Amid withering economy, Nevada considers eliminating rural schools

One-room schoolhouses fade into past

MOUNT CHARLESTON, Nev. - Ron and Paula Marino decided to move from Las Vegas to this village of thick pines and ski-lodge-style homes so that their two boys could attend Earl B. Lundy Elementary School.

With its one teacher for nine students, the one-room school 40 miles northwest of the Las Vegas Strip seemed like Shangri-La within the underfunded and crowded Clark County School District, which encompasses Las Vegas and outlying rural areas.

But by the time the Marinos' 4- and 5-year-old boys are ready to start school, Lundy might be closed.

It is a potential victim of the nation's economic crisis, which has endangered the survival of far-flung schoolhouses - an icon of rural America, immortalized in the "Little House on the Prairie" book and TV series, and often a community hub in no-stoplight towns.

Officials in 25 to 30 states are considering rural school cuts, said Marty Strange, policy director for the nonprofit Rural School and Community Trust. The one-teacher school is in particular danger. In 2005-06, the most recent year for which data are available, 335 remained, Strange said.

"It's a gut-wrenching decision," said Superintendent Nancy McGinley, whose Charleston County, S.C., district is proposing closing two rural middle schools.

Rural school advocates say funding gaps make the schools easy targets. Per-pupil costs are higher in smaller schools, and political power is usually centered in cities. Bigger schools have a wider range of classes and more specialists, such as art and music teachers.

But rural school supporters say children in large schools receive little individual attention, spend hours riding buses and miss out on parents playing a role in their education.

Even in a robust economy, Superintendent Lou Obermeyer said, her district in San Diego County eventually would have discussed closing the Palomar Mountain School, where enrollment had dwindled from about 50 students to seven. The district, which laid off teachers last year, simply couldn't afford to keep it open.

In Nevada, whose tourism and construction industries have imploded, the Clark County School District - the nation's fifth-largest - must cut about $120 million from a budget of more than $2 billion. Among the options: closing Lundy Elementary and another one-room school in Goodsprings that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Lundy's per-pupil cost is estimated at more than three times the district average. The district expects that closing Lundy would save about $240,000 a year. Lundy's students, in kindergarten through the fifth grade, would be bused about 75 minutes each morning, along with middle and high school students, to the town of Indian Springs.

The plan enraged Mount Charleston residents. The town's cluster of half-million-dollar homes looks like a village inside a snow globe, with picture windows and Christmas lights.. The 2000 Census pegs its population - generally white-collar and well educated - at 285. The district would not allow Lundy staff to be interviewed, and Northwest Region Superintendent Richard Carranza did not return phone calls seeking comment.