[LINK] "Closure of South Dakota rural schools sparks fears of the end of an era"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera America's Kayla Gahagan describes how demographic change in South Dakota--specifically, the decline of rural populations as agriculture becomes modernized--is promising to end small country schools.

PEI went through this kind of thing a generation ago. All I can say is that this process is inevitable.

There’s no cafeteria here, much less a teacher’s lounge. So during lunch, the school’s eight students — ranging from kindergarten to seventh grade — gather around two desks and eat in the same classroom as the teacher and an aide.

The students tease and chide one another like siblings. One of the girls admits it’s a lot like family at Milesville School — and that’s perhaps not surprising, since the students have known one another most of their lives.

“I love it here,” says teacher Tracey Hand.

However beloved America’s rural schools may be, many of them face an uphill battle as more school districts across the country face budget cuts.

“It’s not too far away, and it will be a thing of the past,” said Nette Meade, a teacher who was on the losing end of a battle to keep open the doors of Spring Creek School in Custer County in South Dakota. “We fought a good fight. I could see what was coming.”

Meade used to ride to school on a horse. In the 1950s she attended a one-room schoolhouse on the border of North and South Dakota with a barn, an outhouse and no running water.

She became a teacher, working first at North Dakota’s Department of Education but later returning to her roots, teaching at rural schools in several South Dakota communities. But a debate that rages in many rural communities — how to keep small schools open in the face of shrinking budgets — led her to quit her last job, at a remote two-room schoolhouse in western South Dakota. She now teaches at a school on the Cheyenne Indian Reservation.