Pushed Together

Buffi Sawyer never wanted to spend her senior year at North Cedar High School. She had planned to graduate from Clarence Junior-Senior High School, where students from her central Iowa hometown had always gone. But the school district in Clarence merged last fall with its rival six miles away. Her old school is now a middle school.

Though Buffi dreaded the move at first, it hasn't turned out so bad. At North Cedar, she plays on the state's fourth-ranked girls' basketball team, enjoys bigger lockers, takes a wider variety of courses, and eats lunches a la carte. "I've totally changed my mind," she says. "This is the best year I've ever had."

Buffi is one of thousands of Iowa students caught up in a decade of school reorganization that has substantially altered the state's educational map, especially in rural areas. Since 1984, when Iowa had 438 school districts, 119 have merged to create 59 new districts. State and local officials say that by pooling their resources and merging, the school systems were able to address the problems of declining enrollments, aging facilities, and demands for new student services. "People are leery of change," says John Hlubek, principal of North Cedar, which is in Stanwood. "But if it makes good common sense for education,...