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.
This overview approaches the desired affect of the bill on rural schools and on Class 1, 3 and 6 schools in general but doesn't take into account some of the finer details of the school districts with rural schools dealing with the bill.
Cherry County is the largest county in Nebraska. With over 6,000 square miles of land it's almost twice the size of Rhode Island, yet only has a population of just over 6,000 people. Cherry County is ranching territory, with acres of rough land that often requires four-wheel drive. It doesn't take much imagination to believe it has the most rural schools in the state.
This is a place where the people are nervous about state legislation that causes forty Class 1 schools to consolidate in one year.
"People here are extremely apprehensive (about LB 126)," said Jolyne Westover, the rural school principal of the Cherry County School District. "My rural people would really like to see it go away. They are against it."
Cherry County has rural schools up to 112 miles from the nearest Class 3 elementary school, making the idea of closing rural schools impractical, Westover said.
"We do have choices regarding this, but the choice of closing these schools doesn't make any sense."
Cherry County's transition has been fairly smooth, despite their apprehension toward the new bill. They've only lost one of their rural schools, which they have labeled "rural attendance centers," and that school closed due to lack of numbers, not a reorganization of school districts or school boards.
"We already had a rural school principal, so we were one step ahead of the game," Westover said. "I oversee all the rural schools, and the new Class 3 administration hasn't changed that. Our Class 3 board has been super to work with as far as the rural schools are concerned. They've solidly stood behind us."
Thus, even with a feeling of anxiety or lack of trust of state legislation, the citizens of Cherry County have worked together to keep their rural schools. The numbers of the foreseeable future suggest rural schools will last in Cherry County, and as long as the Cherry County school board has control over the fate of these schools, it seems they will stay firmly nestled in the bosom of the sandhills.
Moving south and east of the mammoth Cherry County one will eventually come to Custer County, the second largest county in Nebraska, a place that evolves from the rolling Sand Hills to the fertile farmland in the west.
Varying from Cherry County, people of the Broken Bow school district have been opposed to closing schools but haven't been as nervous about the bill.
"Broken Bow school district took a position early on to oppose any forced consolidation," said Tim Shaffer, superintendent of the Broken Bow school district. "We took a public and active stance on this, but the law passed."
In May 2006, Custer County had five rural schools said Shaffer. One closed due to lack of numbers, unrelated to LB 126. Two of the schools were lost to two separate school districts. The land valuations were absorbed, and the schools were closed. Finally one was consolidated because of its proximity to Broken Bow and the fact that it only had three students.
Out of the five, Broken Bow retained only one rural school. Costing the district over $100,000 in state aide because of lost land valuations.
"I wouldn't say people were nervous or negative," Shaffer said. "But some were disappointed that these districts were closed by an action of the state instead of a more self-determinate type action."
Although these little one-roomers have suffered in Custer County, the teachers haven't been one of the major casualties.
"We have three rural teachers that now teach in the Broken Bow elementary schools," Shaffer said. "That's largely because of the quality of the teachers those rural schools hired."
Shaffer also mentioned the idea of repeal, and its consequences. He said that reopening these districts if LB 126 is repealed could be legally very difficult, expensive and full of red tape.
"If it's repealed there's no prerogative to re-open the district, so how can you go back to something that doesn't exist now? You could petition to constitute a new school district, which you cannot do under LB 126, but how do you reconstitute something that no longer exists?"
Travel back west and north into the Sand Hills once again and head to Sheridan County to find eight more rural schools.
Residents and administrators of Sheridan had yet again a different reaction to LB 126.
"No, not a negative reaction at all," said Casey Slama, the dean of students at Rushville Elementary and Rural Attendance Center of the Gordon-Rushville school system. "We've even seen some advantages so far. We can get our teachers different kinds of training and materials we couldn't before, and we've been sending teachers to in-services, which have been helpful."
Although the transition has its bumps, Slama felt they were handling things well and making progress to do better for all the schools in the district. As far as he can see, the future of the rural schools in Sheridan County is secure.
"They'll be there as far as I see it. They'll probably be there until way past my time, because of the size of the district and the mileage to get to the main elementary schools. Sometimes it's closer to fifty miles. We are so far spread out it makes no sense to close them," Slama said. "Parents like the idea of their kids going to those schools because of the small class size. You can't blame them for wanting what's best for their kids."
Part of the explanation for this improvement is the newness of the Gordon-Rushville consolidated school system, which is in its second year of full consolidation. Other schools have had time to make these adjustments and provide teachers with extra training.
With all the changes, it seems a lot of schools have made a fairly smooth transition with some exceptions. Overall, 40 Class 1 schools were closed because of this new legislation, and the feeling seems to be that this legislation could lead to other laws, which would even further promote consolidation.
"You always hear about county consolidation laws and things like that, but I don't have any idea how serious anything like that is," Shaffer said. "It seems something like that is up every year, but let's hope it doesn't happen."
Change takes longer in rural Nebraska. As the sun crawls across the open sky, sometimes not even blocked by clouds for what seems like a week, the days move slowly along toward a diamond sky. For the people living there the slowness provides satisfaction. In some ways it seems to say that regardless of what the rest of the world is doing, their way of life is still intact.
Class 1: School districts maintaining only elementary grades under the supervision of one school board. Class 2: School districts in a territory with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, maintaining an elementary school and a high school under the supervision of one school board. Class 3: School districts in an area with more than 1,000 but fewer than 150,000 residents, maintaining both an elementary school and a high school under one school board. Class 4: School districts in an area with more than 100,000 residents and a primary class city within the area. Class 4 schools maintain both elementary and high schools under a single school board. Class 5: School districts in an area with more than 200,000 residents and a metropolitan class city within the area. Class 5 schools maintain elementary and high schools under one school board. Class 6: School districts that maintain only a high school, including grades six through eight in some cases, under the direction of a single school board.
Source: Nebraska Department of Education
