At the end of the 2024-25 school year, the small town of Fort Ransom, N.D., closed the doors of its only school after a run of more than a century. In the community of 100 people, Fort Ransom School had only a dozen or so students in grades 1-5, and it was struggling. In contrast, Lisbon, the neighboring town 18 miles away, has a school district that operates three schools with 600 students and a population of 2,200.
The Fort Ransom and Lisbon communities voted this summer to reorganize their school districts after several years of working through the details, including holding a special election to approve or veto the decision. What mattered most to those in charge of the districts’ futures, as this year’s Big Ideas project details, was providing the best possible academic opportunities for their students and maintaining the deep relationships the communities had developed over multiple generations.
This project is part of a special report called Big Ideas in which school district leaders, Education Week reporters, and the EdWeek Research Center ask hard questions about K-12 education’s biggest challenges and offer insights based on their extensive expertise and coverage.
While some students remained at the elementary school until the very end, others took advantage of the state’s open enrollment policy to leave earlier. But even a single student’s decision to leave their small school ahead of schedule had an impact on the district’s ability to keep it open.
For any student leaving Fort Ransom heading to Lisbon, it was a big change. Maclaren Jones was one of the students who chose to leave Fort Ransom School early, entering Lisbon as a 5th grader, two years before it closed. Now 14 and in the 8th grade, she is starting her third year in the Lisbon district. Tacy Fridrych, 12 and in 7th grade, entered Lisbon Middle School as a 6th grader in the fall of 2025. Both girls understood what they were in for: a new school, new friends, and a completely different classroom environment.
