The Keota Community School District announced a superintendent sharing agreement with the Pekin Community School District for the 2025-26 school year.

Pekin Superintendent Dave Harper will be shared between the two districts beginning on July 1 with 60-percent of his time at Pekin, and 40-percent at Keota.

The Keota School Board said that part of the reason for the decision to utilize a sharing agreement was due to an increase in the operational sharing student weighting cap from 21 to 25 allowed by the state. The cap limits the number of employees a district can share, with a superintendent sharing agreement counting as nine full-time employees toward the cap. 

Existing sharing agreements with Washington and Sigourney already represented 16 full-time employees for Keota, so the agreement would not have been possible without the recent increase from the state.