Little schoolhouse's end seen as sad, inevitable

HANCOCK, Vt. -- Every morning, with a stick of white chalk, teacher Amy Braun writes the date on her blackboard at the Village School.

It is one of few signs of passing time in this tiny, white schoolhouse, established in 1801. An upright piano stands in each of the two classrooms. A portrait of Abraham Lincoln hangs by the door. In the kitchen, where winter snowdrifts still reach the windows in late March, the beloved school cook whips up real mashed potatoes for lunch. The students scoop them up with metal forks. These two dozen students, some of them the third generation of their families to attend this school, may be the last to line up on these creaking wooden floors. Residents of Hancock and neighboring Granville, increasingly burdened by the costs of running two tiny schools for fewer than 50 students, rejected the schools' proposed operating budgets at their town meetings last month. The schools may shut their doors for good this summer. That would leave Vermont with just one remaining one-room school, in Elmore, according to the state Department of Education.

The loss of Vermont's smallest schools signifies the end of a way of life that is as quintessential a part of the rural American experience as log cabins and sleigh rides.

"Every day since 1801, since Thomas Jefferson was president, kids have been coming into this building," said Mary Sue Crowley, who teaches at the Hancock and Granville schools. "Once it's gone, you can't open it back up again." Financial pressures have already forced the closing of other small schools in Vermont and elsewhere in northern New England. Remote areas, lacking jobs to attract younger families, have watched school enrollments shrink and, with them, state aid for education. Meanwhile, property values have soared in many scenic rural spots. With residents struggling to pay higher taxes, some towns have reconsidered running schools for a handful of students.

"When schools get very small, it's a real struggle to make it work, and the per-student cost is almost unbearable," said Richard Cate, Vermont's commissioner of education.

Last year, residents of Granby closed their one-room school, which had enrolled six students. Norton, Vt., closed its school a year earlier; the school in Belvidere closed in 2004. Sixteen Vermont towns do not operate schools; instead, they pay tuition for their students to attend schools in other towns.

Vermont has the lowest birth rate in the nation, and its school enrollment has declined for several years. Partly out of concern for the fate of small schools, Cate has proposed a controversial plan to cut the number of school districts in the state from 280 to fewer than 60. Larger districts would help ease the burden on small schools by allowing them to share resources, he said.

In Hancock and Granville, towns of 350 and 300 people nestled between the White River and the Green Mountain National Forest, the schools are among the smallest in the state. The Hancock school has two classrooms, and the Granville school is considered a one-room schoolhouse, though a recently-added corridor connects it to the Town Hall next door, now used as a second classroom.

Residents merged the two tiny schools three years ago to save money and help keep both open. Grades 1 through 4 moved to Hancock, where two grades are taught in each classroom, and the Granville school was reorganized to house kindergarten in the Town Hall and grades 5 and 6 in the schoolhouse.

Two dozen students attend school at the Hancock campus. Fourteen go to the white-steepled, 150-year-old Granville school, 3 miles down Route 100, a winding road dotted with red barns. The first sawmill opened here in 1795, and the lumber trade once flourished. The last fragment of that industry, the local Vermont Plywood factory, has struggled to survive in recent years, residents said.

Educationally, the consolidation of the two schools has been successful, say teachers and parents. But the number of students from Granville has dropped, shifting a heavier financial burden to Hancock.

Adding to the burden, the state recently determined that properties in Hancock were undervalued and that the town was not contributing enough to school funding.

The state has asked the town to pay an additional 30 percent for the next school year.

Residents in both towns voted instead for a smaller school budget that would send students to schools out of town.

Teachers and some parents were stunned by the votes and are fighting to keep the schools open. They have collected more than 50 signatures on a petition that calls for the towns to vote again.

Leaders of the Save Our School Committee say the closings would save little money because of the cost of out-of-town tuition, but would sacrifice history and educational quality.

They are pursuing solutions both glitzy and homespun, including an appeal to Oprah Winfrey for help and a pickle sale.

Teachers in the schools say their small class sizes and close relationships with students allow them to meet each child's needs. Some of their students would feel lost in larger schools, they said.

"It's what school used to be and isn't anymore," Braun said. If the schools close, many of the students would probably go south to Rochester, where 70 students attend kindergarten through grade 6. To the north, the elementary school in Warren has 140 students.

Hancock school board chairwoman Jill Jesso-White attended the Hancock school as a child. Sadly, she said, the will of the voters is clear.

"There's no business here, no growth, and we're not maintaining our population," she said. "If we don't have this conversation now, we're going to be agonizing over it next year, and I don't think the kids and teachers can go through that. It's very emotional."

Students could benefit from interaction with more classmates, she said, and from teachers who can focus on teaching one grade level.

The pace of the school day seems slower, the structure less rigid, at the small schools. A hot breakfast is served at 8 a.m. -- more than half of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals -- and classwork begins about 8:45. One recent morning in the first- and second-grade room, the class stood to recite the Pledge of Allegiance (a small girl named Grace waved a flag throughout), then sang a round of "Yankee Doodle" and paused for "a moment of quiet thought."

Braun played a Beatles song ("Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da") while students checked the weather outside and used a crayon to draw the day's conditions on a chart. Many of the students stay after school for "homework club" from 3 to 5 p.m.; some spend so much time at school, they slip up and call her "Mom," said Braun. (She often addresses them in class as "my darlings.") Braun said the school is worth fighting for.

"This is the picture people draw when they draw a school," she said. Others said change, however hard to bear, is inevitable.

"I think it's a nostalgic thing that can't go on forever, unfortunately," Jesso-White said. "I admire them for trying, but I think you have to move on."