Population decline has become a major issue for rural schools in Nebraska. It has led to many schools consolidating, if not the entire school then at least the athletic teams. I grew up attending Loup County Public Schools in Taylor, Nebraska from 1994-2007. While I was there it was normal to see classes as small as three or four to as large as thirteen or fourteen. Most elementary teachers taught two grade levels in a shared classroom and high school teachers had to teach all 7-12 grade students in their subject area. Some time after I graduated, the population became low enough that the athletic teams had to consolidate with another school and the state required the community to vote whether they should continue to support the school and keep it open or close the doors for good. The community banded together to keep the school open and implemented initiatives to try to increase enrollment such as free preschool, 1:1 laptop program, free door-to-door busing for students coming from outside of town, and STEM lab.
The same issue of population and enrollment is taking place in rural schools in Korea. We visited a school that was facing this issue. Seosang Elementary School is a small school located on the outskirts of Chuncheon and surrounded by small fields of many different crops. Driving up to the school almost felt a little like home. In 2013, Seosang Elementary was seeing class sizes of around five students and, like LCPS, they didn’t want to have to close the school. Their solution was to apply to become a Samsung Smart School, a sort of grant program that supplies both hardware and software to schools showing a gap in educational and cultural opportunities. Since then, Seosang has become a very popular school in the area with waiting lists of families who want to send their children there. They limit the class sizes to about twelve students as decided by the teachers and administration and due to the physical limitations of the school. They also focus on student happiness along with learning. The students we met there definitely seemed happy and engaged in their learning.
Seosang Elementary and Loup County Public Schools may face some slightly different circumstances but they both have very similar goals: to remain open in order to provide the best opportunities possible to the students who attend there.
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