School Bells in Chase County, Kansas: From One-Room Schools to Consolidation and Unification

Chase County, located in the beautiful Flint Hills of east central Kansas, expanded rapidly in the decades after the Civil War. The county's population quadrupled to 8,246 from 1870 to 1900, as settlers arrived to stake out farms and work in the booming limestone quarries. Many had large families with eight to ten children. To serve their educational needs, the county established 66 districts with one-room schools where children could obtain a basic education, learning to read, write, and calculate.

As this video shows, communities were proud of their local schools and reluctant to lose them. But professional educators and the Kansas legislature favored consolidation to provide country children broader educational opportunities. In the 20th century pressures to consolidate and unify school districts would multiply, as Chase County, like other rural counties, experienced a sharp decline in pupil enrollments.

Based on extensive research in the Chase County Historical Museum, and other archives, as well as interviews with local residents, this video looks at the people and issues that shaped public education in this county. It focuses on the period from the Civil War to the early 21st century when the school board closed the historic Cottonwood Falls elementary school that had served the county for 106 years. By 2010, Chase County, which once had 66 common or grade schools, and seven high schools, had remaining only one elementary school and one junior-senior high school.

Professor Alfred Eckes, an emeritus professor of history at Ohio University, researched the topic and provided the narration. Others appearing in the video are Dawn Sisson, curator of the Chase County Historical Museum and Library, and Steve Dawson and Tom Thompson, Board members.