond school officials to form a cooperative agreement with Wausa for junior high boys and girls basketball for the 2024-25 academic year.

This request has been made by Osmond because that school district’s junior high basketball teams will not have adequate numbers to allow Osmond to have junior high teams that can play competitive games or improve skills in practice.

Osmond and Randolph participated in a Junior High and high school basketball co-op the last two years but discontinued it after the 2023-24 season.

A recent survey of parents and patrons of the Osmond community has shown an overwhelming support for the Osmond school district to work toward a long-term partnership with the Wausa school district.

Osmond school officials believe that “a junior high basketball cooperative agreement will strengthen the partnership between both schools by showing a willingness to work together to ensure both schools can offer quality activities to their students,” according to a letter recently received.

Wausa school board members took no action on the topic, but likely will consider Osmond’s proposal for a one-year junior high basketball cooperative agreement during their regular meeting at 8 p.m. June 10.

The conversation about another potential cooperative agreement between Wausa and Osmond – they already are partnering on wrestling, football and FFA/agriculture starting in 2024-25 for four years – led to a deeper discussion at the Wausa school board meeting about future planning.

“In regards to the conversations around what we’ve got in place already with the co-op, we’d like to see how that works before we jump much farther,” said Derek Cunningham, member of the Wausa school board’s future planning committee.

The question came up of whether long-term cooperative agreements were the most feasible “thing to be doing or are there bigger conversations that need to be had for stability of the district financially, as well as enrollment?”

“Are there some other things that maybe we should be talking about alongside of co-oping?” Cunningham said. “We’re currently in a pretty healthy spot.”

Katie Clausen, also on the future planning committee, said these kinds of conversations are not always pleasant.

“It’s not always something anybody has to love being up against,” she said. “By the time this year’s kindergartners are seniors in high school, there will only be 37 kids in the high school. Is that feasible for us? Thirty-seven kids – ninth-12th grade.”

Nearly 80 students in grades 9-12 were enrolled for the 2023-24 year. Clausen dug deeper into data for the discussion and learned Wausa’s birth rate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is 2.9 percent - less than half of the state’s birth rate.

The median age of people living in Wausa is 47. In the 1930s and the 1940s when schools were changing from one-room schoolhouses, the population of Knox County was over 19,000 people. Today, it’s at about 8,200. From 2020 to 2024, Knox County has lost, on average, 100 people per year, she said.

“Things are changing, and they’re changing a lot faster than we would hope,” Clausen said.