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1897 – 1907 · gap G-SP-5 settled at nomination strength
The date 1898 stands in Lakeville's school record, but at first hand it is a state superintendent's call for the centralization of rural schools — not a consolidation act of this township. LK-1 banked the question as gap G-SP-5 and named its settler: the National Park Service nomination for Lakeville High School, read whole. Read whole, the nomination carries no Lakeville-specific consolidation event dated 1898. What it carries is this: State Superintendent of Public Instruction David Geeting first called for the centralization of rural schools in 1898, citing graded schools, better teachers, improved buildings, and cost reductions (the nomination citing the Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1897-8, pp. 35 and 529); forty counties had already started consolidation by that report; and the legislative course that furthered it ran 1897 (compulsory education), 1899 (free transportation; consolidation), and 1907 (discontinuation of small districts; "legalized" high schools), with State Superintendent Fassett Cotton (1903–9) aggressively promoting consolidation. G-SP-5 therefore closes at nomination strength, and the article prints the 1898 fact at exactly that size. What does not stand is a dated local consolidation event for Union Township — the act by which its district schools actually came together; that remainder banks as a named gap, its settlers the Union Township trustee records and the county superintendent reports for 1898–1907. The road from the call to this township's consolidated high school of 1931 is the next article's.