The district served sections of Kossuth and Winnebago counties.
[2] The merger into the Buffalo Center Community District was approved by a vote held on December 10, 1953.
[1] The Buffalo Center district and the Rake Community School District began sharing a superintendent, with the Buffalo Center superintendent taking the role, on July 1, 1975.
At the time no other school district in Iowa had made this kind of arrangement.
William H. Dreier of the University of Northern Iowa and Ronald Pilgrim, superintendent of Buffalo Center–Rake–Lakota Community School District, wrote that the 1977 vote failed by "a slim margin" but that the Buffalo Center district voters and Rake district voters "overwhelmingly approved" the 1978 referendum.