Transcripts

JOHN BIEWEN: If you follow high school athletics in Minnesota, you've probably heard of Norman County West. Since Halstad and Hendrum-Perley became Norman County West in 1982, the Panthers have been in the State 9-MAN football playoffs four times and won the state title in 1984. Their basketball team has made two trips to the state tournament, and took the class a championship in 1987.

CHET THOMPSON: When we first came together, we enjoyed almost instant success. And as the success started, it just-- there was just a building of it and a continuation.

JOHN BIEWEN: Chet Thompson has the enviable position of Athletic Director at Norman County West. He says Halstad and Hendrum-Perley had far less athletic success individually than they've had together. In basketball, for example, Halstad went to the state tournament just once in 1952. And Hendrum-Perley never made it. Thompson says the new team's success has practically erased whatever resistance local people had to the pairing arrangement.

CHET THOMPSON: Right now, for instance, up at the grocery store, it says-- I forget what it says. Thanks Panthers for a wonderful season. This is after you get beat. You walk uptown. You still see these things. I think that with the community that's really come together, both of them, because of this, because of the athletics.

JOHN BIEWEN: Norman County West has had success not only in boys sports, but also in band and debate competitions. This extracurricular success has been a happy side effect of the pairing between the Halstad and Hendrum schools. The aim of the arrangement was not, of course, a full trophy case. Halstad with 700 people, and Hendrum population 336, are just six miles apart on Highway 75 north of Moorhead.

The two districts cover a 200 square mile swath along the Red River. But like many farming areas, the population has fallen here. And the two districts together have just 400 school kids, kindergarten through senior high. Superintendent Don Blazer says the decision to pair was a matter of survival.

DON BLAZER: If it were to dissolve, it would probably be the death of both the districts as individual entities. I think the day and age of operating a school district with 150 kids is gone.

JOHN BIEWEN: Blazer says the two districts cut four teaching positions after the pairing, saving $120,000 a year, and still offer students a wider range of courses than before in such areas as Industrial Ed, Agriculture, and Foreign Languages. Still, it's worth noting the high school offers only one foreign language. German.

[BELL RINGS]

Norman County West High School, for seventh through 12th-graders, is housed here in the old Halstad school. K through sixth-graders attend school in Hendrum. Nathan Dyrendahl is a junior from Hendrum who plays on the football and basketball teams. He has two older brothers and a sister who graduated from Hendrum High School. At first, he says when he had to start riding the bus to school in Halstad, he had his doubts.

SPEAKER 1: It was scary. It was scary coming up here. We've mostly been a rival with Halstad in sports.

Hendrum-- I didn't really want to lose Hendrum Huskies. But it's worked out for the best. Overall, I'd rather have it stay this way. It's turned out much better this way.

JOHN BIEWEN: That sentiment is shared down the road in Hendrum where elementary schoolers spend their after lunch recess in the gym. The walls of the Hendrum school are lined with photos of Hendrum High's graduating classes, ending with the last class in 1982. Even here at what is now Norman County West Elementary, the popularity of the pairing arrangement seems to rest largely on high school sports. Holly Jacobson, a sixth-grader from Halstad, and Katie Ziegler, a third-grader from Georgetown, are both bused into school every day. But they say it's worth it.

HOLLY JACOBSON: There's more people in your class. And we got a better basketball team.

KATIE ZIEGLER: I like it because-- well, for one reason I like it is that we're one district.

JOHN BIEWEN: The elementary school's principal Diane Buchholz says she has some reservations about the importance placed on high school sports. But she says in this case, the team's successes have clearly helped smooth the merger between the two schools.

SPEAKER 2: Right now, I don't-- I don't know if you could talk anybody into going back the old way, teachers, students, or parents

JOHN BIEWEN: As paired districts, Halstad and Hendrum-Perley still have separate budgets and school boards. Discussion is now underway about taking the next final step. Consolidation. In Norman County, I'm John Biewen.