It’s not an easy position to be in for Lisbon Schools, with numbers right on the bubble.

We agree with Chris Caspers at the moment in that we also do not know which way the district should go.

On one side, it’s being a smaller fish in a conference geared towards Class 2A competitors (moving to the River Valley Conference). On the other side is remaining the big fish in the Class 1A conference (Tri-Rivers Conference) and maintaining status quo, when declining enrollment and declining sports participation plague multiple schools.

We get the arguments from the administration that at this point, it may look best to move to another conference instead of waiting a few more years for more districts to drop out of the conference and the decision gets taken out of their hands altogether.

We also get the arguments and comments made by coaches on how a move to a larger conference could disrupt the winning tradition of Lisbon Schools, and impact morale of teams moving forward if the move is done too soon.

In the end, both sides are focused on students, just different groups of students. The administrators are focusing on the issues they’ve had with middle school and junior high athletes having competition that will benefit the programs for years in the future. Coaches are focused on those high school programs successes and keeping numbers out for the sport and funded.

Lisbon’s enrollment numbers continue to skew more as increasing as a district of choice, so it is possible that in certain sports the district will be in Class 2A moving forward. But is it now time to jump to a different conference or not?

It’s one of those opportunities that community members have a chance to let the board and administrators know concerns with this change.