At the beginning of the 1900’s, there were more than 200,000 one-room schoolhouses in America. This changed rapidly after the middle of the 20th century with the initiation of the first round of school reorganization in the United States. Today there are only a few hundred one-room schools remaining in use and most of the consolidated school districts that once held title to those facilities have sold the land and buildings to private ownership. However, today we are witnessing a re-examination of the practicality for the existence of many small rural community schools. In some states there is an ongoing battle over a new round of small school closings and reconsolidation efforts are underway to once again change or reorganize the educational infrastructure of rural community schools. While this paper addresses some of the considerations necessary to more fully evaluate the impact of rural school consolidation, it is not intended to present a definitive solution to the subject. However, we hope our new focus on the subjects such as student, family and community safety will support a fresh look at justifications for keeping our rural school educational infrastructure intact.

This document will also re-address some of the more controversial issues and take another look at a few of the challenges that this new round of school closings may present to not only the safety issue- but the social, political, economic, and educational support environment in our rural communities. Most people would never support the removal of other important primary institutions such as the economic, political, emergency services, religious or media  organizations from our communities, and we feel the rural school community support function is equally important to the performance of a viable community. There is an old saying about “eggs in one basket” - a subject we in rural areas know a great deal about, and we would like to emphasize the larger reconsolidated school dangers – “DON’T PUT ALL OUR STUDENTS IN LARGER AND LARGER SCHOOLS.”

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