The Harvest Over the Classroom
As war labor demands pull students into Kennewick’s orchards, local schools adapt to a half-empty high school.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
With the exception of the absence of a manual training teacher and a light enrollment in the High School, Kennewick’s schools opened Tuesday morning with nothing to indicate that the stress of war is being felt in every phase of American activity. The opening enrollment in the high school was only 80, or only half of the enrollment of 160 last year. Enrollment in the two eighth grades is likewise light, but the seventh is up to the usual opening enrollment. The shortage in the high school and the eighth grade is due to the urgent need for workers in the fruit harvest. In many instances, parents of high school pupils have called up to say that their children will be in school just as soon as they can possibly be spared from work in the orchards. While the late coming of so many pupils is certain to operate against the efficiency of the schools in the first months of the term, every pupil who is kept out to perform necessary labor in saving the crops will be given an opportunity to make up lost work.
“The shortage in the high school and the eighth grade is due to the urgent need for workers in the fruit harvest.”
The tension between economic survival—in this case, seasonal agriculture—and public education remains a recurring theme in the Tri-Cities. Just as 1917 farmers struggled to balance the 'war effort' fruit harvest against attendance, modern agricultural districts continue to navigate school-year interruptions necessitated by the labor-intensive demands of regional produce.
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