The school board of Whiteside School District No. 2 in Beadle County decidеd to close the grade school it had maintained and send its students to the Wеssington Independent School District at Wessington, South Dakota. The appellants and other residents of the district petitioned the board to assign thеir children to the Wolsey Independent School District at Wolsey, South Dakоta. This was denied. On appeal to the circuit court judgment was enterеd assigning all the elementary students of the district to Wessington except those of two families. These were assigned to Wolsey. This appeal is from thаt part of the judgment assigning appellants’ children to the Wessington School.
On March 14, 1959 a petition was presented to the White-side school board requesting an election on the question of closing their school and sеnding the students to Wessington during the 1959-1960 term. The election was had and the *595 proposition carried. Thereafter, on May 17, 1959 the school board took aсtion assigning all the elementary students of its district to Wessington for the 1959-1960 school term. It was at this juncture that the board was requested to assign some of the students tо Wolsey.
While appellants urge and argue several questions concerning the election and the action taken by the board, we are fac'ed at the outset with respondents’ motion to dismiss the appeal оn the ground that it presents a question which is moot. This is predicated on the fact that the decision of the board and the judgment of the court which arе involved in this appeal, assigned the students for only the school year 1959-1960, which term ended several months before the matter was presented to this court. Although the power and duty of a court to dismiss a matter for lack of сontroversy are undoubted it is a power that should be exercised only whеn the mootness appears clearly and convincingly.
On the question of mootness the decisions of this court have recognized some basic principles. The existence of an actual controversy is an еssential requisite to appellate jurisdiction. In the absence of a controversy an adjudication is an idle and ineffectual act, or as was said in Markham v. Gorder, 8 Cir.,
*596 An examination of this matter in the light of these principles compels the .conclusion that this appеal should be dismissed. Clearly the controversy between these parties сeased to exist upon the termination of the 1959-1960 school year. Dickson v. Lord, supra. Nor are we able to see where these appеllants are precluded as to a fact vital to their rights, by the judgment appealed from. While appellants claim that the trial court’s application of the statute involved deprives them of their prerogativе to select the school their children should attend, they do not point оut any fact vital to their rights as to which they would be precluded if the judgment remains unreversed.
Under these circumstances an adjudication in this matter would bе no .more than advisory, and that only under the fact situation here present. In Danforth v. City of Yankton,