The hills roll softly throughout the sandhills of Nebraska, and the wind rarely stops blowing. It's a different world out here than most people know, even Nebraskans. In one of the driest and harshest environments in the United States, people have not only survived it but continue to choose to live here.
In "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, Sal meets a random wandering cowboy who says "Nebraska I ain't got no use for. Why, in the middle 1930s this place wasn't nothing but a big dust cloud as far as the eye could see. You couldn't breathe. The ground was black."
The character of Kerouac, however, maintains his excitement and fascination as he describes Nebraska as the beginning of the "true rangeland."
While the dustbowl years have technically been left behind, new years of difficulty and drought have befallen modern Nebraska, leading to a myriad of new and diverse problems.
For years, rural Nebraska has seen a decline in population, as some counties have technically been losing population every decade since the 1890s. Aside the traditions of small towns and schools are the even more rare way of life - rural one-room schoolhouses.
These little schoolhouses still exist cozily in the rural and often distant areas of Nebraska. The Valentine school district regulates 13 rural schools, 12 of them in operation this year, the Gordon-Rushville school district is in charge of eight rural schools while the Broken Bow school systems had five last year but only maintains one now.
As schools have closed and consolidated, the rural farmers and ranchers have grown increasingly wary of government policy.
Recently the Nebraska Legislature passed a bill that has had an interesting, and as of yet, an unclear effect on Nebraska school systems, particularly smaller schools.
As of June 15, Legislative Bill 126 required the consolidation of many Class 1 and Class 6 school boards throughout the state. According to the Nebraska Department of Education, Class 1 schools are defined as "any school district that maintains only elementary grades under the direction of a single school board." Class 6 schools classify under a very similar description with the distinction of a high school instead of an elementary school.
In short, individual schools will no longer be allowed to have their own school boards, but instead are now run by one school board for each school district - school districts which have been expanded and retracted in size resulting in loss of students and land valuation. This process is being called the "reorganization" process by the state.
New legislation means a lot of different things for a lot of different schools in Nebraska, but none are in a more precarious position than about 70 one-room, one-teacher rural schools remaining in Nebraska. The idea of these rural schools has survived for well over a century, and those who've experienced it and grown up with it will tell the history proudly and with fondness.
How will this new law and the slowly becoming urban-friendly Nebraska Legislature affect these nearly forgotten relics of Nebraska's pioneer heritage and spirit? What chance do they have against the oncoming tide of urbanization in a world full of iPods, laptops, Blackberries and a plethora of other new, convenient technological accessories? The answers come from a variety of people and they give a variety of answers and sentiments but in the end find good in midst of the bad and find something worth holding on to.
The aforementioned goal of the new legislation regarding school board consolidation has several expectations.
"There are several arguments both for and against this bill," said John Clark, administrator of Communication Systems at the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE). "There perhaps will be cost savings as far as dollar per person is concerned. There isn't a large cash flow into Class 1 schools, so the idea of consolidating Class 1s with Class 6s will potentially raise the flow of cash into these now larger school systems."
Clark went on to explain that there is also an academic argument. He said, because of the smallness of these rural schools, the state masks the results. This masking is done because scores may be traceable to a specific student in rural school, which would break codes of standardized testing confidentiality.
Two other considerations of this bill concern teachers' salaries in rural schools, which were lagging those in K-12 systems; and providing the rural schools with the materials they need and may not necessarily have.
Although the state points to the benefits of the new legislation, there has been a reaction strong enough from enough people that it's on the ballot to be repealed in November.
Russ Inbody, an employee in the School of Finance for the NDE, explained how the legislation would affect life in rural Nebraska.
"From my standpoint, what would be easier about this, is setting taxes and for budgeting purposes. Hopefully it will be easier for the county for tax purposes. It's an alignment of governance, instead of having six or seven boards in the receiving districts there will be just one, which, of course, could be seen as a pro or a con, depending on which side you are on.
"It's also an alignment of curriculum and an alignment of funding and finances."
One concern of the rural districts has been that they will lose some of their grant money, but Inbody pointed out that the state has set up rural transition funds to help these districts deal with any loss of money because of LB 126. He also said that not all rural districts lost their eligibility for grants.
The final two important stipulations of this bill are that people are no longer allowed to petition to create a new Class 1 school within their district and schools within 20 miles of each other will be consolidated.
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