Historic News Articles 

One day near the end of autumn, magazine staffer James Denney and I were motoring through the rolling and rich farmland south of Wilber.  We were looking for a milo harvest scene which he could photograph in color for use next fall.

Jim was doing all the work.  I was along mainly for the ride; there’s nothing to recharge one’s batteries like an opportunity to get out of smoggy Omaha and breathe some fresh air; to stop talking about traffic problems and chat with farmers and small town merchants about crops and the Nebraska football team.  Both, of course, are year-around subjects.

So every now and then I sneak out of the office and hitch a ride with Mr. Denney.

A few miles south of DeWitt our Ford topped a rise In the road and there, dead ahead, resting in a large flat saucer of land, was a sprawling new brick schoolhouse.

It was my first experience at seeing such a school—the fruit of Nebraska’s difficult but diligent school reorganization efforts.

It’s a big school and it’s a good school.  And it is a far, far cry from the little white, square, wooden structure perched on a crossroads corner, with the two tiny shanties out back.

Mr. Denney and I continued on our way, but he vowed to return later to tell about this new schoolhouse, called Tri County Junior- Senior High School, and the work that went into making It a success.  We do today.  See the cover and Page 4.

The accompanying photo of youngsters in a gym class is light years away from a game of fox and geese in the schoolyard snow of yesteryear.

On the Cover.....

Three seniors at the new Tri County High School south of DeWitt sprint through the nearby milo field.  Left to right are Susan Spilker, Dave Vogt and Alice Grabowski.  Color photo by James Denney.

 

Editor, Magazine of the Midlands.

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Photos and Story by James Denney

DeWitt, Neb.

AP - The early morning frost glistened on the near-by milo field stalks, bright yellow buses carrying happy students were arriving from all directions.

It was 8:20 a.m. and Tri County High School, a modern structure located smack in the middle of rich farm land of the Big Blue River valley four miles south of here on Highway 103, was ready for another day.

High schools growing out of milo fields are on the increase in Nebraska—they seem in some areas to be an answer to the age-old redistricting conflict between towns.

Today’s cover illustrates the change, with Tri County student Susan Spilker of Plymouth, left, running hand-in-hand through a milo field near her school with Dave Vogt of DeWitt and Alice Grabowski of Plymouth.  The three are seniors.

Tri County, now in its third year, was chosen by the Magazine of the Midlands as an example how these new country schools are created, and to examine their problems.

High schools located out in the country are not limited to Tri County.  Others in Nebraska include Grand Island Northwest, Hickman - Norris (a campus complex, with both secondary and elementary buildings), Columbus Lake View, Springfield-Platteview, Hastings Adams Center, and Central of Valparaiso (unique in that it was a former missile base).  And they are even more numerous in western Iowa.

Will the trend continue?

“I think it will,” answered Tri County’s Fred Schickell, the superintendent.  “I think we have broken down the feelings of intense loyalty at three communities and have created a strong school district that is able to offer much more than the three smaller districts could give.”

The districts to which he referred to were at Plymouth, Swanton and DeWitt.  Plymouth is in Jefferson County.  Swanton and DeWitt are in Saline County.

The name Tri County comes from reorganization of the 17 old districts into the new unit. They were formerly located in Gage, Jefferson and Saline Counties.  The new school is in the extreme northeast corner of Jefferson County.

One of the chief sponsors of the new school is former State Senator Arnold Ruhnke of Plymouth, now a lobbyist for the Nebraska County Officials’ Association.  Ruhnke explained that under the present tax bases neither Plymouth nor DeWitt felt it could offer quality education.  He added, however, that the job of deciding what should be done wasn’t easy.

Swanton entered the picture after its school had closed and the community was looking for a district to join.  Ruhnke served on the first board of education of the new district after it was voted into existence in the 1966 election.  “I still support the idea of the new school,” he said. “My only objection has been to the amount of the bonded indebtedness.  Originally, the bonds to finance the district were to have been about $600,000. After the district was created, this amount was doubled.”

Tri County High School and Junior High has an enrollment of 328. The State Department of Education gives the district a Class 3 rating.

In addition to the new junior-senior high school building in the milo fields, Tri County operates elementary schools in Plymouth and DeWitt.

“We started with an elementary school in Swanton, but because enrollment was small the parents themselves asked that Swanton children travel by bus to another elementary school,” he explained. 

Busing Tri County’s 328 youngsters is a major undertaking.  Schickell estimates that nearly 1,000 miles of travel daily is required by 10 vehicles.  The district owns 12 buses and contracts with another. Nearly all the drivers are farmers.

“The advantage of having farmer-drivers is that when pop is busy in the fields, mother will drive in his place,” he said.

The buses roam all over the countryside, crisscrossing in some locales with buses from other districts.  One unusual stop is in Western (17 miles from Tri County), a community that has closed its high school.  Some Western students attend Tri County.  A few are taken to Fairbury and others attend the new Meridian School at Tobias.

Schickell said it was possible that Western might join Tri County.  Regardless, the bus trip to Western is the longest route from the school by the milo fields.

Not only are the buses used for getting students to and from school, they also are used for hauling students and teams to athletic events.

“We have a good system for the athletic games, depending upon where they are going to be played.  The students are taken home, and have just enough time to grab a sack lunch which they consume after being picked up by a second bus en route to the game,” he said.

The superintendent said, “This isn’t like city living but then I think we have some advantages over the city, too.”

When the new building was occupied, Schickell and others insisted that athletic trophies won by the former schools would not appear in the new trophy case.

He said: “We wanted Tri County to win its own trophies for Tri County.  Let’s remember that both DeWitt and Plymouth were red hot rivals in athletics before.  Old trophies could only stir up trouble.”

The new building has 38 rooms and is modern in every way.  Since Schickell had served five months as DeWitt Superintendent before joining Tri County, he was able to make some comparisons.

He took this writer to the business education room, pointing to students working with modern machines.

“At DeWitt,” he said, “we had maybe two or three old typewriters.”

Federal aid has played a big role in helping to finance the modern equipment.  Shickell estimated that nearly $60,000 was obtained from various “title” grants under the Federal Education Act to purchase machines, projectors and other equipment.

He said hiring teachers is no problem and gave three reasons:

—Low pupil-teacher ratio (about 16 to 1).

—New building and new facilities.

—Salary schedule ($6,000 base plus paid hospital insurance).

Most of the teachers are young and many are working toward advanced degrees.  Only three teachers in the system don’t have degrees.

Schickell said with the exception of about six teachers, the staff is new. “I know under the old schools, we couldn’t attract the kind of talent we have today,” he said.  Does a school out in the country have more problems in bad weather?

“We missed three days last year because of snow-clogged roads,” he said. “However, I think other schools around us missed the same three days.”

Security has not offered any problem.  “We keep flood lights on during the night,” he said. “I’m certain that the farmers living around here would call the sheriff if trouble erupted.”

The school has its own sewage disposal plant and receives electricity from the Norris Public Power District.  Schickell hopes eventually to have an elementary building at the site so Tri County can be called a campus.

Serving three communities can have its obstacles for the superintendent who tries to attend civic meetings in all three towns.  “I do the best I can but sometimes the meetings in two places fall on the same nights.”

Activities within the school have presented some of the most difficult both for school officials and parents.

Schickell observed: “In a Class D school like Plymouth or DeWitt, Johnny might play football, basketball, and run in track.  He was on the Student Council, in the class play and was a member of the choir.

“But now we are a Class B School under the Nebraska High School Activities Association rating system.  It just isn’t possible for Johnny to be in everything as he was in the smaller school.  Now, he has to pick and choose. Some don’t like it but it is a fact of life.”

Another change: Plymouth and DeWitt both played eight-man football.  Tri County plays 11-man ball.  The school’s fortunes in 11-man haven’t been on the winning side.

Steps are being taken to strengthen the athletic program by starting a junior high football team—something none of the schools had before.

Football games through last fall were played in Plymouth (the old 8- man field had to be stretched from 80 to 100 yards).  But next fall, Tri County will have its own field on the north side of the school.

“All of these activities are going through a period of transition,” he said.  “It will take time to work them out."

Schickell constantly is checking on bus routing in attempting to determine ways of improving transportation.  He hopes eventually to have each bus equipped with two-way radios in case of weather situations that merit last minute changes.

Busing students has traditionally been one of the biggest headaches facing a school administrator since the school bus came into being.  It could become a city problem, too, because of recent Supreme Court decisions.

On Tri County’s first day of the operation, one driver nearing the end of his route heard a small fry in the back of the bus crying and carrying on.

“The driver,” said Schickell, “discovered the child had taken the wrong bus and was 25 miles from home.  Needless to day, both child and mother were very unhappy with the system for awhile.”

Now buses are clearly marked with numbers and drivers know who should be on each bus.  Tri County hasn’t lost a child since that first day.

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Lincoln Journal Star, March 2, 1969

Cornfield High Schools Shoot Up in Nebraska

By DEAN TERRILL - Southeast Nebraska Bureau

They’re omitted on road maps and camouflaged in the yellow pages, but “cornfield high schools” are shooting up like seeded crops in southeastern Nebraska.

Oasis-like in settings several miles from any town, the million- dollar layouts are an educational force to be reckoned with — and analyzed.

Already, sprawling new plants are finishing out their second school years at Tri County and Sandy Creek.  Norris, Central and Centura — also relatively new identities — are going it country style with buildings scheduled for fall occupancy.  Meridian is moving toward a bond election.

Besides the schools being built between towns, a number of others have been or will be constructed on the edge of villages.

Unlike controversial Class 6 high schools which lack elementary programs, these new districts provide K-12 (kindergarten through 12th grade) programs, usually continuing village grade schools as satellites.

The system coordination makes the plans acceptable to educators who have scowled at Class 6 setups for decades.

Are the new rural schools then the start of a real trend in Nebraska education?  Are they merely a second-best expedient for consolidations that couldn’t have come about otherwise?  Most important, do they measure up in practice?

Had No Doubts

“I had no doubts about the operation here from the very first day,” said Fred L. Shickell, who heads the Tri County system deriving from DeWitt (Gage County), Plymouth (Jefferson County) and Swanton (Saline County).  “I came from Iowa where such districts have been common for years, so I knew they would be workable here as well. 

Sixty miles west, Sandy Creek Supt. James Micek amplified the success story.  His impressive junior-senior high school has quickly become the hub of activities for Glenvil, DeWeese, Edgar and Fairfield, each of which formerly had its own high school.

“This situation is 100 times better than what any of the member schools had before,” Micek said.  “The curriculum is much broader and students have discovered competition.

We’ve found no real problems from building in the country.”

Realistically, however, even the strongest advocates admit that their schools were born of desperation.  Often it was the failure of other reorganization tries which brought acceptability to the “new entity” concept.

“Norris (combining several southern Lancaster and northern Gage County high schools) never would have materialized if we hadn’t started talking a rural location long ago,” said Harold Williams, Hickman farmer who has been board chairman since the district’s 1964 inception.  “Two years ago our bond issue of practically $2 million carried by an amazing show of 72%.”

Though preferring consolidations tied to “the economics of stable communities,” State Education Department officials have taken no stand against the cluster experiments.  They agree that the schools are providing better opportunities that their students had previously in the separate village-based high schools.

“We’re less concerned about a school’s location per se than the resources behind it,” said Dr. Floyd Miller, department director.  “Other things being equal, we prefer such town advantages as police protection and other municipal services.  But we also recognize that there isn’t always the capability of agreeing to build in any one community.  This is because old rivalries in sports or business may carry more weight with voters than the best interests of students.

Dr. Miller doubts that current interest has the significance of a real rural trend.  Some involved in the new districts, however, believe they will prove out well enough to be followed in substantial numbers.

The reservation most often expressed is not unique to country locations, but applies equally to all modest-sized redistricting.  In the face of declining rural populations, will enrollments and valuations hold up long enough to justify the sizeable investments.

Cited, for example, is the recent closing of Bratton Union, a school near Humboldt—Bratton Union had pioneered much the same concept decades ago.  Dwindling enrollment brought its demise.

Uniquely Blessed

Uniquely blessed from the standpoint is Tri County, which out-scrapped nearby Beatrice to gain two tax-lucrative fertilizer plants.  A wrench factory in DeWitt also helped shape a district with a $19 million valuation, a comfortable levy (35 mills) and “one of the best teacher salary packages in the state.”

“Sure we’re unusually fortunate at Tri County, but if Nebraska succeeds in is big push for industry, similar districts could become common,” said Supt. Shickell.  “Getting teachers is certainly not the problem some had feared.  With lower living costs and a slower pace among our inducements, we’ve attracted some top teachers even from Lincoln, Grand Island, Scottsbluff and Fremont.”

Transportation, the big bugaboo of all consolidated districts, is somewhat eased when schools are built centrally rather than in a fringe town.  Expansion space is a major asset, as evidenced by full quarter sections owned at Tri County and Norris.

“At Norris we took our excess land out of production and collected a $20,000 lump sum through a federal farm, program,” said Williams.  “That gave us a good down payment on the whole tract.”

Still utilizing old facilities in its fifth year of operation, Norris goes to the unusual next fall by transporting grade-schoolers as well as high-schoolers to one (two building) campus.  The Lancaster-Gage merger had evolved from four high school districts—Hickman, Firth, Cortland, and Panama—plus Roca, Holland and Princeton.  The valuation is now $13 million.

On Missile Site

Though there is considerable variance in the size of schools, most fit into the B or C athletic brackets.

Meridian, still in the… of firm establishment Tobias, Daykin, and Alexandria, has a valuation of $6 million.

Central, which teamed Ceresco, Raymond, and Valparaiso, is building on the former Agnew missile site.  A Centura location four miles north of Cairo will serve that town, Boelus and Dannebrog.

What happens to rivalries which have existed for generations when small towns find themselves suddenly allied?  School personnel say they dissipate unbelievably fast.  A

January soup supper at Norris attracted 1,100 patrons.  Sandy Creek boasts ‘near-tremendous followings” even for junior high basketball.

Head cheerleader Barb Glass summed up the loyalty aspect for Sandy Creek, for her own Fairfield and for fellow cheerleaders hailing from both Glenvil and Edgar.

“We’re all friends now, while just a couple years pack we were enemies of a sort, like our folks before us,” she quipped.  “We’re every one a Sandy Creek Cougar.”