Today in 2016 we have become accustomed to thinking of our Pea Ridge Schools as quality, growing, strong-performing schools. It is no surprise that we need a facilities development plan for the next several years to avoid bursting at the seams. Even the management of vehicle traffic around the schools has become a challenge. It has not always been so. Some of us who were attending Pea Ridge Schools in the late 1940s went through a time when we were not sure that we would be able to graduate from Pea Ridge High School. We feared that soon there might no longer be a Pea Ridge High School to graduate from.
The year 1949 was, I think, a pivotal and crucial year in the life of our Pea Ridge High School. The changes which took place then have impacted the future of our School District from that time until today. The Arkansas Legislature had enacted a new school consolidation law, requiring a minimum school enrollment of 300 if a school was to be permitted to have a high school. For our Pea Ridge High School, the options available were, either consolidate with other nearby schools to achieve the required minimum school size, or be absorbed into the Rogers School District. Consolidation agreements were worked out with the several remaining rural elementary schools around Pea Ridge, such as Central School and Twelve Corners School, and a serious effort was made to consolidate Garfield High School with Pea Ridge High School. When that effort to merge Garfield High with Pea Ridge High failed, Garfield became part of the Rogers District, and Pea Ridge entered an unusual consolidation plan with Sulphur Springs.
Pea Ridge and Sulphur Springs High schools would continue to function somewhat independently, but under the supervision of the County School superintendent. It was a strange arrangement, involving communities quite distant from each other across the county, but without it, our seniors today would be graduating from Rogers High School, not from Pea Ridge High School. It makes me grateful for the work of Hugh Webb and other school board members of the time, that they persisted in their efforts to secure the future for our local High School.
Of course, since public schools came into existence in Arkansas in the 1880s, there have been several periods of school reorganization. Communities such as Pea Ridge and Garfield once had 10 or more schools covering areas which today are served by one school. That pattern developed during the days when horses were everybody's principle means of transportation. Those schools were small, rural, one- and two-room schools, often with one teacher teaching all eight grades. We probably wouldn't want to go back to that pattern today, even though many people who lived through that period of time would speak of good things coming out of those little community elementary schools.
In 1929, we saw a significant round of school consolidations. In that year, several of our small Pea Ridge area schools were closed -- schools such as Sassafras School northeast of town, Shady Grove northwest of town, Possum Trot out west of town, Corinth north of the military park, Cross Lanes and Buttrams on Leetown Road east of town. Still, several of the smaller schools were able to continue on -- schools such as Twelve Corners, Central School at Leetown, Bayliss west of Gateway and Clantonville east of Gateway. Students who came out of those community schools normally would then attend Pea Ridge High School if they pursued a high school education, but the rural elementary schools were able to continue holding classes until 1948, and Bayliss School continued holding elementary classes even into the 1950s.
Administrative expense and efficiency have long been serious issues for small high schools, and sometimes consolidation efforts have been driven by the desire for greater administrative efficiency. Also, a small high school may be unable to offer as many courses as are needed, often cannot afford to keep up with technological developments, and may be unable to offer the desired extracurricular activities and advanced placement curriculum. On the other side of the discussion, often the point is made that "as goes the school, so goes the community." In fact, many small communities, having lost their school, have withered away and are no longer on the map. Some small communities have pointed out that their schools, though small, have performed quite well academically. Others make the point that advancing technology is able to provide teachers on screen for certain crucial subjects even in schools which cannot afford to have the teacher on campus. Others argue that students in very large schools tend to get lost in the crowd and do not perform as well as students in smaller schools with a stronger sense of unified community.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 06/01/2016