Mainers mourn loss of local schools Pros, cons of consolidation not settled

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BURLINGTON – The swing sets behind the Burlington Elementary School don’t have swings on them anymore.

It’s been six years since children sat in the three classrooms that served kindergarten through fourth grade.

When it closed in 1995 and the 29 pupils were bused 10 miles to Enfield, the town lost its last school. And with it, residents lost one of the institutions that binds towns together, providing a sense of community and purpose.

For more than a century, parts of rural Maine have withered as people went elsewhere looking for work.

There was a speed up in the exodus in the 1990s, forcing those who remained to decide whether to close their last schools or to keep them open despite dwindling numbers of pupils. In the past decade, 35 schools were shut down, most of them in rural areas. Forty-four others were consolidated into 19 new buildings.

Just this week, the board of directors in SAD 4 (Guilford area) voted overwhelmingly to reorganize the district, closing three elementary schools. The proposal must by approved by voters at referendum in November.

The pros and cons of rural school consolidation have never been settled. While there are increased educational offerings when children go to larger schools, as well as financial savings, there is also a social cost when a community closes its last school.

Without a school, “You get so you don’t even know who your neighbors are,” lamented Orland Shorey, 65, a native of Burlington, which has 351 residents, nearly 20 percent fewer than in 1950.

The school was the town’s social center, bringing people together for events like Christmas pageants, said Shorey. He attended when there were four one-room schoolhouses, before Burlington founded SAD 31 with Enfield and other small communities.

“I think the younger people don’t want to settle here. They want a place with a school. You lose your younger generation when you lose your school,” he said.

According to Rachael Kilby, 33, Shorey’s daughter and chairwoman of Burlington’s Board of Selectmen, the biggest change is the loss of daily interaction with children walking up and down the road to school.

“When the school is in the middle of your town you give your attention to it and you give your attention to the kids there,” said Kilby, whose 5-year-old daughter rides the bus to the Enfield Station School each day.

Georgia Luce, 56, a lifelong Burlington resident remembers when in 1954 the town shut down its four one-room schoolhouses and moved all the students into a new elementary school. Back then, she said, “People were very interested in their children. They seemed to take part more when school was here.”

In some Maine towns the struggle to save small schools continues.

In Shirley, where residents have repeatedly voted to keep open their two-room schoolhouse, despite a projected enrollment of just eight pupils next fall, a selectman recently said, “It’s part of the little town’s identity.”

But the loss of rural schools still haunts the social landscape in many places.

In 1998, voters in Westfield, an Aroostook County town that is part of SAD 1, decided to close the town’s elementary school.

“You’d have to had been in the [town] for 25 years to see the disintegration of the community,” said Richard Watson, 61, chairman of Westfield’s Board of Selectmen and a native.

The only store in town closed about 10 years ago, and the only filling station about five years ago, Watson said. With the elementary school gone, “the only thing we have in town is the post office.”

“Schools gave the people a chance to be neighbors,” said Gene Kilpatrick, a retired sociology professor at the University of Maine at Presque Isle,

When the last school closes, it eradicates “the social relations that keep people together,” said the Aroostook County native who earned his bachelor’s degree at the now-defunct Ricker College in Houlton, and his master’s and doctorate degrees at Columbia University.

In rural areas, schools have been the traditional community centers, hosting town meetings and wedding receptions, as well as school activities, he said. “They were social halls as well as schools.”

Luckily, in Littleton, an Aroostook County town that closed its elementary school in 1999, someone had the foresight to build a snowmobile clubhouse, said Gerry Miller, a native who serves on the Board of Selectmen.

Now the social functions, like wedding receptions, that used to be held in the school are held in the clubhouse. That has helped hold the community together, Miller said. “Every little town has to have a central place for an identity.”

Falling rural school enrollments are not a new phenomenon.

In a 1991 report, University of Maine researchers wrote, “While [school] consolidation provided more efficient utilization of resources and an increase in services to students … closing the local school changed the quality of life in many rural communities. The school in rural America exemplifies the values and traditions of community life. Once gone, many community members feel the loss of a way of life.”

Watson of Westfield recalled the community suppers of his youth. He said the school closings of recent years are akin to what happened years ago with Grange halls and Masonic lodges as their membership fell away.

He commended SAD 1 officials for trying to keep the town’s school open. They were willing to bus students into Westfield to buoy the enrollment for a while. But more and more Westfield parents pushed for their children to go to school in Presque Isle where more educational programs were offered.

“I don’t fault the school system,” he said. “If we weren’t part of SAD 1, I can’t see how our little town could have maintained that school [for as long as it did].”

When schools close, the buildings often assume a new function in the community.

East of Burlington, just before the pavement ends on Route 188, stands a red clapboard, one-room schoolhouse. The Grand Falls Township Historical Society keeps the school as it was when students attended.

But no one lives in Grand Falls Township full time anymore. Its last official resident departed sometime between the 1980 and 1990 Censuses.

One of Burlington’s old one-room schoolhouses is now a tractor shed.

In Lowell, immediately east of Burlington, the town office is in an old one-room school.

And in Burlington, a couple of years after the students moved out of the elementary school, the town office moved into one classroom, while the volunteer community library took over another. So far, the school’s old kindergarten room remains empty.