The Ten Million Dollar School

Perhaps that title should read, "The Ten Million Dollar School District." USD 380, in Northeast Kansas, actually has two so-called "schools", one in Nemaha County, and one in Marshall County, a mind boggling division that is the result of gerrymandering, done in an ongoing effort to resist Brown v. the Baord of Education. The school board (a tiny, unprofessional collection of persons who do not have degrees or experience in education) has issued a request for a construction manager to upgrade their buildings and it also wants ten million dollars. Both of the two buildings babysit less than three hundred children per year; why should taxpayers foot the bill for this project, when consolidation with other schools is the obvious answer?

Since 1980, the population of Frankfort, Kansas has steadily declined, as has the population of Centralia, Kansas. At this writing, Frankfort has a population of about 700, and Centralia's population is about 500. That gives us about about 1,200 people, adding the populations of both towns together. Both of the schools that serve this demographic, Frankfort and Centralia, have less than 500 students, combined, from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Your blogger graduated from a high school that had a bigger student body than both of the entire towns of Frankfort and Centralia, put together; so it seems quite natural to wonder why ten million dollars would be requested for such a small student body.

Instead of new buildings for a declining population, shouldn't USD 380 look at saving money by making sure that there is only one school board and administrative staff for each five hundred high school students? In fact, if Marshall County consolidated its public schools into one high school, one middle school, and three or four elementary schools, that would cover the needs of Marshall County children nicely. Sports would be more competitive, and the dead weight of multiple superintendents and principals could be jettisoned in favor of hiring foreign language and math teachers. If schools were consolidated this way, USD 380 could dissolve and there would be no need to beg for more bucks. Students would be better off, too.