Education History Bingham County
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10/14/20265 min read
In 1887, the Idaho Territory passed legislation regarding compulsory education for its citizens. Parents or guardians in charge of children between eight and fourteen years of age were to send them to school for a minimum of twelve weeks a year, at least eight of them consecutive, though those living beyond two miles from an established school were exempt from the law. Those not complying faced a five to twenty-five dollar fine for the first offense, a ten to fifty dollar fine for subsequent offenses.
Some citizens already had banded together to form schools. Bingham County's Presto district (see attached image), which extended from the eastern foothills westward for a considerable distance, already taught nineteen girls and twenty-seven boys (eighteen more students than the prior year). Bingham County, which extended from near the Utah border to Montana at that time, already had twenty-nine districts, a number that would swell to 87 by 1892. Educational standards were low by present-day standards, as one teacher in the Pocatello was handling an average of seventy-two pupils a day—that district had too little money to pay for extra instructors.
The County's school districts reached from Oxford (District #1) in the southeast corner of Idaho to Howe (#6) and St. Anthony in the north, to Chesterfield and Soda Springs, Teton Basin and Ashton, Dubois and Small (the Small schoolhouse, pictured, still stands northwest some miles from Dubois). Eight families sufficed to form a district, so communities of any size could create a school system to shorten their children's traveling distance.
The numerous districts drew boundaries and would frequently redraw them later, splitting apart when either population rose or factions developed and disappearing when settlers faced too-hard times and left. Squabbles, of course, were common, a specifically Idaho version appearing in the Rexburg district where Superintendent Moody reported that, of 269 students, but two attended due to the teacher being non-LDS. Frederick Dubois' anti-polygamist campaign was in full glory at that time.
The Fort Hall Indian School had over a hundred students shortly after that Territorial proclamation compelling that children be educated. The Parsons District #20 (its boundaries shown on the attached photo) had already been established, too, Homer LaLiberte winning (with a $14 bid) the job of building two outhouses, pointing the school house, scrubbing the floors of all three buildings, and fixing the school's roof. Forty-nine students were enrolled, the average attendance twenty-seven. Their ages ranged from five to twenty, and less than half lived within two miles traveling distance. It wouldn't be long before the Parsons district was split, the Watson District (also shown) taking a chunk of its area in 1889. That district would, several years later, be truncated to the south to form the Rich school district.
County residents were being taxed sixty cents on every one hundred dollars of property value to pay for the educational services—taxes amounting to just over $5800 in 1892. That paltry amount no doubt contributed to a near-disaster at Riverside in 1895, when the roof of the inadequately built school collapsed in January under the weight of its earthen composition and heavy snow. School was in session at the time, but the "cracking noise...alarmed the teacher and pupils who...made for the door." The heating stove and desks were damaged and the teacher, Miss Veesy, was injured slightly.
Riverside District #2 (see attached image) had been split off from the Parsons District in 1894, shortly after the Carey Act was passed and the big canal building efforts of the Peoples and the American Falls systems were starting. Big families, a great many of them LDS, were pouring into the area. The Riverside district constructed a new school in 1898 for $500—this one passed inspection.
In 1915 the Idaho legislature tweaked educational law to require school districts without a high school to pay for their students to finish years nine to twelve elsewhere. As a consequence, a drive to consolidate districts began. Moreland began offering high school in 1924, the same year Parsons and Thomas districts made an effort to unite—echoing earlier attempts of consolidation, one coming over a decade earlier, in 1910, and another in 1916, when it was proposed to establish a grade school at Thomas and primary grades at Rockford and East Thomas. Bishop John Williams was working for that consolidation, but the Church's power fell short, the vote tied at 65 apiece. The County commissioners voted to override the tie and consolidate, but their decision was appealed by a group of angry District 12 patrons. The commission was found to have made their decision illegally and the status quo was upheld.
District 12 had a long history that extended back to the mid 1880's, a history that was apparently a source of pride, unlike the District 48 newcomers in Rockford, which was a railroad village initially called "New Thomas" when the tracks to Aberdeen were completed in 1910. Rockford's frame school house would need to be replaced in 1914 with an updated, four-room building at the townsite. That district had financial troubles during and after WWI, a teacher forced to sue for unpaid wages, the school closing for a time due to a shortage of funds.
Part of the consolidation woes may have been due to that imbalance of monetary power. The assessable property of #12 was $254,000 and #48's nearly double that, and Thomas residents feared that a new high school would be built far from them, in Rockford, some five to seven miles away for many students (cars were yet a rarity, so that was a significant distance). They would be paying taxes, they felt, for educational services unfairly benefitting their neighbors to the west.
District #12 already had two schools by 1908, the "Stone schoolhouse" at the Thomas townsite and the brick schoolhouse (its exact location in question, but the current Wilson school site a good guess). The District was one of the few that employed a janitor rather than foisting that job on its teachers. The 'Basin' school, a wood frame building located west of Thomas and southeast of Rockford, may have been part of District #48.
East Thomas residents ramped up their educational interest almost immediately after the 1916 'uprising' against consolidation, first establishing three wagon routes to make it easier for students to get to school and then voting to bond a new $7000 school house. It would be the fifth attempt to pass such a bond. It succeeded, but the opposition appealed and the election was declared invalid. Still, a few months later after more infighting, the schoolhouse construction was underway and bricks from the old building were being used to construct a new one, its size 51' by 71'.
The tribal warfare culminated in 1948, when a vote was taken to create a unified entity that would include Moreland, Riverside, Thomas-Rockford (they had united as district #40), and Parsons Districts. Three of the districts' patrons voted a resounding 215-16 votes in favor of the consolidation, but Riverside's taxpayers voted 31-6 against. Their opposition failed and the Snake River School District was born.
