SMALL CORNER DESK FREE
SMALL CORNER DESK WINDOWS

“Our six students were the top of the class.” “We had six seniors that took biology from a junior college,” he says. “When I started here there were 88 kids in the top four grades.” The principal is proud of his school’s academic record, often citing the past accomplishments of his departed high schoolers. “I felt the calling to be here,” he says. School administrator Rodney Scherbenske, who is 71 years old, started his career here as a teacher, 49 years ago.

The last valedictorian’s great grandmother was also a Goodrich graduate. Basketball trophies and band awards share space in the halls with framed class photos going back 100 years.

The 12 young students still in attendance are confined to the first floor, leaving the second and third floor classrooms empty, dark, dismal and in disarray. The high school class of 2020, the last to graduate, was made up of just two girls and one boy. The few local high schoolers now attend another school, several miles away. And he’s only six.”Įvery day at Goodrich begins with breakfast.Until a few years ago, Goodrich School served pupils from kindergarten through the 12th grade. He shoots rabbits at their house, and his mom cooks them. I don’t participate in a lot of the things they do out here.” But she marvels at their self-sufficiency. “I don’t go to any of the brandings, where they rope the calves and give them their vaccinations. “It’s hard to get used to,” she says about life in this remote corner of the country. Most of her students come from ranching families and a culture that’s still foreign to her. Her greatest challenge has been the lack of opportunities to socialize.

SMALL CORNER DESK FREE

Teacher Tosch lives steps away, in a matching little house provided free of charge by the district.Ī Wisconsin transplant, Tosch has been teaching at Horse Creek for five years. The other half looks more like a rec room, with an overstuffed reclining sofa, bookshelves, computers and an upright piano. A large whiteboard divides the interior space in two, with one side containing a traditional array of student desks and small tables. Front and back bump-outs contain a small kitchen, bathrooms and entryways.

SMALL CORNER DESK WINDOWS

The kitchen is a favorite place to read and work.The Horse Creek School building resembles a typical mid-century ranch house, with picture windows and a low-pitched roof with deep overhangs. “You cannot put a 5-year-old on a bus for an hour and a half each day,” says the state superintendent of schools, Kirsten Baesler. But closing and consolidating schools has its limits. North Dakota’s steady loss of rural population makes it increasingly difficult to justify the continued operation of underutilized schools. Of those, 129 have fewer than 300 students, and 34 have less than 100.

The rural population in North Dakota has been declining for decades, and since 1985, consolidation has reduced the number of school districts from 312 to 173. It is one of just five one-room schools still active in the state. With a dozen pupils, Horse Creek is the only school in its district. All three attend the Horse Creek School in western North Dakota. Whether they understand the material or not, two of Avery’s classmates, Rosie and Ledger, smile and clap appreciatively at the conclusion of the report.Īvery is the school’s oldest student and the only eighth grader. The audience seems mostly bewildered by her presentation. So just stay with me on this one.” Not all of them can. Photographs by David KiddEighth grader Avery LaDue is reporting to her class on a book she just finished.

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