It has until the end of June and after that the Isabel School district will be no more. It'll be dissolving and attaching to neighboring districts. The school had its final graduation this past weekend.

As student enrollment dropped, people in Isabel knew it was coming. But it doesn't make the school closing in town any easier.

"It's quite devastating," Hellen Brinkman said.

Brinkman invested about 25 years teaching at Isabel. She substitute teaches now.

"All my years were good years. And I felt like when I look at some of the students, how they've turned out, I feel good about it," Brinkman said.

But this year's a bitter-sweet one, knowing that anything that happens through the school’s doors will be happening in the building for the last time.

"I actually cried,” Kali Wiedmer said. “Yeah, I was pretty disappointed."

Kali Wiedmer has been a student at Isabel since preschool. She's going to Timber Lake next year. She was hoping Isabel would stay open a little longer.

"Until I graduated but that didn't happen so one more year," Wiedmer said.

There were right around 60 students, kindergarten through 12th grade, in the school through this final year.

For some of the elementary students, class in Isabel will be is distant memory by the time they graduate. For Wiedmer, many memories will stick with her just as they will her grandma, who’s served about 25 years in Isabel.
"Life goes on I guess and I'm sure they'll survive and they'll continue to be successful," Brinkman said.

Isabel is a sparsity school so state law didn't require it to close; it was a matter of money. The district will attach to McIntosh, Dupree and Timber Lake.