The District #15 district was created on a date prior to February 2, 1913, and merged with
Wrenshall at around this time period. Circa 1951 it became District #2 as it merged with the
Sawyer district. It received its current formal name circa 1957. In 2019 the Carlton district and the
Wrenshall School District were in talks on the possibility of consolidating. By September 2020 a study was released stating that if Carlton and Wrenshall consolidated, the taxpayer in the former Carlton zone would pay two and one half times the rate that a Wrenshall zone taxpayer would. Some legislation that would have facilitated the merger was, in 2020, not passed by the
Minnesota Legislature. Additionally the compositions of the school boards changed. The two school boards chose not to hold further discussions on consolidation after February 2021. That month Carlton began discussing with
Cloquet Public Schools the possibility of an agreement to send high school students to Cloquet. The Carlton district was also working on its own referendum for new facilities. On June 21, 2021, the Carlton School Board stated that it no longer wished to consolidate with Wrenshall and that it was considering using the South Terrace campus as a single K-12 site and/or consolidating with the Cloquet or
Barnum school districts. Carlton, in July 2021, was still negotiating with Cloquet. ==Student body==