Small is beautiful … and smart
Living and learning in remote communities in the mountains, valleys, deserts and coastal regions of the Golden State can be a challenge, one that requires grit and determination on the part of students, teachers, administrators and school board members.
But rural enthusiasts like Rob Schamberg, superintendent in El Dorado County’s Black Oak Mine Unified School District, say they wouldn’t have it any other way.
After serving more than a decade in urban San Francisco Bay Area school districts, he’s happily settled in Black Oak Mine’s 421 square miles of mountainous terrain, overseeing educational services for 1,846 students in seven schools.
“When I first got here after working in New Haven and Hayward, I thought it was ridiculous to have 15 districts and all these superintendents in a county that only had 23,000 students,” Schamberg says. He initially believed that it was inefficient to maintain so many small districts and local boards. “I came in thinking: ‘My job is to eliminate the need for my job,’ ” he recalls.
Within three years, Schamberg had become a true believer in the value of small, up-close-and-personal rural schooling.
“Small districts can turn on a dime,” he says. “I discovered that consolidation does not make economic sense.” On the contrary, local school boards with intimate ties to communities and students are practicing direct democracy “the way it should be done,” he says. He also found his work as an administrator more meaningful in a smaller venue.
“During my time in larger districts, I was in the business of resource allocation and overseeing broad educational programs in a generic sense,” Schamberg says. “In this job, I’m applying money directly to meet student needs.”
Black Oak Mine has won a number of state and national awards for its innovative educational programs. They include peer counseling for high school students and an orientation for ninth-graders that begins with a white-water rafting trip down the American River—one of the region’s chief natural attractions. The trip helps entering high school students get to know their teachers and each other.
“There are no loners at school after the trip,” Schamberg says. “We’ve focused on helping our students feel safe, secure and focused.”
Like many rural districts, Black Oak Mine is battling declining enrollment and has lost almost 400 students since 1992, a reduction of nearly 20 percent. To attract families to the rugged region, the district entered a national competition and was named one of the country’s “Top 100 Best Communities for Young People” earlier this year by the America’s Promise Alliance, a nonprofit service group headed by Alma Powell. (Her husband, Colin, the former secretary of state and general, sits on the nonprofit’s board.) Black Oak Mine students helped write the winning application, and a 2007 graduate of the district’s Golden Sierra High School will accompany the district delegation to an awards ceremony in the nation’s capital this fall.
Attracting teachers
Rural districts have also come up with creative strategies to help make life easier for teachers in isolated communities. The 12-student Kashia Elementary School District in a remote corner of Sonoma County provides a two-bedroom, two-bath “teacherage” (named after but antithetical to the hermitages that provide shelter to recluses) adjacent to the school. Surrounded by redwoods, the one-room schoolhouse is located on the Stewarts Point Rancheria and serves children from the Kashia-Pomo tribe.
Mary Caponio, a veteran teacher with experience teaching special education and bilingual kindergarten, began teaching K-8 classes here in August. Having a house just up the hill from the school is a big help, Caponio says, especially since she routinely puts in 12-hour days.
“I spend my weekends at the house I own in Jenner,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to drive an hour on those winding Highway 1 roads to get to work and back every day.”
Caponio says teaching multiple grades in a single room is extremely challenging. She has an aide four days a week, and a prominent Sonoma County painter has taught art at the school for years. Still, Caponio is stretched pretty thin. “My students are terrific,” she says. “They work so hard and do such great work. I am so proud of them.”
Despite the many rewards of the job, she understands why the district has had trouble keeping teachers. “It’s because of where they are,” she says. “Teaching children in so many grades and at different levels within those grades requires a great deal of juggling.”
Rural schools, cities and counties are also designing creative instructional programs—all designed to deepen students’ knowledge of and ties to their respective communities.
Many rural schools, including those in Anderson Valley, Nevada City and on the Monterey Peninsula, have also instituted “place-based learning” to use the wilderness itself as a living laboratory for historical and environmental study. The name is an umbrella term that can cover student-led activities involving everything from species preservation to local economic development. For example, at Kashia, Caponio enlists tribal elders to teach students about American Indian culture and about native plants that grow in the forest surrounding the school.
Small and rural makes sense for other reasons.
Beverly Flynn, principal and superintendent at another Sonoma County school district, the 82-student, K-8 Horicon Elementary, says these rural schools are integral parts of local communities that offer unique advantages.
“Every adult knows every child,” says Flynn. “No one falls through the cracks. In rural communities, people who work at the school are part of the community. I know students’ parents and probably their grandparents. Teachers at Horicon stay with their classes for two years. That really creates a strong bond. Other districts don’t have that luxury.”
—Carol Brydolf