(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
An Ag-Focused School Hopes to Turn Enrollment Decline into Community and Economic Renewal [1]
['Lane Wendell Fischer', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2025-07-08
For the first time in years, the Palco‑Damar‑Zurich school district (Unified School District 269) in rural western Kansas will see its student body grow — a small uptick in a region where schools have been shrinking for decades.
Many small communities across the country have been faced with shrinking enrollment and the threat of consolidation and closure. But in this upcoming school year at USD 269, something different is happening.
About a dozen new students have signed on, drawn by a new Ag-Focused School model and the opening of USD 269’s Northwest Kansas Agriculture Education Center program. The innovations were introduced earlier this year to stem decline and spark community development.
“Okay,” said superintendent Brian Pekarek, in response to the renewed energy. “We can breathe again.”
Rural school consolidation and closure are ever-looming threats. In southern Rooks County towns — Palco, Zurich, and Damar — this has played out over decades.
In 1977, Zurich grade school closed. Its high school had already shuttered in 1955. Zurich’s population dwindled from 189 in 1970 to 89 in 2020.
In 1974, Damar High unified with Palco High. By 2015, Palco’s elementary building closed too, with Palco’s elementary students now attending school at Damar. Since then, Palco’s population fell from 398 to 208, and Damar’s from 245 to 112.
By 2016, a state bill threatened even more consolidation, targeting small districts with fewer than 1,500 students and those in under-populated counties. If passed, it would have slashed the number of Kansas school districts in half.
Palco School Board president Tom Benoit, Class of 1963, carried the community’s plea to the state capitol.
“[Consolidation] should be the decision of the local patrons of those districts and not based on a hasty and ill‑conceived plan from Topeka,” he said.
The bill didn’t pass. But year after year, students and families moved away or transferred to other districts. The state’s open enrollment frameworks allowed students to remain living in the district to send their kids elsewhere. While local property taxes of those who stay living in USD 269 stay with the schools, dwindling head counts means less money for Palco-Damar-Zurich.
Today, the district sees just around 85 students.
Planting Bold, New Roots: Ag For All Ages
Wanting to find a solution, the community, where farming and ranching has been the primary source of economy since its beginning, found their answer in something familiar: Agriculture.
“Teachers and students wanted to see more ag‑related coursework in the classroom,” said Pekarek.
The district began to connect with resources across the state. They learned from other rural districts like Hamilton and Bluestem in southeastern Kansas. The latter district opened an Agriculture Academy in 2019, which has since created a pathway for students in the district to operate a mercantile and community space downtown.
“Those schools told us that these programs bring in kids,” Pekarek said. “They tell us if we go ag, we can’t go back, because the community just falls in love with the program.”
The USD 269 school board declared the district “Ag-Focused” on October 3, 2024. Their vision is to provide some form of agriculture education from preschool through high school. At the elementary levels, students will be engaged in ag-related activities, lessons, and will even roll up their sleeves to do some chores.
Students experiment with growing lettuce, beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers for district lunches. (Photo courtesy of USD 269)
Earlier this spring, students worked to incubate and raise their own flock of egg-laying chickens. Some students experimented with growing vegetables and hydroponic lettuce, and others helped build raised beds for the upcoming school year.
And what the students produce in their classroom, they are able to enjoy for lunch, thanks to a $10,000 Farm-To-Plate grant awarded from the Kansas State Department of Education.
“We could be entirely self‑sustaining on eggs and lettuce. That’s so exciting that our students can be invested and excited about their school lunches in this way,” said Pekarek.
For older students, teachers are finding ways to incorporate ag-learning into their regular curriculum. Students learn to apply core knowledge to ag‑related projects, like figuring out the perimeter of raised beds or a greenhouse to calculate material needs or using the scientific method to experiment with growing different vegetables.
“I’ll be interested in seeing how these ag lessons might help make math seem more real for the students,” said Mary Singleton, who teaches math at the high school, as well as 7th grade agriculture applications in the upcoming year.
Students also read and research about certain topics in preparation for other project-based learning, or to prepare themselves for field trips to places like Foote Cattle Company in nearby Hoxie, Kansas, or McCarty Family Farms dairy in Colby, Kansas.
Jennifer Guffey, the school’s history and English instructor will be teaching junior high agriculture reading and research to students.
She also leads the school’s fiber arts course, which has slowly expanded into other types of hands-on creative learning, as well. “One day, we also decided to refinish the classroom desk,” she said. “You never know what learning you’ll be doing in my classroom.”
Guffey also organized a soap making unit, an arts project that gives students something useful to take home to their families, she said.
“There is so much that schools can do for students when we think about creative ways to learn,” Guffey said.
Growing Students — and Communities
This fall, the district will open the Northwest Kansas Agriculture Education Center in Palco, transforming a long-closed elementary school into a regional hub for hands-on learning.
The building, which sits next door to the high school, was previously used as a storage space. The idea started small, but once members of the community came together to clean out the building this spring, volunteers envisioned more and more opportunities.
“The ideas just kept coming,” said Greg Hamel, the inaugural executive director of the ag education center and its accompanying nonprofit organization.
As the building is renovated, each room will be fitted with classrooms and labs focused on key ag disciplines in the region, from cow‑calf and feedlot operations to grain production, welding, heavy equipment and ag robotics. There are also plans to create space for conferences and presentations.
Students accepted into the program will come from both within and beyond the district, thanks to Kansas’ open enrollment law. In its first year, the center will accept 20 juniors and seniors, who, in addition to attending classes, will spend Mondays and Saturdays at paid internships at local farms. Parents will also receive mileage stipends for student travel, covered by the district’s transportation budget.
Students will also meet regularly with bankers to learn more about ag business, finance, and succession planning. These skills can help prepare students who are interested in launching their own business or taking over an operation when a local farmer retires.
“We will have folks who are going to come in and sit down with high school students who want to start a business who can say, ‘Let me help you get started. Let me help you get that USDA loan,’” said Pekarek.
Hamel also emphasized the broader benefits agriculture education can have on community development and mental health. “It teaches…not just focusing on what you can do for yourself, but what you can do for animals, for plants, for your local community to help it thrive.”
The program’s design is adaptable, made possible by small class sizes. The program will be tailored to students’ individual interests and connect them with local opportunities. Ag-related coursework can even count for physical education credit.
Students standing in front of a chicken house that was donated by a community member this spring. (Photo courtesy of USD 269)
“Almost everything around here is ag-focused,” Hamel said. “Everyone is looking for a job, an employee, or wants to start their own business. This program is going to help make that happen — and it’s going to help everyone in our community. It’s going to help keep kids in rural Kansas.”
The ag education center has budgeted nearly $1 million for startup renovations and equipment, which will be funded largely through grants and community contributions. For the long-term, the district anticipates that increased enrollment will help sustain the program. Oversight will come from a local nonprofit board, with Hamel leading the day-to-day operations of the program as executive director.
At the heart of the program are students like Carson Knipp, a rising senior who lives just outside Palco. When asked to join the student Ag Advisory Council, he didn’t hesitate.
“I said heck yeah I’ll do it,” Knipp said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.
Knipp is working with a local farmer this summer and plans to continue learning from the farmer through the internship program this school year.
The student advisory council currently includes three students and plans to grow with incoming transfers. Knipp already knows some of the new students transferring from neighboring Hill City. “It’ll be nice to get to know them better next school year.”
Knipp hopes to pursue a career in ag mechanics. But for now, his focus is on getting the word out. “This [program] will help bring more kids into our community, help them find what they want to do after school, and help our town,” he said.
He put it plainly. “If we lose this school, Palco would absolutely turn into a ghost town.”
He also helped lead the council’s presentation about the ag program at the center’s grand opening, held on April 13th. “I learned there’s a lot more that goes into speaking than just saying words,” he said. “You have to mean it — and keep people’s attention even when they aren’t responding.”
The building may not have been fully renovated for the open house, but that didn’t stop a packed house from showing up.
“The pursuit was on,” said Benoit. “It was one of the biggest community events we’ve had in a while.”
On top of the student presentation, attendees enjoyed a free meal and a first look inside the space. It was the first time in over a decade that the building buzzed with life, and a hopeful sign of what’s to come.
A large crowd of northwest Kansas residents gathered at the ag education center in Palco on April 13th for the center’s grand opening night. (Photo courtesy of USD 269)
A School That Stays
The stakes for Palco and surrounding towns go far beyond graduation rates. Without young people, local farmland can fall into absentee ownership — sold to out-of-state hunting groups or leased out without local ties. The connection between land and community frays.
“We need more young people to come in,” Benoit said. “We love our small communities. We want to survive.”
And survival may now be plausible. A dozen new students have enrolled — the first net increase in enrollment in years. Those new faces may not be eligible for sports in their first year, but some students don’t mind.
“We will come over even if we can’t do sports,” one student told Pekarek.
In towns where sports are a large part of the culture, this sentiment, maybe more than anything else, signals hope.
Word is spreading, too. “We’re getting calls from state officials and local politicians who want to come tour,” Pekarek said.
Pekarek hopes that Palco can serve as an example of how rural schools, faced with shrinking numbers and limited resources, are responding with creativity and collaboration. Rather than cut programs, Palco doubled down, partnering with businesses, farmers, students, and the state to offer something real — a vision of how education can support a whole community.
“It’s a unique time in education,” Hamel said. “You don’t necessarily have to get a four year degree to be successful and live comfortably. It’s not the grades you make, it’s the hands you shake.”
Palco’s program isn’t just for agriculture students, it’s for anyone interested in building a life in the region, Hamel said.
“We aren’t just taking ag Students,” he said. “This school can support all students, whether you want to pursue ag after high school or not. It’s good to know about all of the systems that help support our life, our homes, our clothes, our energy, our food.”
“We are here offering something unique, but hope that they’ll come for the rest that our schools have to offer, as well.”
In the process of trying to save their local school, USD 269 is also attempting to redefine what rural education can be: a site of connection, abundance, and possibility.
Related
Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://dailyyonder.com/an-ag-focused-school-hopes-to-turn-enrollment-decline-into-community-and-economic-renewal/2025/07/08/
Published and (C) by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailyyonder/
