Along the Pony Express Trail, Juab County - Kicking up a cloud of fine dust as she traverses 50 miles of dirt road in an early 1990s school district van, Tintic Superintendent Patty Rowse discusses the "luxuries" of rural education.
It's a seemingly odd choice of words given the heavy challenges of educating students in a small and rural place.Rowse's calendar is full of chores not found in most superintendent's job descriptions. On this day, for instance, she's delivering milk to two elementary schools and one high school near the Utah-Nevada border.
She makes the run about every two months, first driving to Logan to pick up the ultra-high temperature processed milk. She then transports the milk to the schools.
The trips serve two purposes, delivering milk and keeping in touch with principals, teachers, staff and students. She otherwise visits the schools about every two weeks.
On most trips, she travels alone. The area is so remote she can scarcely pick up a radio station - "There's one that plays only country and western," she said - or operate her cellular phone.
Although flat and mostly arid, the area is rife with wildlife. Rowse's attention is drawn to a small herd of antelope as she waves to a passing pickup truck. Later in the day, a badger scurries at the side of the road. On occasion, she sees eagles.
The long rides give Rowse an opportunity to think through issues, to plan.
"It keeps things focused. It reminds me what people are here for," she said.
Most of the people who live in the school district make their living off the land. Most are second- and third-generation ranch families. Some work for the railroad or the Intermountain Power Project. A few others work at an open-pit beryllium mine. The school district is the area's largest employer.
In the school district, employees wear many hats.
Rowse and business administrator Brenda Sutherland answer their own phones. Rowse writes her own letters and handles most personnel issues as well as technical administrative functions.
"I now know how to apply for water rights," she said, laughing at the sound of it.
The district obtained water rights to drill a second well at West Desert High School, the state's smallest public high school located about five miles from the Nevada border.
The well will supply water to a baseball field under construction at the high school.
If this is a field of dreams, the dream would be fodder for a John Steinbeck novel.
Carving a ball field out of the desert has proven to be a more arduous job than volunteer National Guard engineers had anticipated.
At the start of the school year, the engineers believed they could perform the dirt work in a couple weekends.
Going into December, the freshly turned ground is still littered with football-sized stones - a testament to the unrelenting nature of the desert.
"We're about half done," principal Ed Alder said. "We're still trying to level it out. They'll be out here in December and January, and they anticipate they'll get it done then."
The field is a metaphor to life in the 386-student Tintic School District. Alder said he is confident the ball field will eventually take shape. Whether the sod will take root by fall, the start of the 1998 1-A baseball season, is another matter.
"It will work out," he said.
At West Desert, making do is a matter of course.
On a recent visit to his school, Alder said he puzzled over a busing problem. "All I need is a (radiator) hose or I'm dead. It means trying to find one on a bus or a tractor or going into town. You have to improvise. Sometimes, it's fun. Sometimes, it's really frustrating," he said.
The trick to being principal of West Desert is juggling duties - keeping all the balls in the air regardless of what else hits.
"I teach four periods and have three periods of administrative time - that is, except when someone gets sick. Then I teach all day," Alder said.
He coaches girls basketball. As the West Desert girl's volleyball team prepared to travel to Orem for the recent state tournament, Alder worried about the bus. He was the driver.
For the record, the team won its first game but lost two others. "They placed third in region," he said.
About 56 students attend West Desert High School, although Alder hesitates to say no child slips through the cracks.
"It's more like if someone slips through the cracks, it's noticed. We know it," he said. "It hurts more because we take it a lot more personally."
Two of the 56 students at West Desert High are Alder's daughters. A son attends West Desert Elementary School, which is next door.
At West Desert Elementary School, Joan Richards apologizes for the appearance of her classroom. On one side of the room, children are cutting out sugar cookies. On the other, students are painting Halloween pinatas.
Richards, who teaches 19 fifth- and sixth-graders in one classroom, said distance is a boon and a bane.
"This is pretty rural," Richards said. "It's just the distance to libraries, field trips and outside input. That's about the only drawback. I can list you a whole lot of benefits."
"It's like a family when you're in a school like this," she said.
At West Desert, there is no fast food. There is no television. No one makes a munchie run to the 7-Eleven at lunch time. Discipline problems are few.
"These kids have an innocence about them that's just incredible. It makes you want to cry," Richards said.
There are no frills at the West Desert schools, but Alder emphasizes tech-nology. Students take classes via satellite using EDNET, the state-wide education network that broadcasts over television, and students share two computer labs.
"By the time they leave here, I envision there won't be a better computer group in the state. These kids know more than I do already," Alder said.
At nearby Callao Elementary, head teacher Annette Garland begins the school year with computer keyboard practice. She teaches her students to use CD-ROMs and go online to conduct research. By third grade, most students have mastered WordPerfect, which they use to publish reports and other projects.
"I frown on them playing on it," she said of computers.
Garland, who teaches 16 kids in kindergarten through eighth grade, describes her students as books on a shelf. One kindergartner and one eighth-grader constitute the book ends. There are two children each in grades 1-7.
Except that the school was converted from an LDS ward house, Callao is very much the one-room schoolhouse. Garland, who grew up in Bountiful, has taught for the Tintic School District since 1973. It was her first job out of college. She married a cattle rancher and, as she puts it, "the rest is history."
Garland and two classroom assistants emphasize the basics but use an integrated curriculum. Last year, her school was decorated as a town in the Old West - complete with bank, jail and saloon.
Students learn to manage their money with in-school checking accounts. If they earn a score of 80 on a test, 80 cents in in-school currency is deposited in their accounts. They may spend the money at a school store, writing checks for each item purchased, recording each transaction.
"I've got one little kid who won't spend a dime. Another one spends it down to the last penny," she said.
Rowse, a former state-level school administrator, gives Garland high marks for teaching style and innovation. "I believe some of the very best teaching in the state goes on in that school," Rowse said.
Though few in number, Garland's students consistently score above the state average on the state-mandated Stanford Achievement Test.
Callao Elementary has no lunch program. Most students live close enough that they can ride their bikes or walk home for the noon meal.
The mail is delivered twice a week and there's no local television. Teachers and other district employees are paid through direct deposit. Even so, Garland said she doesn't feel isolated.
"I think our kids sometimes wonder what's out there in the great, big world. But I've found they come back if they can. It's a way of life you get used to. I know I wouldn't go back," she said.
As she reflects upon nearly 25 years of teaching in Tintic School District, Garland said what she cherishes most is the community's work ethic.
"Our kids learn to work. We don't have to worry what do to with our kids in the evening because they're usually very busy," Garland said.
For Rowse, the luxuries of rural education are the intangible qualities of growing up and learning in a place where someone knows your name, knows your parents and gets involved when there's a concern.
"One of the luxuries of a small student population is, when you go to a faculty meeting, teachers are talking about students. You don't have that luxury in a large school," Rowse said.