If you have ever driven the farm roads on a Friday night in the fall, you know where the light is. It is at the football field behind the country school. Half the town is in the stands. The other half is at the concession stand, which the band parents run. I love those nights more than I can say, and I want to say a word for the school that makes them.
The country school is the heart of a small town. In a lot of towns I know, it is the biggest employer for miles. It is where the town votes, where the town holds its funerals when the church is too small, where the town finds out who is sick and who needs a casserole. I believe all of this sincerely. That is exactly why I am not worried about it.
The Legislature has put about a billion dollars a year toward private tuition and home schooling, and some folks out in the country have asked what good it does them. The nearest private school may be several counties over. The family that wants it would spend the morning in the truck. I understand the question. I think it misses what a choice is for.
A choice is valuable even when you cannot use it. When I was a boy, the big mail-order catalog came to our house every year. We could not afford most of what was in it, and the things we could afford did not ship out our way. But I read that catalog until the pages went soft. It told me that the world had more in it than our county did, and that was worth something. The money for private schools is that catalog. A family in a small town may never order from it. They can still turn the pages.
Meanwhile, the country school will do what it has always done, which is make do. I have watched those schools stretch a dollar further than any business I know. They share a music teacher with the next town over. The principal drives a bus route. The coach teaches history, and teaches it the way a coach would, with energy. These are not signs of a school in trouble. These are signs of character, and you do not get character by being handed things.
I have heard people say that if the country school ever closes, the town closes with it. I take that seriously. But I have also noticed that country people are the toughest people in Texas, and tough people do not need their schools coddled. A town that loves its school will find a way to keep it. That is a test of love, and I trust small towns to pass it.
This fall I will vote for my party’s man for the Senate, because I want the country school to keep its place in line. I am told the other fellow would put that money back into schools like it, and I do not want to see a school that tough start being handed things now.
So let the money go where the private schools are. The country school has the Friday lights, and the band parents, and the coach who teaches history. It has always been asked to wait its turn.
It is very good at waiting.
D. M.