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Mason City’s application to join NEIC reflects larger statewide issue

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Athletic directors and superintendents of all seven school districts in the Northeast Iowa Conference were scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss Mason City’s application to join the league.

“Our priority is maintaining a conference, and making sure we have a conference that makes sense for Charles City,” said Charles City Superintendent Mike Fisher, who added that he wants to try to avoid unintended consequences. “I want to make sure we don’t make a move that’s going to hurt us in the long run.”

Mason City formally applied to become a member of the conference last month, and Fisher said last week that he didn’t yet have an official position on the application.

“That is way more for me to process, since I’ve only been here 18 months now,” said Fisher, who added that he’s relied on CCHS Athletic Director Todd Forsyth and CCHS principals Bryan Jurrens and Larry Wolfe for information. He said the three have been gauging community perception in recent weeks.

Mason City wants to join the NEIC for the 2021-2022 school year because the Central Iowa Metropolitan League (CIML), of which it is currently a member, has 18 school districts, most of which are much bigger than Mason City. It also has high transportation costs because Des Moines schools are a four-hour round trip.

“We see good and bad in it,” Fisher said last week. “They’re much larger than us, but we run pretty well with them, and we also partner with them in swimming.”

Fisher said that other NEIC schools like Cresco, New Hampton and Waukon — which are much smaller — have some serious concerns.

NEIC bylaws state that new members must be approved by a “majority plus one,” which means five of the current seven member schools need to say yes for Mason City to become a conference member.

Charles City was one of the founding member schools of the NEIC in 1920, along with Decorah, New Hampton, Oelwein, Cresco and Waverly. Charles City left the conference in 1939, then rejoined during the 1946-47 school year, and has been a member since then.

The NEIC has consisted of the same seven schools since 1970.

Among NEIC schools, Charles City is currently the district located the closest to Mason City geographically. A handful of Charles City varsity swimmers have participated with Mason City’s swim team since 2016, when the pool at the old Charles City Middle School was shut down.

Mason City already plays a number of the current NEIC schools in multiple sports.

The one sport that would not come into play is football because the state uses “classed” districts which, as of now, are based purely on enrollment.

Mason City officials have said they also like the fact that, although the NEIC is most known for athletics, it also sponsors a music festival, a leadership conference and other academic events.

Complicating the situation is the fact that representatives from the North Iowa Cedar League have approached Oelwein about leaving the NEIC and joining their conference.

“Oelwein has already announced that they’re looking into the possibility of leaving to go to the North Iowa Cedar League,” Fisher said. “We’re talking and trying to figure out how to navigate those things.”

Scheduling could become a hassle regardless of what happens. If Oelwein stays and Mason City joins, the conference would be an eight-team league. If Oelwein leaves and Mason City is not allowed to join, the NEIC would be just a six-member league.

“If Oelwein leaves and you bring Mason City on, now you have a seven-member conference again, but then you also have a bunch of 2A schools playing against a 4A school, and you could have some of them going to find another conference,” Fisher said.

The current NEIC schools have Basic Educational Data Survey enrollment — which the state associations use to “class” each postseason support — ranging from New Hampton’s 231 to Waverly-Shell Rock’s 521. Mason City’s BEDS enrollment, the previous year’s number of students in grades 9-11, is 810. Charles City’s enrollment number is 394, less than half the size of Mason City.

“We as school districts have to realize that demographics are shifting,” Fisher said. “In Charles City, there was a time when we had about 3,000 kids in our district. We are growing, but in reality, that’s probably not going to happen again.”

Fisher talked about how smaller communities similar to Mason City — such as Marshalltown and Ottumwa — are having problems staying competitive in metro and suburban conferences around Des Moines.

“We are hitting a critical mass in athletic conferences in Iowa. There is a have and have-not culture,” Fisher said. “It is not just the Northeast Iowa Conference, it is a statewide issue.”

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