PIEDMONT - Piedmont-area residents took the first steps Thursday evening in what could be a long process to form their own school district.

Former state Sen. Alan Aker led an organizational meeting at the Piedmont Gym to gauge community interest in breaking from the Meade 46-1 School District and forming the area's own district.

In the most recent school-district bond issue vote, support was strongest at the Piedmont polls. In Piedmont, 42 percent of voters favored the $7.9 million bond issue. The total proposed district building plan called for $27.75 million in construction, including $11.5 million for a new Piedmont school.

Only 21 percent of rural voters cast yes votes. The proposal got 38 percent support in Sturgis and 35 percent in Whitewood.

After the second attempt to pass the bond issue failed, Meade School District board members voted to delay plans at the Piedmont site and move ahead with expansion plans at Bear Butte Elementary School in Sturgis, citing substandard conditions at existing Sturgis elementary school facilities.

Although school board members resolved at the same meeting to move ahead with the construction at the Piedmont site within three years, Aker has said that the division of Meade 46-1 is inevitable and that it would be best for the district as a whole to begin the process now.

He told the crowd of about 50 people that with the failure of the bond issue, many Piedmont residents began to worry that the school district will continue to put Piedmont's needs on the back burner. Aker said everything that the school board stated as a reason to dispose of the Erskine building could apply to Sturgis Williams Middle School.

Aker said people in the Piedmont area seem to feel more a part of Rapid City than Sturgis.

Aker, a 1981 Sturgis graduate, said that when he attended school in Sturgis, there was a plan to possibly buy land and build a high school in the Pleasant Valley area. He said he is sure that in his lifetime there will be a need for another high school.

Future steps in the process of dividing the school district would include additional informational meetings in other communities that are currently part of Meade 46-1, as well as meeting with the school board to request that it prepare for the division.

Aker said if the Meade school board does not cooperate, the group would collect signatures. Obtaining signatures from 15 percent of voters in the district would force the Meade district to form a plan, which would then go to the state Department of Education, Aker said. This plan would contain information about the boundaries, names, assets and liabilities of the two new districts.

The plan would have to pass muster with the state Education Department.

Aker said the process could last from 1-1/2 years to five years.

Helen Jenkins, principal of Piedmont and Stagebarn Elementary schools, said one-third of Sturgis' students are from the Piedmont area and that this year, the Piedmont and Stagebarn schools saw an increase in sixth-grade enrollment.

She said that several students from Black Hawk who live in the Rapid City School District had enrolled in the two schools.

Jenkins said the schools had seen an enrollment increase between about 3 percent to 4 percent every year for the past three years, although kindergarten and preschool screening numbers for the 2007-08 school year were down from this year.

She said that kindergarten enrollment at Piedmont will drop from five sections to four in the fall and that one of the kindergarten teachers will move to first grade.

Aker said that until they have a plan, there is no way to say what the boundaries of the new school district would be. He said that it is possible, however, that boundaries could mirror the original Piedmont district. Piedmont had its own district until 1961, when, with only three in the graduating class, officials decided to merge with Sturgis.

Aker said that he and his co-chairman, Mike Smith, decided that it would be best to create a new district splintered from the Meade district, and then Summerset or Black Hawk schools, if interested, could join the new Piedmont Valley district by annexation.

He said Summerset divides almost equally between the Meade 46-1 and Rapid City districts and that if the new district succeeds and the state approves the decision, the part of Summerset that belongs to the Rapid City School District could annex into the new Piedmont district. He said creating a school district in Piedmont Valley could lead to unifying Summerset into one district.