Consolidations

Someday, we will have two choices of school systems for our kids.  They will either go to school in Rudyard, and be North Star Knights, or they will go to school in Chester and be C-J-I Hawks.  Both these districs are consolidations of smaller communities.  North Star is comprised of the communities of Rudyard, Hingham, Gildford, and Kremlin; Chester, Joplin, and Inverness send their children to C-J-I.

Before this most recent round of consolidations, there were more choices for schools.  Rudyard and Hingham were together-- the Blue Sky Eagles.  Kremlin and Gildford were the K-G Kougars.  Joplin and Inverness were the Rams, and Chester was on their own-- the Coyotes.  My husband graduated from J-I, and his little sister was in the last high school graduating class for the Rams. Her husband was a Blue Sky Eagle.  

Before these pairs of towns came together to form school districts, each community had their own individual school system.  My father-in-law was an Inverness Cardinal.  My landlord and some of our other closest neighbors were Rudyard Panthers.

It is the nature of small towns to band together and consolidate public services.  Schools combine in an alphabet soup of acronyms.  Do their fans get confused over which animal or mascot to cheer for, as they make the switch from a jungle cat to a medieval warrior?

There is a lot of talk right now about a new round of consolidations, and it's not the schools.  The United States Postal Service has been losing money annually, due to modern communication services like email and Facebook, and competition on package handling services from FedEx and UPS.  Larger towns will not likely notice any difference in a few positions being cut at the Post Office, but in our small towns, each town only has one Post Office and is only staffed by one Post Master.  It's these small towns where rumors are flying that their Post Offices will no longer be available to serve the community-- they will be closed.

As it is, we patronize the Post Office in Inverness, but that is one that is likely to be shut down.  How will they consolidate postal services?  Will it follow school district lines? Or will it be an even broader move-- post offices only in Havre or Chester?  For now, we will wait and see.