Recently, two Kansas school boards split votes to close rural schools in Wilson and Walton. In both cases, parents and students presented strong arguments to maintain their schools, but those points didn’t keep doors open.
If you drive around western Kansas, you’ll see one fine school after another built in the early 1900s now falling to ruin. Broken windows and crumbling foundations tell an oft-told tale of buildings that outlived their use. After reading what Logan, a village along Hwy 9, is doing to serve day care, public education, and senior citizens’ needs, town leaders, administrators, and school boards might want to study their model to keep schools open while meeting multiple community needs.
I graduated from a class, not school, of 1050+ students, so consider my surprise to find my first job involved teaching 54 total high school students. To introduce me that first day, cheerleaders hid the new teacher in a cardboard box on the gym floor where she imagined herself leaping out to a packed gymnasium. Instead, my jaw dropped to see only two rows of staff and teens sitting in the first section of one side of the gym. Used to crowds that rocked rafters, I wondered where everyone was until reality set in. This was everyone. That lesson continued for the next two years as I learned how tiny schools build strong character and well-rounded citizens.
Big schools limit participation. Everyone attends class but that doesn’t guarantee they’ll make teams, choir, play casts, or student government office. In tiny McCracken, every student counted. We needed every body in sports, forensics, music, school plays, student leadership, and daily existence. Kids who weren’t natural athletes became skilled, aggressive teammates or encouraging cheerleaders. Folks who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it learned to play instruments well enough to win awards. If we wanted a pretty prom, everyone—juniors, parents, teachers, administrator, and curious townspeople showed up after a school day followed by a windblown track practice to turn the old grade school gym into a tented dining area that transformed to a dance floor after handsomely suited junior and senior men moved decorated tables and chairs to the edges of the room.
That first year taught me it’s not the variety of coursework offered that makes good citizens. It’s folks who regularly overcome challenges under extreme duress that rebuild lives after crises or guide businesses to survive downturns. Students in small schools problem-solve hourly to manage their world’s demands. After 30+ years teaching in 1 A and 2 A districts and watching those youngsters become parents and grandparents, I’ve seen the citizens rural schools build.
These individuals support their communities with time, money, and labor. They may differ in beliefs, but they learned to work together to achieve goals starting in kindergarten. Pundits may discount these salt of the earth human beings, but their communities enabled them to dream and live big. Among them number soldiers, medical personnel, mechanics, inventors, agriculturalists, educators, law enforcement officers, entrepreneurs, politicians, artists, musicians, librarians, dozens of other professions, reliable employees, and most of all Americans who care about one another. One graduation after another introduces our world to another round of problem-solvers who get jobs done.
Sometimes, keeping a school open involves more than budgetary concerns. It means rethinking how community functions. Maybe it means new ways of seeing and reinventing accordingly. Folks ought to keep an eye on how tiny Logan maintains their viability despite their challenges.
Karen is a retired teacher, writer, photographer, outdoors lover, and sixth-generation Kansan. After a time away, she’s glad to be home.