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Like a lot of other rural Kansas districts, Smoky Valley Unified School District 400 had already been dealing with the pitfalls of declining enrollment when one of the most disruptive years in the history of Kansas education started.
Covering a 395.5-square-mile footprint, the district isn’t actually that big, at least in comparison to other mammoth districts covering swaths of the state. USD 400, centered around the charming little town of Lindsborg halfway between McPherson and Salina, had been steadily losing students since a peak of 1,600 students in fall 2017, mostly as jobs became more difficult to find, said district business manager Julie Martin.