Schools Without Pupils

In the old days, whenever a group of homesteaders settled down in Nebraska, they opened up a school as a first order of business. But they never could bring themselves to close one down. In the last 30 years, thousands of farm families have moved to the cities, but the folks who stayed behind still stubbornly refuse to give up their schools. Last week State Superintendent Freeman B. Decker announced the result: the number of farm kids has dropped 50%, the number of rural schools only 5%. Of the 6,400 rural school districts left, 2,106 have ten pupils or less. And 200 schools have no pupils at all.

In Cherry County, 20 "schools" are nothing but shanties or boxcars that are moved about to wherever the most kids are. In Douglas County, 24 out of 36 schools have outdoor privies, five have illegal cesspools, and 31 have no running water. At one time, a school near Inman was found to be operating in the kitchen of a ranch. Its teacher: Mrs. Joseph Pojar. Its pupils: five little Pojars. Near Broadwater, one 82-year-old teacher has to live in the school, cook her meals on a hot plate, sleep on a cot pitched beside her desk. Near Kimball, Teacher Helen Layer is in the same fix: she has one room, one stove, one pupil.

Superintendent Decker pleaded with the state legislature to consolidate Nebraska's inefficient hodgepodge of 6,466 school districts, but he doubted that the legislature would succeed. As far back as 1902, school officials tried to get a redistricting bill passed; they tried again in 1919, again in 1949. Each time the powerful farm bloc refused to budge. Its main objections: larger schools, taking in larger districts and more pupils, may, in some cases

1) cost a lot of money for new equipment, 2) make it necessary for children to travel longer distances to class. Many farmers just feel like the Holt County rancher who explained last week: "My grandpa learned in that there little school. So did I, and so did my kids. If I got anything to say about it. my kids' kids will be learning in that selfsame little school."

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