The Rural One Room School

As settlement took place in the area surrounding Cochrane, the need to provide an education to the children became imperative. The first step in setting up a school took the form of an information meeting, usually at a pioneer’s home. That meeting would lead to the formation of a committee of at least three residents of the proposed school district.

This “education” committee would apply to the Minister of Education for approval to carry on with their establishment plans. The department stipulated the school district had to include at least four persons, constituting the School Board, who actually resided in the area and who, on the formation of the district ‘ would be liable to assessment of taxes for school purposes.

In some cases plans to form a school district faced stiff opposition. Bachelors living in an area feared that the establishment of a school district would raise their taxes and, as a result of apparent short sightedness they would oppose the education committee’s plan.

The local school board was the sole taxing authority as well as the only collecting agency. The board would make an estimate of the amount needed to run the school and then set a rate of tax to agree with this. Financing the rural school could be demanding, especially when local residents fell on hard times due to drought, livestock losses or human tragedy. Taxes were often deferred until a load of wheat or a cow was sold or the milk cheque had been cashed. During a tough period, while very few rural residents paid the school tax, the school still functioned by reason of the paid-up taxes of the more fortunate ratepayers in the district.

Apart from taxes, school boards raised some money from rental of the school building for functions such as public meetings, dances and for polling booths on election days. A tuition fee of thirty cents per day per child would be charged students who attended from an unorganized district or from neighbouring districts whose schools, for one reason or another, were not operating. After 1905 the cost of maintaining schools was met by an additional method, legislative grants.

Where did the schools spring up in these districts? The Canadian government intended to use western natural resources and lands to promote western settlement and railway construction. A simple effective survey system divided the arable prairie lands into square townships, each comprising 36 sections of 640 acres (259 ha) with the basic homestead comprising of a 160 acre (64.75 ha) quarter section.

Under the Dominion Lands Act of 1872 two sections in each township were reserved for the support of education. “And whereas it is expedient to make provision in aid of education in Manitoba and the North-West Territories, therefore sections eleven and twenty-nine in each and every surveyed township throughout the extent of the Dominion Lands, shall be and are hereby set aside as an endowment for the purposes of education.”

Where topography determined the placement of the school and its outbuildings, land was either purchased from, or donated by a settler.

Once the school site had been selected it did not mean that the location issue was solved. A shift in the school population often left the school in anything but a convenient place. No one could predict with certainly the number of families that would take up residence in the district or the increase in population of the families already living in the district. When a population boom meant a building had became too small and another was available, school boards arranged for the moving of school buildings from one district to another. In our locale, the Inglis School (north east of Cochrane) was moved to Cochrane during the late 1940’s when enrollment went the other way and dropped below the minimum requirement.

On January 3, 1939, by order of the Minister of Education, Calgary School Division No. 41 was created bringing into one administrative unit some seventy-six local school districts. The new School Division was divided into five subdivisions, each to be represented on the Divisional Board by an elected trustee.

The Minister of Education, Anders Aalborg noted in his 1960 New Year’s greeting to teachers that only 10 years earlier there were 1545 one-room schools in operation. By 1959 the number had dropped to 275 schools. Alberta’s highway system developed rapidly in the mid 1940s and early 1950s. After World War II many rural school districts centralized their operations. The introduction of school buses altered the shape of rural education at this time.

In 1977 the Calgary School Division No. 41 changed its name to the Rocky View School Division No. 41.

Glimpses into the past, based on notes from Big Hill Country, Chaps and Chinooks: a history of west of Calgary and memories of those who attended the one-room schools in the Cochrane area follow. The one room schools have been grouped according to their location in relation to Cochrane and then alphabetically.