Tiny schools - Opinions? Experiences?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My daughter is due to start school next year so it’s time for us to knuckle down and choose one. The local state school is out of the question. It has a terrible reputation and abysmal scores on the standardized test results our government makes publically available. There is a nearby state school my daughter could attend that has excellent scores, but it’s a tiny rural school. There are 3 teachers and 31 students in total - this year that breaks down into 6 students in the Prep/Grade 1 class, 11 students in the Grade 2/3 class and 14 students in the Grade 4-5-6 class.

The teacher I spoke to when I called was very enthusiastic and said the children get very individual attention because there are so few of them, and the school community is very close-knit. Most of the kids would be farm kids and I imagine they wouldn’t have the sorts of problems the local state school has as they are from a more sheltered and less dysfunctional background (broad generalization).

I have no experience with a school that small. While my own schools weren’t enormous, there were more children in my year level than this entire school. Is anyone here a former student, parent, teacher or informed bystander with insights on the pros and cons of attending a tiny school?

2

Not an exact parallel, but when I was in a school for disabled kids, there were roughly 140 kids in the whole school, no more than 10 in a graduating class.

3

Any insights, etv78?

4

Yes, sorry! :smack: As you’ve observed with the school you’re looking at, individual attention is high, and in my case, it’s easy to notice someone missing. You gewt to know each other (students and teachers) Though, in my case, backrounds don’t match well, so some people may find class too easy, while others struggle.

5

I was the top 25% of my high school graduating class. The school had only about 30 students at that time altogether. There were advantages and disadvantages. The individual attention was great, with a few teachers. With others it was annoying. It was no place to develop a social life.

However, it is 38 years later and I just emailed my math teacher today to let her know about something I learned from indistinquishable on this board.

6

It sounds like it’s a better option than the local underperforming school, at least. Are there any other options in your area? If your religion isn’t compatible with the private schools in your area (or you can’t afford private tuition), then this might be her only chance to avoid the underperforming school. But we really need more information on your other choices to advise properly.

If you do decide to send her there, you’ll have to work hard to make sure she gets sufficient peer involvement through extracurricular activities. Test scores are important, but some colleges view the overall well-roundedness of the applicant as being equally or more important. A grade with only 5-10 other children allows for a lot of individual attention, but very little diversity (and very few extracurriculars, it might be 4-H or nothing). It will also impact the class offerings–does this school feed into a larger high school, or is it the same kids from grades 1-12? Do they offer AP courses, foreign language classes, or college credit? You could investigate homeschooling groups near you and see if they do educational outings. You might also consider music or choir or art lessons, since a school that small isn’t likely to have a robust arts program.

I never had a high school course with fewer than 20 classmates, myself, and my graduating class was over 200. So obviously I’m not experienced with class sizes that small.

7

Your daughter’s personality should be an important aspect of the decision that you make. I have two kids, one that is very outgoing and another that is very reserved. My daughter did well at the local public school and enjoyed the extracurricular activities, while my son couldn’t care less about joining a team or the band or whatever. He went through the 9th grade at the local high school and hated it.

The school had about 2600 students and the teacher/student ratio was around 1/22; however, classes were often more crowded than that. The individual attention he received was pretty much nil, especially since he’s so quiet. He wouldn’t speak up when he had a question and the teachers didn’t really notice him. There was also a fair share of bullying that he both witnessed and experienced, and your usual high school cliques.

We switched him to a small charter school - what a difference! First of all it’s on my way to work so I drop him off every morning. No more getting up early, standing at the bus stop in the cold, and then riding a bus for 25 minutes in the morning. That little bit of extra time he can sleep in makes a big difference when you’re a teenager. The class sizes are much smaller so his (quiet) voice is more often heard. There are only three hallways in total so getting from class to class isn’t stressful at all. His old school had two separate buildings and it was a 5 minute walk between them - not fun in the winter!

Most importantly, my son is happier in his current school. There have been no cliques of jocks/cheerleaders/stoners/artistic types, etc. They don’t have a football team or anything like that so all of that hierarchy bullshit isn’t typically present. I didn’t believe the other parents when they told me that the kids all intermingle and there are no superiority complexes (I have a letter jacket, you must bow to me, etc.) but much to my surprise it’s true. Unfortunately my son has said this year that behavior is starting to sneak in as more parents are catching on that this is a good school and sending their kids there. He said there are some former football players from the high school that transferred this school year and they’re trying to impress upon the other kids how vastly superior they are. So far they’re mostly getting a reaction of :confused::rolleyes::dubious:

Grades and a good education are very important, but your kids only have one childhood/high school experience. Whatever we can to to make it a good one for our son instead of something he must endure is our goal.

8

Attendee of a tiny Quaker boarding school here; graduating class of 12. (Student body anywhere between 40 and 60).

Pros? It was a wonderful, nurturing environment. You really do get to know your teachers and other students as a part of an extended family of sorts. The extra attention, possibility of independent projects and self-driven research was welcome.

Cons? Similar to those in a larger school. Some kids still smoked, drank, and acted out. But that’s humans everywhere for you.

9

I don’t have experience with a very small school, but it seems to me that individual attention from the teacher is far more important than extracurricular activities in the elementary school years. Do they even have extracurriculars in US elementary schools? IME, team sports don’t start until 7th grade, and parents are responsible for signing elementary school kids up for sports, music lessons, etc. outside the school.

I also think it might be a benefit for your daughter to have more interaction with kids of varying ages, which it seems would be a given at a small school with the makeup you’ve set out. My son’s school has a program where the older students read to and mentor the younger students, and it’s a great benefit to both groups. The younger kids get to spend time with older kids then can look up to and learn from, and the older kids learn responsibility and patience.

I would also think that you, as a parent, will be able to better advocate for your child as one of a relatively small set of parents rather than as a small voice in a crowd.

I would send my children to that school in a heartbeat. As far as college goes, no college gives a rat’s ass what elementary school you went to.

10

I just wanted to point out that just because a school’s average tests scores are low, that does not mean it is a “bad” school. Particularly if the population it serves is fairly large or heterogeneous. If the school serves special education or ESOL students, for instance, its average will be lower than a school that doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean the former is a worse school than the latter.

I’m unfamiliar with the concept of a state school.

11

I went to a tiny school. I started there in grade three and there were only three other students in my grade. The school consisted of three rooms with multiple grades in each room. Grades one to five with one teacher, six to eight in another room with one teacher and then nine and ten were taught by the principal in another room. For grades eleven and twelve the kids went to a different school.

I was probably the happiest at that school. The only problem was is was a religious school so the curriculum wasn’t equal to the public schools and when I did start to go to public school in grade six, I was about a year behind and had to make up two years in one.

12

I was one of 28 pupils at my school. This is in England, at primary level, so covered ages 4 through 11, so I’m not sure how much similarity there’d be with the US system.

First off, it really did break down the cliques- the largest year group was mine, with 6 pupils, but all of us had friends of all ages. There weren’t enough ‘cool’ kids to be able to exclude the ‘not-cool’ ones.

We were divided into 2 main classes, ‘infants’ age 4-7 and ‘juniors’ 7-11, but even between them there was a little flexibility, and there was no real divide within the class.

I’d imagine with 3 teachers, the school would work on a similar principle to mine- instead of being divided strictly by age, we had a situation where all the juniors did the same subject at the same time, but were divided up by level for each subject, on differerent tables in the same room- so you could be taught with the kids the same age for most subjects, mainly with the year above for a few, and with the year below if that was the level you were at. There was stigma attached to being grouped with the younger kids, as it really wasn’t obvious, or seen as majorly important, so long as you were progressing. They’d even have some of the more advanced kids teaching basic concepts to the ones that weren’t getting it.

We actually had a very low problem rate, despite the fact that several of the students were there because the local larger school thought they (or older siblings) were ‘troublesome’- the teachers really did know the kids strong and weak points, in a way that I’d really not found in my previous school (my parents moved 100 miles when I was 8, and I had been at a school with maybe 100 kids previously). I can’t remember any fights, or anyone getting into serious trouble- it got picked up on so early.

As it was so tiny, it was very low budget- we had nothing like the facilities of some of the larger schools, and even trips were very limited, due to there being an awkward number of us- too many for a minibus, not enough for a full-sized bus. We had a deal with the local secondary school that we were allowed to use some of their sports facilities, so we didn’t entirely miss out. We also had a music teacher who came in one day a week, and random arts and science people would do very occasional sessions.

Again, I don’t know how the US system works, but the fact that it was so tiny gave the teachers a lot more flexibility- if a student was really interested in something, the whole class sometimes wound up doing a project on it. There was no formal timetable, apart from when we had visiting or part time teachers in.

For me, it was mainly positive- I much preferred that school to the one of 100 students (still a small school really!), but it would depend on your kid’s personality. There were downsides, and I’d expect a very competetive kid would have found it very boring.

13

One important thing to keep in mind is that there’s a lot more variability in small schools. One crazy kid or family can’t have too much effect on a large school, but they can absolutely wreak havoc on a school with 30 students.

14

Exactly what i came to point out. If you’re an active and involved parent, and encourage your kid to take her work seriously, there’s no reason she can’t do fine at the public school.

I spent a year in a really small school when i was in grade 3. It was a one-room, one-teacher school, and when my sister and i joined the student body, we brought the total number up to 22. The school was in a small, rural community in the rainforest about 12km from Mullumbimby, in the far north-east of New South Wales.

I had a lot of fun in that little school, although it might say something about the experience that my main memories of my time there are of doing things like swimming in the creek and playing games. I’m sure there was learning going on as well, and i certainly didn’t fall behind in my year there, but i mostly remember the fun, extracurricular activities. And the long, winding ride on the school bus to and from the front gate of our farm. It was quite a change for a kid who had spent his first couple of school years in a suburban Sydney primary school.

We only stayed a year. As it turned out, our whole reason for moving to the area had been so that my stepfather and two of his friends could start a very large marijuana growing operation. That all came to a crashing halt on the day that five police cars descended on the place and arrested my parents. My sister and i actually spent the following week living with the schoolteacher, until my mother was let out on bail.
ETA: I just looked up my old school online, and it has grown to teachers and 52 students, with a new brick building.

15

I went to a small (120 students grades 6-12) private school and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wasn’t thrilled my first year - I hated leaving my friends - but after the first year I asked to go back. I was in a very similar situation; the local school I would have attended was very bad, both in terms of academics and what would now be called gang behavior.

Instead of winding up pregnant and/or dropping out of school like almost all of my “friends”, I went on to college and graduate school.

There were 20 kids in my senor class. The entire school has a reunion every year and it’s amazing how many of us go back.

16

I went to a small elementary school, by the time I left it was down to under 100 students.

This doesn’t matter so much in elementary school, but in split grade classes, watch out for the curriculum. Sometimes your child will end up taking the curriculum in the other grade, which is okay, but they might miss a time period in history, or a unit in science.

Also, cliques are harder to deal with in smaller schools, since there are only enough students for a ‘popular kids’ and ‘loser kids’ group, with an ‘average kids’ group if you’re lucky. I was a bookish, geeky student and my school was too small to find anyone like me, so I ended up being a loner.

But I still liked the feeling of knowing everyone, and the teachers all knowing who you are, and not having so many people at school that it felt like a university.

17

I went to a rural schoolhouse one year, grades 1-4 in one room, 5-8 in the other. Our teacher made sure to include all subjects and give each student a chance to participate with each grade learning at their different levels. All the kids hung out together during lunch and recess. We had a lunchroom and a gym which was also used for school functions (PTA, plays, the Christmas program etc.) I heard from her just a few years ago when my younger brother died, even tho I’m now three states away. It was the best school year of my life.

I’d have to guess there were maybe 40 or 50 students in the school.

18

Watch Etre et Avoir, a beautiful documentary about a tiny rural school in France. Not just to find out about small schools…just because it’s a great film :slight_smile:

19

These replies are all very helpful, thanks. Regarding the local school, it isn’t only poor academically, it also has a reputation for trouble. There are a lot of kids from disadvantaged backgrounds attending and I understand the police are regularly called in (this information is courtesy of a local police officer, who was complaining about the number of 11 and 12 year olds at that school who carry knives).

There are a few private schools but two have (IMO) unimpressive results on the standardized testing and the one that has good results strictly requires families to actively participate in religious activities outside the school. We couldn’t comply with that.

I think I’ll visit the little school today and get a feel for it.

20

I had 36 kids in my class, kindergarten through 12th grade. I was a weird kid who didn’t fit in with my classmates at all. If you’re a weirdo in a large school, likely you’ll be able to seek out some other weirdos and still be able to have some normal social development. In my case, I was on my own, and it was a tiny rural community, so there weren’t any other kids around besides the ones at my school. Some days nobody talked to me at all, and those were the good days. It left me with substantial social anxiety issues that I still struggle with to this day (I’m 34). I finally did manage to bumble my way into befriending some people in the grades above and below me when I was a junior in high school, but I was still pretty much a social retard, and to this day I am terrible at relating to other people and getting to know them. So, that, to me, is a major disadvantage to a small school.