Orient-Macksburg students deliver school's eulogy
'Last Letter Jacket' is speech team's farewell to district that will soon be gone
A recap
Last summer, the Orient-Macksburg school district was preparing for its end. The second-smallest district in Iowa simply doesn’t have enough students to continue functioning. It drew up plans to dissolve and hand over the vast majority of its territory to Nodaway Valley of Greenfield.
With days left to arrange a September vote, however, the process was knocked off kilter. The Creston and Winterset school districts both objected to getting only a fraction of the area they were hoping for. The next opportunity for a dissolution vote wasn’t until March 4.
Because of that delay, Orient-Macksburg will exist for another year as a school corporation, but the student body won’t. In November, the O-M board voted to send all of its students to Nodaway Valley for 2025-26.
A proper sendoff
While that drama was playing out, O-M English teacher Kendra Breitsprecher was working on a drama of her own. Someone found an old letter jacket from the school. She thought the speech team’s last performance for large-group contest should be about the school’s last graduate receiving the school’s last letter jacket.
Breitsprecher knows her way around speech clubs. As Kendra Dodson, she made All-State Speech in 1983 for Expository Address. As a speech coach, she’s written pieces so good that two of them have been plagiarized.
Breitsprecher worked on a draft for two months, but it wasn’t gelling. Then she read a book by Barb and Dave Else, For All the Small Schools, that has pictures of closed and abandoned schools across Iowa. That’s when the light bulb went off. The performance about “Anytown Consolidated School District” could reflect closed schools in towns across Iowa. Nearly two dozen in the book get a shout-out in the performance.
Breitsprecher interviewed lots of area graduates back to the 1920s for material. Carter Osborne, who expected to be O-M’s only 2025 senior but has had a couple more join her, chipped in with ideas for the lead character “Carter”, who “may or may not be autobiographical.”
Osborne said the story is “me as a person, going through the story of not just me being the last person but all the other people who have graduated from here.” From there, more characters were fleshed out: “Mom,” a composite of Osborne’s mother, who’s on the O-M school board, and of sophomore Marissa Cass’ mother; “Grandpa,” a composite of O-M athletes from the early 1970s whose stories wouldn’t be complete without beer; and “Great Grandma,” “who may or may not be based on Mrs. B’s mother.” Sophomore Kolbie Carson said a family friend from the Class of 1971 was eager to share stories, even after the script had been written.
Of the nine cast members, only three have previous speech experience, but that’s fine. In the Reader’s Theatre category, performers must have scripts in hand. Junior Emma Boswell said it brought her out of her comfort zone: “I would only do this for Ms. B.”
The students performed in front of teachers before the district speech contest and have had other requests. “The crochet group wants us really bad,” Breitsprecher said. During their district speech performance, tears came to parents’ eyes. “It gives us a chance to tell our school’s story in a way that’s kind of nostalgic to people in the community,” Osborne said.
Orient-Macksburg has limited varsity sports and no high school band or choir. What it doesn’t lack is teachers with experience. “The school board opened their pocket” in recent years, Breitsprecher said, to recruit “good teachers, not cheap teachers.” She was out of teaching and living in north-central Iowa when principal Dan Grandfield sought her out. Come July, her time in Orient will be over.
Dissolution process reveals code inconsistency
Last summer, Orient native Charlene Lamberti, who with her husband Donald co-founded the Casey’s gas station chain, announced a $1 million charitable fund for the town. Another $200,000 is “to be used to ensure that the school district building remains a productive asset,” KJAN radio reported. It’s a good investment for the community, but not enough to keep the school.
When the dissolution process restarted in fall, Orient-Macksburg didn’t change a thing. The plan still gives about 90% of the district’s area to Nodaway Valley. This time around, Winterset accepted what was being offered, but Creston maintained its objection to the map.
Because of that, the text of the dissolution measure leaves the Creston portions under control of the Iowa Department of Education. Creston will end up with, at most, 5 1/8 square miles of new land and a whole bunch of people in Adair County thoroughly annoyed at its actions.
Orient-Macksburg’s situation has exposed differing time frames in Iowa Code. In the reorganization (consolidation) of two districts, “The question shall be submitted to the voters … in the calendar year prior to the calendar year in which the reorganization will take effect,” says §275.18(1) (emphasis added), but attachment of a dissolved district’s land “is effective July 1 following its approval,” says §275.55(4). Of the five allowable dates for a vote in a two-year cycle, two of them — the ones in March — are the troublemakers. The Department of Education recognizes the conflict and defaults to the reorganization timeline due to other school-year-related deadlines.
State Rep. Ray “Bubba” Sorenson and state Sen. Amy Sinclair, whose districts include Orient-Macksburg, each introduced bills this session to synchronize the timetable in school changes. The bills, now House File 174 and Senate File 171, unanimously made it out of their committees. Both say that any change to school district boundaries approved after Jan. 1, 2025, shall not take effect until July 1 of the “immediately subsequent” calendar year.
On Saturday, “The Last Letter Jacket” received top ratings at state speech contest. On Monday, it was designated a nonperforming entry for All-State Speech. The story ends with solo senior Carter declaring that she’ll run for governor when she grows up, complete with a motto: “She graduated top of her class!”
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Would it be possible for someone to videotape the group and offer it for viewing on a blog or YouTube. Would also make a great IPTV airing.
Thanks for sharing. One of my daughters was taught by Kendra at her previous school (Southeast Webster-Grand), and she also was her speech coach. She is an excellent teacher!