FOR THE RECORDS: COUNTY WORKS TO COLLECT AND PRESERVE OLD COUNTY SCHOOL DOCUMENTS

They still stand in rural communities throughout Cape Girardeau County, aging reminders of an era when neighborhoods spanned miles of farmland and most children walked to school, rain or shine.

The structures, one- and two-room schoolhouses largely built prior to 1900, are shells that give no indication of the activity they saw as late as the 1970s. Weathered paint and broken glass testify to their neglect after doors were closed in the name of modern education.

Rural schoolhouses were the norm in the mid-1900s, with 75 districts operating in Cape Girardeau County alone. The schools usually included one teacher and enrollments consisted largely of kinships. They were places where teachers kept the bulk of student records, where children cleaned up in anticipation of a visit from the county superintendent and completed lessons with their feet propped against coal-burning stoves during cold winter days.

One by one, community-based schoolhouses were closed after 1948 as a national movement toward efficiency and modernization swept children out of the rural areas and into town-based districts. Most communities fought in vain to keep their schools open.

Today, the old schools have been overtaken by progress, and written records are scattered among individuals, churches, libraries and existing school districts.

It's a situation Jane Randol Jackson, director of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, hopes to change by making the archive center the main repository for all county school records.

Keeping history

Official caretakers of county school records include Nell Holcomb, Advance, Delta, Jackson and Oak Ridge school districts and Hanover Lutheran Church. But there also are a number of individuals and at least one library that have school board minutes, teachers' records and other written histories of the former districts.

"I can't see any reason why we wouldn't want the archive center to maintain these records and make them easily available to people who are interested in historical development and progress of the district," said Cape Girardeau schools superintendent Dan Steska.

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education voted Monday to donate records from its pre-consolidation districts to the archive center.

The district will turn over records that detail how the buildings were built, how much money, equipment and supplies they needed to operate and who attended the schools, all of which are open records.

But by law, permanent student records are confidential without the written consent of the individual and will be retained by the district.

"Our goal is to make sure those records are not lost," he said. "We think it's a good move to turn them over to an institution that would be sure they were historically preserved."

Jackson has started an inventory of where records from the districts are kept to help genealogists and people researching county or educational systems. By maintaining records in a central location, experienced researchers or curious family members will know where to go for information, she said.

"We could probably take care of them better than in places where they might be kept in closets somewhere," said Jackson. "These records are very detailed in the business of the school. We also have copies of photographs of some of the schools that also will be kept together."

Alberta Loos of Cape Girardeau said she has many photos and other records from her six-year tenure as teacher at Abernathy School in the late 1940s.

"If I knew that they were going to be preserved I wouldn't mind giving them," said Loos. "If people were aware of it, I think there is interest in those days."

Consolidation movement

The Missouri movement to consolidate rural schools with larger city districts began in 1920, when the General Assembly passed its first consolidation law. The statute was not well received, and a dozen years later just four consolidations had taken place.

Determined lawmakers approved a second consolidation law in 1947, this time including a provision that mandated the creation of county boards of education who would supervise reorganization efforts.

In 1948, Cape Girardeau had complied with the law by submitting a consolidation plan to the state board of education for approval. The plan reduced 75 districts in the county to three large districts that would have high school centers in Cape Girardeau, Jackson and Delta.

The plan was declared a state model, but it still needed the approval of voters within the proposed districts before it could be implemented.

Retired Jackson schools assistant superintendent Fred Jones, who attended Whitewater school prior to its consolidation with Delta city schools, said rural residents were reluctant to lose local control of their children's education. They didn't want to transport their children long distances to town schools, even if the schools were newer and had better equipment.

"It was a big step going from a rural community to a more centralized school operation," Jones said. "There's a lot of fond memories people have of those one-room schoolhouses, but I think probably the time has passed for that."

Voters in all three proposed districts rejected the first county plan. It was the first in a series of failed proposals.

Voters rejected a proposal in 1950 that was remarkably similar to the school districts operating today. Under the plan, K-12 districts would be created around the towns of Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Delta and Oak Ridge. An elementary district would be created north of Cape Girardeau, and its older students were to be transported to University High School in Cape Girardeau.

In 1954, voters approved part of a proposal that would have consolidated the county's rural schools into seven new districts. From this plan, voters approved the creation of Jackson R-2 School District, which consolidated Jackson city schools with 17 rural districts. Millersville R-7, an elementary district that eventually was annexed into Jackson, also was formed.

It was their first success, and over the next decade, the county school board would continue working to reduce more than 70 school districts to the mere five that exist today.

In 1956, voters united Delta city schools with 11 rural districts. Oak Ridge city schools were united with four rural districts, and the elementary district now called Nell Holcomb was created from six rural schools in communities north of Cape Girardeau.

Although rural voters rejected several plans to consolidate with the district, the Abernathy, Campster, Kage, Marquette and Pecan Grove schools were closed in the late 1960s and early 1970s after their districts were annexed into the city limits and attendance dried up along with money to run the schools.

What was left behind

Dr. Daryl Hobbs of the Office of Social and Economic Data and Analysis in Columbia, Mo., said the preconsolidation schools were an important part of American history. People understood the link between school and community, and it is a link educators are struggling to re-establish.

Hobbs, a rural sociologist who has researched the effects of school consolidation on rural communities, said many communities died after their schools closed. People bought into the idea that bigger was better, but in truth, education was not dramatically improved for many rural students, he said.

"Consolidating schools was thought to be progress, so although some complained, they were a minority," said Hobbs. "When people think they are in the middle of producing progress, they don't very often keep records on what they left behind. This is a good time to begin digging through some of those records."

Cape Girardeau resident Marj Suedekum, 67, periodically visits the school she attended with family members through her eighth-grade graduation.

The rundown appearance of Abernathy School just past Cape Girardeau's western city limits is a reminder that education as a whole and many rural communities have been irreversibly changed by consolidation, she said.

"That's all we knew," said Suedekum. "I didn't have anything to compare it to because I hadn't been inside a city school. That was just the way it was."

She said she supports efforts to store rural school records at the archive center, saying it would be a fitting tribute to the places where education began in the county. People need to recognize the efforts of the teachers and administrators who coped with poor conditions and supplies to provide youth instruction.

Said Suedekum as she looked around her former schoolyard, now overrun with farm machinery, "It could be like a written history of how we learned. Looking back now, I think we had a top quality education. I wouldn't have taken anything for that."

RECONSOLIDATION

Breakdown of voter-approved consolidation plans:

Delta R-5 - high school (12)

Allenville

Arbor (Hickory Ridge)

Blomeyer

Collins-Moore

Council Ridge

Crump

Dutchtown

Oak Valley (Round Pond)

Randles

Rum Branch (Green Cox)

Stroderville

Whitewater

Oak Ridge R-1 - high school (8)

Arnsberg

Critesville

Hilderbrand (Brick-Hildebrand)

Oak Ridge

Old Appleton

Cape Girardeau

high school (6) **

Abernathy

Campster

Cape City

Kage

Marquette

Pecan Grove

Jackson R-2

high school (18)

Burfordville

Cane Creek

Pocahontas

Fruitland

Gravel Hill

Helderman

High Hill

Jackson

McFerron

Neely's Landing

Poplar Grove

Poplar Ridge

Randol

Roberts

Sandy Ridge

Schoenebeck

Stroder

Tilsit

Millersville R-7

elementary district (7) *

Big Springs

Hartle (partially Bollinger County)

Lick

Millersville

Niswonger

Old Salem

Rieman

Nell Holcomb R-4

elementary district (6)

Brooks

Coker

Egypt Mills

Indian Creek

Iona

Juden

Other districts were either closed due to lack of enrollment or otherwise absorbed into consolidated districts.

* Later annexed into Jackson R-2

Schools were closed after communities were annexed into Cape Girardeau