The Incredible Shrinking School : Historic Gorman Institution Is Tiny but It Boasts Its Own Ghost

As a stirring recording of “Pomp and Circumstance” filled the school auditorium, three eighth-graders in blue gowns and mortarboards marched solemnly toward the tiny stage. “Ladies and gentlemen,” intoned Supt. Wesley Thomas, “I’d like to present the Class of 1989.”

Even for Gorman School, this was a sparse crop of graduates. Last year, it had six.

Located in a small Spanish-style building 65 miles north of Los Angeles, the Gorman School District is, with 49 pupils and only one school, the smallest public school system in Los Angeles County. The rural school also is probably the only campus in Southern California, if not the state, where deer graze on the athletic field and where students and teachers claim a ghost haunts the halls.

Few districts could make such demands on an administrator as Thomas, who identified himself as “superintendent, principal, teacher of the junior high and part-time bus driver.”

Homespun Atmosphere

But the homespun atmosphere of Gorman’s school, which celebrated its 50th commencement in its present home last week, may soon change forever.

The Ralphs family, a pioneer Gorman clan best known for the supermarket chain, wants to build 150 homes on the hills west of the school. If the tract is approved, the district will have to buy classroom trailers or perhaps build a new school, Thomas said.

Although the proposed housing tract would render the old three-room school building obsolete, the influx of new students also could save the financially strapped district from extinction, he said.

Unlike the rapidly growing school districts 30 miles to the south in the Santa Clarita Valley, Gorman officials watched their enrollment slip from 63 to 49 over the last year. School funding is tied to daily attendance, and extra students will funnel extra dollars into a district that squeezes by on a $240,000 yearly budget, Thomas said.

New Set of Doors

Since March, the superintendent has driven five students to and from school in the family car because it was cheaper than running a second school bus. The major capital improvement this year, Thomas said, was a new set of doors.

But adversity is not new to Gorman School. Ruth Ralphs, a school board member, said the isolated district has learned to be resourceful. “When you’re out here, you have to be survivors,” she said.

The first school in the area started around 1906 when children gathered at a local ranch house for lessons. Later sites included a cabin, a prefabricated building and the living room of Ralphs family matriarch Mary Ralphs. The school’s present home was built in 1938 by the federal Works Progress Administration and the first group of eighth-graders graduated the next spring.

Gorman School has never been prone to swift change. One bus driver served 35 years. Mary Ralphs, in a profound example of the powers of incumbency, stayed on the school board 57 years.

The 1970s were especially difficult for the tiny district. In 1971, the Legislature narrowly killed a bill that would have eliminated school districts with fewer than 50 students. Funding plummeted after the property tax-cutting Proposition 13 passed in 1979.

But the school survived. The district hired mainly part-time teachers and rotated their schedules to save on salaries and benefits.

Funds for Computers

“It was very difficult,” Ruth Ralphs said. Somehow, money was found for 16 computers and all grades, from kindergarten to eighth, receive computer training.

Today, the school has four part-time teachers, two full-time teachers, a cook, a secretary and three aides. Kindergartners join first- and second-graders in one room while the middle grades share another.

The sixth, seventh and eighth grades meet in what students call “the big room,” which serves as auditorium, classroom and--on snowy winter days--a gymnasium.

Since several grades meet in one room at once, teachers sometimes call on older children to help younger students. “Just like a one-room school,” said Walter Hanson, a regular substitute teacher at Gorman.

Some students thrive on the extra attention. Since enrolling in Gorman School three years ago, “I got a lot better grades,” said Christina Arnburg, one of last week’s graduates. “Over here, they help you with what you’re doing.”

In the fall, Arnburg will attend high school in Bakersfield. Other graduates, who live closer to the Antelope Valley, will attend secondary school in Quartz Hill, near Lancaster. Both are about 40 miles away. The students at Gorman live throughout northwestern Los Angeles County, and the district’s school bus covers 96 miles each day.

Gorman, itself, is not so much a town as a notion. The Grapevine truck stop off Interstate 5 includes four gas stations, a cafe, a fast-food restaurant, a bar, liquor store, real estate office and a motel. And that’s about it.

The county recorder lists 65 registered voters there, 40 of whom are Republican. Other than the school Christmas pageant and graduation, there are no civic activities to bring the Gorman community together.

The Gorman Ghost

But the most intriguing feature of the school is the Gorman ghost, supposedly the spirit of a girl accidently run over by a tractor driven by her father. “She was buried underneath what is now the stage,” Thomas said.

With familial affection, teachers and students say the ghost is just another part of the school, supposedly opening and shutting doors and cupboards. She allegedly is musical. “The piano plays,” said Catherine Van, a reading specialist.

To district secretary Diane Phillips, the ghost is a blithe spirit. “It’s a good ghost,” she insisted, “as long as you’re here for a good reason.”