CLAFLIN — Barton County residents will decide whether to break up with their school district and “start fresh” following heartbreak and anger over the closure of a rural community’s high school.
The change could result in hundreds of students displaced and three more schools shut down.
The Aug. 1 disorganization vote is a test case for rural communities that increasingly have to make decisions to shut down or consolidate as populations dwindle and schools face financial strain.
“This is brand new territory for the Department of Education, for the State Board of Education and basically every district in the state of Kansas,” said KSDE general counsel Scott Gordon during a June 27 meeting in Claflin.
Dissolving the district is likely to have widespread consequences for all district schools and likely will increase residents’ taxes, according to opponents of disorganization.
Wilson parent Kayla Cullens said the split needs to happen because the Claflin-based Unified School District 112 school board voted to shut down Wilson High School.
The district covers portions of five counties, including the Holyrood, Bushton, Claflin, Dorrance, Lorraine, Wilson, Beaver and Odin communities, along with other rural areas. Claflin and Wilson are a little less than a half hour apart, and the other communities mostly fall within a 10-30 minute range of each other.
Cullens, part of a disorganization campaign, said the district’s school board had long treated the Wilson community unfairly. She said the “hostility” in the decision to close the high school was the latest evidence of other schools being prioritized over Wilson.
“It’s been growing animosity between both ends of the district since consolidation, and it’s now a good time just to part ways,” Cullens said. “They weren’t willing to work with us. They weren’t willing to look at the bigger picture.”
Michael Kratky, a lifelong Wilson resident and fellow disorganization advocate, said the Wilson shutdown was a bad decision by the board. Kratky said part of his frustration stemmed from Claflin’s consolidation with Wilson, Holyrood, Bushton and Lorraine in 2010, when the Claflin school district needed financial help.
Kratky said the district didn’t extend the same help these past two years to Wilson.
“They’re shooting for everything to be centrally located eventually in Claflin. … (The district) helped them survive. They didn’t help us survive,” Kratky said.
The district now has three schools left: Central Plains Elementary, Central Plains Junior-Senior High School and Wilson Elementary School.
Cullens said she is aware that disorganization isn’t likely to re-open the high school, but she said the Wilson community will fare better under a different district school board.
“I do not think it will get re-opened,” Cullens said. “I hope it will, and it’s really the only chance we have of reopening it. But I don’t see a yes vote opening our high school.”
