A one-room school district

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A one-room school district
Topics: Blake School, Safe Schools, Blake Elementary School, Sherry Eggleston
Posted by RaisingBakersfield Tue Nov 30, 1999 00:00:00 PST
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Drive 40 minutes north of Bakersfield up windy roads that carve a path through oil fields, honey-colored hills and cattle ranches, and you will come upon a quiet pocket of California living, a trip to another time.

Woody’s approximately 200 residents are served by a fire station, community hall, post office and Kern County’s (and on some days California’s) smallest school district, its teacher said.

Sherry Eggleston is the lone teacher at the K-8, one-room, Blake School. The only school in the Blake Elementary School District has three first-graders, three second-graders and a fifth-grader.

“It’s just like ‘Little House on the Prairie,’” said Eggleston, who, having been at Blake for one year, still laughs at the old-fashioned hand bell she rings to call the students back from recess.

This small school tucked between ranches is, in some ways, similar to other public schools.

A walk around the room reveals posters of verbs and math problems. Seven desks sit in rows, books line shelves and computers offer interactive lessons.

Out back is a basketball court and blacktop where, with pink chalk, first-graders Samantha Nielsen, McKenzie Branum and Kaitlyn Lagas practiced their spelling words.

At a kidney-shaped table, second-graders David Oakes, Bryan Garcia and Michaela Lagas, as well as fifth-grader Erik Garcia, glued beans to white paper in the shape of flowers and clouds.

But here’s where a lot of the similarities end and the unique situation that is Blake begins.

INSIDE A ONE-ROOM SCHOOL

The school, two connected portables that form one big room, sits on a patch of land next to the original one-room school that was moved to Main Street from its original site on Blue Mountain, said Erin Rogers, the district’s part-time secretary.

The original school with red wood siding and white trimmed windows was built in 1870 and doesn’t meet earthquake code, so classes are held in the portable. The classic building serves instead as the library, art center, secretary’s office and occasional lunch room if the weather is too poor to eat in the “cafeteria” — about half a dozen green picnic tables beneath shade trees.

Eggleston’s training at Cal State Bakersfield didn’t entirely prepare her for the quirks of a one-room school house.

Woody moves at its own pace so attendance and tardiness sometimes aren’t priorities, Eggleston joked. A lesson can fall by the wayside if one student is absent.

And with lesson plans for three grades, lectures are rare, she said. Most of the time, she and her teacher’s aide and parent, Jennie Lagas, work with students one-on-one.

The parents appreciate the personal attention Blake offers.

Bertha Garcia, who has lived in Woody for eight years, said through her son Erik: “She likes it because there’s less students and we can get better grades. The teacher here is very nice and she gives us a good education.”

“They just get a lot of attention and the kids are all really close,” said David Oakes, who trains horses.

But small schools have to make concessions.

There are no organized sports, so Eggleston takes the children on at least one field trip each month. They ride in Eggleston’s and Rogers’ cars because there are no busses. This year the children stepped onto a whaling ship and did the chicken dance at a Condors hockey game.

And there’s only one part-time custodian, so the students must clean up after themselves.

There’s no trash pickup either, so on “dump day” students help Rogers load up her truck with the week’s garbage, which she takes to the dump.

And in place of a music program, Rogers’ daughter comes once a week to teach the students to play instruments such as recorders and hand bells.

SIZE MATTERS

On the administrative side, Rogers, who started working with the district this school year, realized size sometimes doesn’t matter.

The district has to fill out as much state and federal paperwork as the big districts.

And at one point the school had one eighth-grader, which qualified Blake to receive $10,000, the amount given to bigger districts, for a program called Safe Schools. The program is meant to curb violence and gang activity and can be spent on things such as cameras and monitors.

“Our biggest issues are safety elements,” she said laughing. “For us, that’s: ‘If you see a snake, don’t pick it up. If there’s cattle on the road, stay to the side.’” The money was useless to them, she said.

For all its quirks, Blake has provided a sort of utopian experience in a school without bullying or gangs. ‘Say no to drugs’ week has little meaning for students here, Eggleston said.

But many of Blake’s students, some of whom will spend nine years there, will eventually go down the hill to Bakersfield’s North High where Eggleston worries the students will be “blown away.”

But Samantha’s mom, Betsy Carver, the school’s part-time custodian, is prepared for the transition her daughter will face about eight years down the road.

“That has to be a parent responsibility,” Carver said. “You have to educate them at home as well. ... It might be a culture shock but that’s life.”

Next year the school will add two kindergartners, siblings of the Lagas sisters and the Garcia brothers.

But as the school with high teacher turnover has experienced many times before, Eggleston will not be there. She’s accepted another unique teaching opportunity, this time in Kabul, Afghanistan.

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