May 9 Meeting Will Focus on Future of School (and Town)

The Dorchester School's monthly newsletter confirms there will be a public meeting this Wednesday, May 9, to discuss the deteriorating conditions of the school's main building, as well as options to replace the 80-year-old main structure. The meeting will allow patrons to view the results of the new construction study and look at options presented to the School Board. Tours of the facility will be conducted following the presentation.

The meeting is to begin at 8 p.m. in the multi-purpose room. All Dorchester School patrons are encouraged to attend this important meeting regarding Dorchester's future. (For more background on the meeting, click here.)

As patrons ponder whether to invest in a new school building, we wanted to step back and examine the educational situations in nearby communities.

Today's Lincoln Journal Star includes an article on the closing of the school in Bradshaw. Some of our readers will recall that Bradshaw was once part of the Crossroads Conference, which still includes Dorchester. While Dorchester has advantages that Bradshaw does not -- including a larger population and relative proximity to Lincoln -- there are similarities between the two communities. Therefore, we believe today's Journal Star story is quite relevant.

Here are some edited excerpts from the news article:

BRADSHAW, Neb. — Sixty miles west of Lincoln, Bradshaw's last day of school -- the last playground banter, the last hurrah -- is coming up much too quickly, May 18. ...The Heartland school board (formerly Henderson) voted 5-1 in December to close the Bradshaw attendance center and to bus all the students to Henderson, 11 miles away. That ends an educational tradition that began in Bradshaw 126 years ago.

Sharon Zierott, the only Heartland board member from Bradshaw, cast the single no vote before stepping down. “When they start hauling things out of the school, that’s when it will probably be the hardest,” she said. Zierott, part of the class of 1954, sees Bradshaw's future as a matter of taxation without representation.

Several players from the eight-man Bradshaw team that won a state championship in 1969 went to a recent school board meeting. They were there to ask that all the trophies and awards Bradshaw students won before the 1998 Bradshaw-Henderson consolidation go to the Bradshaw Community Center for display. “We’re losing our heart,” they said. “We’re not going to lose our past, too.”

Bradshaw’s downtown business district appears past its most prosperous point. There’s no grocery store, for example, and no hardware store. There is a bank, a post office, a grain elevator, and several other businesses clustered either downtown or a few blocks away along U.S. Highway 34. Perry Siebert of Siebert Custom Paint and Body doesn’t feel so good about what’s happening to local education. “I think it’s a bad deal,” he said. “Properties will be devalued because of it.”

These excerpts reveal not only the struggles Bradshaw has experienced following its consolidation with Henderson, it also provides a glimpse of things to come for all small communities that lose their school. Put simply: As goes your school, goes your town.

As Wednesday's meeting approaches, we are reminded of the question posed by Dorchester Superintendent Alan Ehlers: "Will we be known as the generation that allows future generations to suffer with below standard facilities -- or worse, a consolidated district that may cause the town to decline and send tax dollars to another town and district?" The choice is up to the residents of the Dorchester school district.