Yello!

Today marks the reduction of the number of school districts in Nebraska due to the enactment of LB 126 which requires Class 1 (elementary only) and Class 6 (secondary only) school districts to merge with K-12 districts. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the small country schools still in operating will close, but rather that they will operate as part of the larger K-12 district – although some of the remaining one-room schools will, in fact, close. People can make good arguments on both sides of the issue – the benefits of the mergers vs the benefits of the small schools and local control. I can see merit in both sides of the discussion.

At the risk of sounding like an old-timer (OK – well, maybe I am!), I can’t help but thinking of my own experience as a kid in the one-room school a couple of miles away from my house. If I remember right, we had as many as ten students and as few as six or so during the seven years that I attended school there. I had one other student in my grade, a boy named Robin. One of the best things about attending a country school included the interaction I had with students of all ages. As a Kindergartener, I played the same games at recess that the eighth-graders did and also had parts in the school Christmas program and county music contest. I listened to lessons in math, english, history and science that all of the older kids were learning since we were all in one room. Since I learned to read at an early age, I even got to give the older kids their spelling tests sometimes to help the teacher out. (I suppose now that would be considered brown-nosing, but to me it was just fun!) I can’t help but think that all of that exposure we had to the curriculum of all grades, K-8, not only accelerated learning but also reinforced what had been learned in previous years. That’s not something that is so readily available with the structure of our schools today. Of course, on the flip side, we probably gave up some things like more indepth instruction in areas like music, PE, art and other curriculum areas since we only had one teacher for all things and all grades! Our little school closed at the end of my sixth grade year and we all headed off to town school – we felt like little fish in a bigger pond for awhile, but we all did OK for ourselves and learned to adjust to a new situation.

So I have mixed feelings about the state forcing mergers of school districts. Keeping in mind that bigger does not always necessarily mean better, I also know that change can be tough. With all of the pending litigation surrounding LB 126, we be hearing more discussion on this issue for years to come.