This Historic Idaho School Is Closing

A local country store (pictured above) is accepting donations in hopes of winning a reprieve.  Almo School is still only half-way to meeting its operating budget.  On Saturday morning I was heartbroken when I picked up a newspaper and saw the story.  My mother and her brothers all went to a similar school through 6^th grade.

They got excellent educations.

Country schools are hanging by threads throughout the Mountain West.  Population increasingly is being centered on a handful of urban centers and large suburbs.

Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to raise their kids in a quiet rural setting with low teacher to student ratios?  We don’t think that way.  We think about our own personal ambitions.

Almo School could be saved for another year if someone wrote a check for 11-thousand dollars, although.  It wouldn’t forestall the same crisis following every school year.

About a year ago I was reading a biography of Harold B. Lee.  A legendary leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  Lee graduated the Normal School at Albion, not far from Almo.  Then he went on to teach at a small rural school in Eastern Idaho.  He juggled two dozen students every day in 8 different grades.  Most became very successful in life.  What are we missing?