Lincoln Journal Star from Lincoln, Nebraska • 6

(2 A Lincoln Journal Star SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION Monday, October 6, 2003 IcUTl chool closing will uproot teaching Barbara and John James have invested 20 years in Dawson-Verdon Public School What happens at the end of this school year? like so many other families, they'll have to move. It- 1 5 him how well one little girl was progressing. "Today I did not have to keep prompting her," the teacher told her principal. Then it was the school counselor. "Question," she said.

"Ice cream. How is that being handled? What do you want us to do?" The school is planning "Sundae Fridays" to celebrate Dawson-Ver- don's last year, rather parents want. "We wanted to settle in a place where they had roots, and we could settle," she said, "rather than try to jump to bigger and big- ger and bigger schools. The oldest James daughter now lives in Lincoln and is a recruiter for BryanLGH Medical Center. The younger two are pursuing acting careers in Arizona.

After years of coaching he still has his 1988 state football 'When this school's not here, then neither are our two John James, administrator, Dawson-Verdon Public School i ROBERT BECKERLincoln Journal Star John James, administrator of the Dawson-Verdon school district, steps in as substitute teacher for the eight-grade social skills class, sharing information with the help of students Greg Huppert (left) and Jacob Nincehelser. i'T Board of Education, which includes several Dawson-Verdon graduates; part is his personal conviction that a small school has much to offer students. He and the board have kept the school open as long as possible, cutting classes to the bare minimum. Not everyone agrees. Of 501 school districts in the state, about 70 are coalition members.

Five others, including Lincoln and Omaha, are involved in a separate suit. "I hear other schools saying, 'It's a waste of time. It's not going to make any John James said. "But nobody's saying, 'You're While he has a professional responsibility to the Dawson-Verdon School Board, he and his wife also have a personal investment "When this school's not here, men neither are our two jobs," John James said. The couple owns two homes in Humboldt, one they bought when they first got to town, and the old Victorian they wanted to buy when they first moved there, but couldn't until later.

They are house-rich and money-poor, John James said, not a good situation with few buyers in the Humboldt market. When the school closes after this school year, they say, they'll have to move another family gone from the area. Said John James: "The job market here just won't support us." Reach Barbara Nordby at 473-7242 or bnordbyjournalstar.com. J. Dawson-Verdon Public School.

Sports Dawson. construction started making it easier to get kids into town, and the number of farms dropped 15 percent during those years. In 1949, the Reorganization of School Districts Act required counties to develop reorganization plans, although change wasn't mandatory and there were no financial incentives. But the 1950s and '60s saw massive reorganization: In those two decades, 73 of every 100 districts dissolved or merged. Perhaps the change was less a result of the state's action and more one of the changing farm economy and technology.

Fritz, the Dawson-Verdon school board president, witnessed many of those changes. He lives in the Verdon-area farmhouse his grandparents built in 1919. He was in kindergarten in 1959, the year Dawson and Verdon merged, but was 23 by the time the district closed the school at Verdon. "That was a pretty hot subject, just closing the elementary," Fritz said. "It was just economic necessity.

We didn't have the kids to keep them both full. "I think we're kind of getting at that point again," Fritz said. "Kids that actually live on a farm and this is hard to believe in what you consider a rural district I'd say there probably isn't more than maybe two in high school and maybe two or three more in the elementary." Many area parents work at Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville, in industry across the border in Sabetha, in manufacturing in Falls City. The changing, unstable economy means not many of today's students will be able to stay in Richardson County. Some don't mind.

Some think it's so unfair. Jed Fritz, a senior at Dawson-Verdon, would have been happy living 50 years ago. "I want to farm," he said. "Everybody keeps telling me I should go to school. I'm diinking about going to SCC." Most of his classmates want to go to college and get good-paying jobs, he said.

"I like being outside and being able to do stuff and not having somebody else telling me what to do." He's saved some money and would like land of his own. "I got a boy that wants to farm," Phil Fritz said. "That's the hard part, when you try to scratch out enough living for one family, to try to come out and get enough for two." Jed said a doctor and a lawyer from Chicago own some farmland in his schooldistrict They use it as a tax writeoff, he said. One time, he said, his dad talked to one of them. "He didn't even know where his farm was." Reach Barbara Nordby at 473-7242 or bnordbyjoumalstar.com 'If I Consolidate Continued from Page 1A don't have to look far to see the day the county will be down to two, possibly even one.

They foresee Southeast Consolidated with its high school in Stella will be the next to go. The fourth high school is Humboldt-Table Rock-Steinauer in Humboldt. Right now, the three other districts are hoping for some Dawson-Verdon students to boost their enrollment. Dawson-Verdon combined with Falls City for sports this year. "We were very pleased that they were willing to create the athletic co-op with us," Falls City Superintendent Jon Habben said.

"We are hopeful that as they are working their way through, we are part of the discussion." Depending on where a student lives in the district, any of the other three high schools could be the most convenient, but Dawson-Verdon School Board members seem to see stability as their priority. Falls City is by far the biggest district and the least likely to have to consolidate with anybody anytime soon. "We've talked to just about everyone around us," Dawson-Verdon School Board President Phil Fritz said. "There's very few that I consider long-term solutions. You don't want to put these kids through this every six or eight years." If the district does merge with Falls City, Fritz said, "They're going to get a good education, and they're not going to be driving that much farther." Small schools all over Nebraska worry about what will happen in the Legislature tliis spring.

The Education Committee has been studying how reorganizing school districts would save money and affect academics. On Friday, committee members BY BARBARA NORDBY Lincoln Journal Star Dawson-Verdon schoolteacher Barbara James met her future husband, John, around the same time she started teaching. The third grade. As students in Albion, the kids took a liking to each other, although they didn't start dating until eighth grade and weren't married until 1971, when they were halfway through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Barbara knew at a young age what she liked in a guy and what she wanted in a profession.

"1 always played school, from die time I was little," she said. "My teddy bears and little sister needed to get taught." After graduation, the Jameses started a career, moving from district to district to teach together in Macy on the reservation, in Ravenna, a railroad town. When John, who always coached and taught physical education, heard 'about a head wrestling coach job in Humboldt, they looked it up on the map. Soon they found themselves in the hilly Nemaha River valley in far Southeast Nebraska. They've lived in Humboldt more than 20 years now.

They wanted the same thing for their three girls, now grown, that other Dawson-Verdon 1 think time will take care of a lot of Habben at Falls City said the senators study is on everyone mind. "I think everybody is anxiously awaiting that, especially in light of the lawsuits that are filed," he said, referring to a suit in which Omaha and other districts argue the state needs to give districts more money to educate poor students, students who are learning English and those with other learning challenges. "It's a lot of people holding their collective breath," Habben said. People can start breathing again. Sen.

Ed Schrock of Elm Creek and Sen. Vickie McDonald of Rockville said Friday they would not support the idea of forcing even elementary-only districts to merge. And the plan didn't say anything about forcing districts to close any actual buildings. Committee member Sen. Elaine Stuhr of Bradshaw said she would support eliminating elementary-only districts.

That plan would eliminate 241 of the state's 501 school districts. But Education Committee staff found doing so would save roughly $4 million, half of 1 percent of total state spending on school aid. The research showed that while Nebraska ranks high in the nation in die number of districts, it is near average in expense per student. Still, Stuhr said, ending the elementary-only system might make people feel something is being done. i "We are changing the perception of the number of school districts we have in the state," she said.

"Sometimes I think perception is reality." Schrock said the issue is "the big hot button in rural Nebraska," and than take a doom-and-gloom approach. And then there were a bunch of high school kids from the computer lab down the hall in the portable who needed help with their passwords. Oh, and whenever the secretary is away from her desk, John James answers the phone and handles any questions that come the school's way. In between the little things that crop up, he has been responsible for planning the year's tricky budget And he's been politically involved with state school-funding issues, serving recently as president of the Nebraska Coalition for Educational Equity and Adequacy, which plans to sue the state later this year for more money. "If it never comes down to the court making the decision," he said, "the fact that the lawsuits are looming out there will make them devote some attention to the problem." Part of his willingness to get involved is the support of the local i Till 1 If Football posters decorate lockers at are a big part of the small school in demic opportunity.

They were built where it was convenient. They were built where the kids were. The Homestead Act spread settlers uniformly and sparsely across the state, and schools followed. As railroads came and farmers succeeded or failed, more schools were built in areas where land was good and a family could make a liv-, ing on a section or quarter section ofland. In 1917, when the great-grandparents of today's students were, born, Richardson County School Superintendent Daniel Weber wrote a history of schools.

In the eight years starting in 1885, there had been a building boom in the county. At a total cost of $82,000, communities built 35 schools. The pattern was mirrored in the rest of the state, with growth continuing into die 1930s. But communities began to reorganize districts in 1921, when the Legislature passed a consolidation act. At the time, the state had more dian 7,200 school districts.

Some of the old prairie buildings were barely adequate as shelters, let alone as schools. Weber wrote about a school built in 1916 for three consolidated districts. Unnamed in his essay, die school may have been the Bratton Union Consolidated High School, which was described in a publication of the Nebraska High School Historical Society as the state's first rural consolidated school. "A splendid four room brick building," he wrote, "costing over ten thousand dollars which is pronounced by educators as the best and most admirably equipped consolidated school in the state." The school had lights, water pressure, steam heat and toilets. Weber noted with pride that the principal had an automobile and students were bused to school.

"Visitors from all sections of this county as well as from other counties haVe called to see this new departure in education." He predicted more consolidation. "Other buildings will be erected next year and in the years immediately following," he said, "as a number would be condemned by any building inspector visiting us. Over the next eight decades, Weber was proved correct. Between the 1921 act and die end of World War II, die number of districts had dropped 5 percent while the number of school-age Ne-braskans (5 to 21) dropped 22 per-, cent. Young adults had left to join the service or move into larger towns with more jobs in manufacturing.

With so many districts and so few students, people were upset about disparities between neighboring schools in assessed valuation and per-pupil spending. Road (fill PHOTOS BY ROBERT BECKERLincoln Journal Star The Dawson-Verdon athletic fields behind the school get a workout from a neighbor's calves. championship plaque on his desk John James earned his administrative degree and served for a time as superintendent joindy of Humboldt and the Dawson-Verdon district. Now the Jameses are solely in the DV camp. Barbara teaches elementary special education and John does the multitasking common to small-school administrators.

"I'm the principal, superintendent and activity director," he said. In an hour's time one afternoon, he had a steady stream of visitors to his office in a portable building with no bathroom off to the side of the school. There was the kindergartenfirst grade teacher who came to show Ann Stevicks, assistant cook for almost 30 years at Dawson-Verdon, says: "The serving time from 11:30 to 1 is the busiest. It's a continuous flow with serving, dishes and then more." closing schools would not be popular in his district, where the number of school districts is declining without any push from the state. "I just hate to have Lincoln deciding how quick that's going to take place," Schrock said.

The committee also found that, in most cases, reorganizing school districts saves money because of cuts in staff. They studied 12 mergers that took place during the 1990s and found savings that varied from 1 percent to 45 percent a year, depending on how a given district approached it. In Richardson County, Humboldt unified with Table Rock-Steinauer two years ago, then merged this year. At first, the finan-cial impact was small because no staff members were cut. By now, 10 have retired or moved and the positions haven't been filled, resulting in an annual savings of roughly $450,000, Superintendent Clinton Kimbraugh said.

The merger did cost the district more in transportation. It now has five morning bus routes, four in the afternoon. Some children ride the bus more than an hour one way. "I haven't heard the complaints, but if we need to go back and add a route, we sure will," Kimbraugh said. Historically, school consolidation in Nebraska has been the result of a mix of forces: the farm economy, world wars, highway development, the idea that children in every town should have equal access to a qualityeducation.

But the original sod and log schools weren't built according to a government plan based on the ideal amount of property value or aca- The cost of education This graph shows the average cost per pupil at Nebraska school districts. On average, it is more costly to educate students in the smallest, most sparse districts, those where schools and people are few and far between. On average, the bigger the school, the less expensive per student Average cost per pupil 0 $2,000 $4,000 $6,000 $8,000 $10,000 $12,000 met in Lincoln to talk about two proposals. One would force Class 1 elementary-only districts to dissolve and "assimilate" into a K-12 or high school system by fall 2005. The other would offer financial incentives to K-12 districts that merge.

Many have the feeling the state is out to shut down small schools to save money. K-12 education spending accounts for nearly a third of the state's budget. "I think the state will, in time, start doing 'forced Fritz said. "The state shouldn't get overzealous about doing it unless they think theres a need, because I TTftT D. MATT VAN DRIESTUncoln Journal Star Sample districts Dawson-Verdon fells City Lincoln District type Very sparse districts with fewer than 250 pupils Sparse districts with fewer than 250 pupils Standard districts with fewer than 250 pupils (includes Dawson) Districts with 250 to 500 pupils Districts with 500 to 1,000 pupils (Includes fells Crty) Districts with 1,000 to 2,000 pupils Districts with 2,000 to 5,000 pupils Districts with more than 5,000 pupils (inchJdftS Lincoln) State average Note: All Information is based on the 2001-2002 school year and comes from the Nebraska Department of Education.

Districts do not have to submit financial reports for the 2002-2003 school year before this November. SOURCE; Nebraska Department of Education, Education Committee Staff.