A Year-Old Schoolhouse Blown Over as Waitsburg Schools Strain
The Lost Spring schoolhouse was wrecked by wind just as the district hired an extra teacher for a first-primary room bursting with 61 children.
WAITSBURG, Nov. 21.—Owing to the crowded condition of our public school this year, the school board found it necessary to add another teacher to their corps last week. Miss Elsie Conklin, a young lady of some experience and quite well known here, has been engaged to assist Miss Dale in the first primary room, as in this room there are 61 little folks and more steadily coming in each week. The public school faculty now numbers 11 teachers, with a total enrollment at the October report of 361 pupils. … The total days' attendance for the month was 6,530½, which, multiplied by ten cents—about the amount apportioned for each day's attendance—would make a total of about $650.35 to be received from the state. The amount apportioned to this district, together with the amount received from the special tax of five mills, keeps up the running expenses of the school with but little to spare. Last Thursday the Lost Spring school house was blown over and wrecked. It is thought it will not be repaired, but instead a new school house will have to be built. The school house was only built about a year ago.
“In this room there are 61 little folks and more steadily coming in each week.”
Waitsburg's 1903 squeeze—61 first-graders in one room, state aid barely covering running costs, and a year-old schoolhouse lost to wind—echoes today's rural school-capacity and facilities debates. It also shows how weather could erase a public building overnight in a district already stretched thin.
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