Northeast Iowa Conference votes a second time to remove Waverly-Shell Rock

It’s done: Waverly-Shell Rock’s 90-year membership in the Northeast Iowa Conference will end next year.

The NEIC’s executive board, comprised of the league’s six superintendents, voted Friday to remove WSR from the league, effective June 30, 2023.

The vote was 5-1, with Waverly-Shell Rock the lone dissenting vote.

It was the second vote among the committee (the first was April 4), and the result was the same.

Waverly-Shell Rock has a BEDS number (enrollment of students in grades 9-11) of 596. The other schools are Decorah (430), Charles City (399), Crestwood (305), Waukon (286) and New Hampton (272).

“They have become so much different than the rest of us,” New Hampton superintendent Jay Jurrens said earlier this month. “(WSR’s K-12) enrollment is 2,200 and ours is 930.

“Waverly-Shell Rock is a good school, but it’s a numbers issue, and it’s no more complicated than that.”

WSR athletics director Greg Bodensteiner said following the first vote: “We get it. It makes sense. The only options (for NEIC expansion) are smaller schools, and we’re kind of an insurmountable hurdle in the way of that.”

With five remaining schools, it is assumed that the next task for the NEIC will be to seek expansion.

Potential candidates for expansion could include a return by Oelwein (BEDS 266), as well as North Fayette Valley (249), Osage (226) and Sumner-Fredericksburg (202).

Waverly-Shell Rock’s next move probably will be to seek membership in either the Mississippi Valley Conference or the new Iowa Alliance Conference.

Waverly became a member of the NEIC in 1933.

Comments: jeff.linder@thegazette.com