Enrollment Climbs to 3, so Tiny Schoolhouse Will Stay Open--for Now : Education: Their attendance at the 1918 building could help prevent its extinction, but its future is not assured.

Enrollment tripled at the Orton School this fall, but there is no risk of overcrowding. Three students now share the school’s single classroom.

“Now I have someone to play with at recess,” said Levi Tibbs, a fifth-grader who was the school’s lone student last year.

His playmates are sisters Emily Hansen, a second-grader, and Sheri Davis, who is in sixth grade. Their attendance at the 1918 schoolhouse has helped stave off its extinction.

“We considered closing it, but if we did, then we’d have to pay to board those kids in town or we’d have to pay mileage for them to be driven to school and home every day,” said county school Supt. Jerry Kleinsasser.

And that trip is no quick jaunt. The nearest town is Ft. Pierre, a long hour’s drive down 50 miles of bumpy, winding road that follows the rugged breaks of the Missouri River.

Locals call the area starkly beautiful. Outsiders call it desolate. Winters are harsh and snowy on the Dakota prairie, and the wind almost never stills.

“You can hear the coyotes fighting and jabbering all night long,” said teacher Steve Pickner, 31, who lives with his dog in a rent-free mobile home on the school site. His nearest neighbors are antelope, grouse and rattlesnakes.

Pickner is in his first year as a teacher--he graduated from the University of South Dakota in August--and he has his qualms.

“I’d rather teach 50 kids in one class than three in different grades,” he said. “That’s 21 separate lessons I have to prepare each night, but it does keep me busy and helps pass the time out here.”

It’s hard to get used to the quiet after classes. “I look forward to Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays when the mail comes,” Pickner said.

Occasionally, he helps mend fences at a nearby ranch that raises one of the nation’s largest private buffalo herds.

Elementary Principal Elsie Baye says teachers rarely stay more than a year at Orton. “It’s isolated,” she admits, and the free housing is essential to lure teachers to such a rustic outpost.

Still, she persists in putting the best face on it: “Someone who is an artist or wildlife photographer would just love it there.”

And as for the children, “It’s a great educational opportunity. Our rural kids are usually good students. They get a lot of one-on-one.”

Levi Tibbs’ mother, Loretta, taught at the Orton School; her husband, Wayne, and their three other children all went there. “They were almost a year ahead of other students when they got to ninth grade,” she said.

In Orton’s classroom--big and bright with three desks in the middle--two students sit together while Pickner tutors the third across the room.

An outdated computer sits in one corner; a television set that gets only one channel sits in another. The other classroom fixtures include an aging piano, an ant farm, a water fountain and a microwave oven where the kids and teacher heat their lunches.

Once a month, a janitor shows up to shine the linoleum floor. Three times a day, the huge bell atop the freshly painted white building tolls.

The bell did not toll this year for the Orton School, but its future is not assured. Stanley County rural schools once were full, but fewer ranch families live in the area, Loretta Tibbs said.

“They couldn’t all make a living here anymore because milking cows and a few acres of land just didn’t cut it. People sold out to others, and the remaining ranches got bigger. That cut down on families and kids in the area,” she said.

But Orton is not alone in its tininess. Of the three other rural schools in Stanley County, none has more than eight students.

Almost one-fourth of the elementary schools in South Dakota still have only one or two teachers. Legally, schools cannot be closed unless enrollment slips to fewer than five. And neither the kids nor their parents seem inclined abandon the small schools.

“It’s funner than a big school,” said Sheri Davis.