Why Ogilvie Matters and the Demise of Small School America
by A look into why small schools and their towns are eliminated and why we should care if they do. When accountability and budgets are only paper documents its these documents that can destroy a community.
I graduated in 1984 from Ogilvie High School. A small school located almost directly in the middle of Minnesota. The teachers were incredible and a few are still around with the same passion that was there when I attended so long ago. Over the years budget constraints have taken their toll on elective classes and other resources that help children succeed at the highest level. These constraints have been battering the school like a hurricane on a levy helped to protect a city from destruction. This fall a different levy is in need of desperate attention or a different kind of storm will befall a city and eliminate a school in the process.On November 4th, 2008, that levy failed and the school will be left to consolidate with other schools and new school boundaries will be drawn and come 2009 a new school year comes one less town and one less school that mattered. Driving to my daughters where she goes to school in Olivia, which has already combined three schools into one years ago, I pass another town and another school in MacLeod County West that will also close its doors next year and consolidate. It happens all over the state and the country every election year.
Small schools and their communities lack the resources that larger schools have to compete and sustain in an ever changing climate. There was a time when going to a small school had almost every benefit of a larger school when it came to education. Times have changed and we continually ask these communities that don’t have the resources to fund our schools when the state and federal levels keep taking these funds away. We ask farmers, small business owners, and other families that make up these small towns across Minnesota to stretch their property taxes that they can barely afford in order to help preserve their children’s education and ultimately…even their child’s school.
It shouldn’t be this way, it wasn’t always this way, and we can’t allow another school to pass under the waters of a failed levy. It’s time to take a stand and say enough is enough. When our nation is falling farther and farther behind the rest of the world and the rest of the world is taking our children’s jobs it’s time to take a stand. We can’t afford to let another school succumb to the politics of education to the wayside.
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