Volume 11 , Issue 4

County High Schools In Oklahoma

The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 37, pg. 196, states, "Providing secondary education for pioneer Oklahoma Territory youth was a very difficult problem and was not solved soon or well.

Most of those ready for high school were not within walking, riding distance of secondary schools of any sort. Only a few attended the preparatory department of public colleges where tuition was free. Very few towns were able to provide high school facilities and the private and church schools were few and small."

Oklahoma had several counties that voted on proposals to establish county high schools under a law enacted in 1901 and repealed in 1909. Four counties organized and operated under this law. In 1919, another county established a high school under a law enacted to meet its needs. It was between 1903 and 1935 that Oklahoma had five county high schools operating from 4 to 26 years each.

Besides county high schools, the Territorial Legislature tried two other methods of bringing secondary education sufficiently near to the homes of the youth. These were called the township high schools and the consolidated district.

1. Township High Schools -- The township high school was authorized by the 1st Territorial Legislature, in 1891, and repealed by the 2nd Assembly, in 1893. It was under this proposal, each congressional Township, six miles square, included four common school districts, each three miles square. A township board coordinated the work of the four district boards and operated a high school, in the center of the township. Some townships did not began a high school during these two years.

2. Consolidated Districts -- In 1905, the Territorial Legislature enacted a law which permitted two of more districts to combine, when approved by a majority of the voters in the areas affected. A centrally located school offered high school subjects as well as upper elementary grades.The consolidated district was often built around a town district, which already had a high school, though some were strictly rural. The Oklahoma reorganization law, enacted by the 22nd Legislature and amended by the 23rd, discontinued the consolidated district as a legalized unit. By 1950, improved roads and transportation shifting of population to town, and other causes contributed to make the consolidated district less and less needed.

3. County High Schools -- It was in 1901, county high school law was enacted by the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature and amended in 1903. Between 1905-1933 there were at least six other laws dealing with county high schools. Two of these were concerned mainly with Cimarron County, in the Panhandle. Others dealt with disposal of funds or property of schools that had been discontinued.

The first law provided that any county with 6,000 population could, by vote of its qualified electors, build, equip and operate a high school for the entire county, supported by county-wide tax levy on all property. One-third of the electors of a county petitioned for a vote on the county high school proposal and the commissioners called an election. A favorable majority voting authorized the school and the county commissioners appointed 6 trustees to serve with the County Superintendent as chairman. Not more than three of the six could be from the same township or of the same political party.

Pupils living too far from the school to reach it daily from their homes usually lived during the week in the school town, returning home over the week end to care for laundry needs, replenish food supply, or sometimes to help with the farm work. A good many boarded in homes or in clubs or did light housekeeping. Some mothera kept house for their children and those of neighbors, returning home most week-ends and at the close of the school year. I know this is what my mother, Vada Paris, did when she attended high school in Seiling, Oklahoma. Vada boarded with a family in Seiling and kept house and looked after their children while she went to Seiling High School.

Only two of the five counties erected high school buildings and only one of these still stands, the one at Helena.

Eight counties rejected proposals to build county high schools. Cleveland county was the first of these, heavily rejecting a proposal to establish a school in Lexington. Other counties defeating the measure included Blaine, Canadian, Garfield, Kay, Lincoln, Pawnee and Pottawatomie. Some defeated the measure two or three times. Cimarron, Creek, Logan, Okfuskee and Woods Counties established schools, the latter becoming Alfalfa county High School in 1907, when helena was no longer in Woods County.

In April, 1933, another act of the Legislature abolished "... all county high schools in counties having a population of less than 25000, according to the US census of 1930," and provided for disposal of the funds or property left by a school thus discontinued. The population of Okfuskee county was 29,016, so the Okfuskee County High School was not affected by the 1933 law.
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