One-Room School Houses Threatened

Nov. 13, 2002 -- It was 7 a.m. and the temperature was zero degrees Fahrenheit as we plowed over the snowbound and ice-crusted back roads of North Dakota's Badlands one day last month.

We were tracing the route to the Stevenson Elementary School — a place so remote, even by North Dakota standards — that the closest mailman comes from next door Montana.

After a 30-minute ride that included driving across the Little Missouri River without benefit of a bridge, we arrived at the door of a one-room white-painted structure. Stevenson School at last.

Inside, Jan Bergstrom presided over six students that included kindergarten, first, second, third and sixth graders.

"Second and third graders, take out your pens," says Bergstrom.

While their lessons proceed, the other kids work quietly with a teacher's aide or study by themselves. It is all very orderly. No one is acting up — not even in the presence of strangers with a television camera.

'No Reason to Change Anything'

Bergstrom is a big booster of one-room schools. Hers is as modern as they come, with four computer terminals, television, and a well-stocked library.

"It's easy for me since I work so one-on-one to pick up on any area where a child might be having problems," she says. "Then I can jump on it right away when they're young."

Keith Rockeman, a rancher whose son Josh is enrolled at the Stevenson School, is president of the local school district. "If they're having some problems with things, usually our teacher catches on real quick and can get them straightened out pretty fast."

"There's really no reason to change anything, as far as I'm concerned," he said.

North Dakota: Time to Regionalize

Unfortunately, for schools like this one and the seven other one-room units in North Dakota, not everyone agrees. At almost every meeting of the North Dakota state legislature, bills are introduced that would have the effect of eliminating these schools, merging their students into bigger — but more distant — schools.

To many legislators, the schools are anachronistic.

"I know it's difficult. It's very emotional," says State Rep. Rae Ann Kelsch, who chairs the state House Education Committee, "However, I think the time has come that North Dakota has to realize we cannot continue to operate and continue to provide education in the same manner that we have for the past 20 or 30 years."

"It's nice to have a smaller classroom," she continues, "but when does a smaller classroom become too small?"

Moreover, adds Tom Decker, an official at the state Department of Public Instruction, "The kind of specialized services that other larger districts routinely provide all of their students could be provided to students in those smaller schools by being part of a bigger, stronger administrative structure."

What's Best For the Kids?

But ranchers and farmers and one-room school house teachers in far-flung McKenzie County say moving the students to a larger school district isn't the solution.

"You have to weigh what's more important," says Jan Bergstrom. "Is it really how it looks on paper, or is it what these children will have to endure if this school isn't here?"

Almost certainly, the children would have longer trips to bigger schools — some may last 90 minutes one way. The one-on-one care would disappear too.

Small school advocates have been using those arguments for years to hold off consolidation, but the trend of history is running decidedly against them. Back in 1968 there were more than 4,000 one room schools or schools with one teacher in this country. Today, by comparison, that number is down to slightly more than 400 and dropping every day.

Karen Goldsbury is the teacher at the seven-student Squaw Gap school in McKenzie County, N.D.

"You're just continually fighting for your life, for your way of life," she says.

Closing the school would mean death for the community. "It's the beginning of the end of a community and your way of life," she adds.

And because North Dakota is losing people at an alarming rate, keeping communities together is vital. Keeping the little schools running is pivotal in that fight for existence, because they stand as symbols that a new generation is growing up to inherit this land.