Parents say rural Kentucky school facing closure is ‘heart of the community’
Parents of students at Arlie Boggs Elementary School praise the care teachers show the kids, the quality of instruction and the family atmosphere.
But that may not be enough to save it.
As the population declines in Eastern Kentucky, the tiny school on the south flank of Pine Mountain in Letcher County faces an uncertain future.
There are only 103 students in grades kindergarten through 8 at the school, down from 121 at the end of the 2023-24 school year, according to the principal, Freddie Terry.
The outlook for the upcoming school year is not promising so far, with only two students registered to come in for kindergarten.
The low enrollment and other challenges, including middle-school teachers having to double up to cover required content areas, have the school board considering closing the school.
The board will discuss the issue at a meeting April 28.
“Nobody wants to take a school out of that community,” said Superintendent Denise Yonts.
However, she said, “We really have to look at what’s best for these kids.”
Lost coal jobs, aging population
Arlie Boggs is dealing with demographic and economic headwinds that are a concern in other counties in Eastern Kentucky as well.
Coal jobs that fueled the local economy for decades took a sharp downturn beginning in 2012 as several factors drove down demand for coal, including competition from natural gas, proposals for tougher environmental rules aimed at improving air and water quality, and the rise of renewable energy.
Nearly a generation ago in 2006, there were 1,262 direct coal jobs in Letcher County that accounted for nearly 32 percent of all county wages, according to the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet.
The number of coal jobs in the county had dropped to 154 at the end of 2024, mirroring a decline throughout the region.
There were 2,545 coal jobs in Eastern Kentucky at the end of 2024, down from 13,371 at the end of 2011, according to the cabinet.
Families have moved out of the eastern coalfield as a result, including younger families with children.
Some people also moved out of the county after devastating flooding in 2022.
The other reality is that there are more deaths than births in Letcher County and others in the region.
Between the census counts in 2010 and 2020, 2,375 more people moved out of Letcher County than moved in, and there were 591 more deaths and births, according to a 2022 report from the Kentucky State Data Center at the University of Louisville.
Local and regional groups are working to try to change that trajectory, but those efforts have not reversed outmigration just yet.
The state data center projected that Letcher County would lose 43.3 % of its population between 2020 and 2050, the largest decline in Kentucky except for neighboring Knott County, at 43.8 %.
‘More than a school’
At a meeting in the school gym last week, Yonts laid out the problems facing Arlie Boggs, named for a superintendent who served a century ago when people were moving in for coal jobs and there were more than 80 one-room schools dotting the mountainous county.
Without counting potential kindergarten students next year, the would only be 86 returning students in grades 1 through 8, Terry said.
In addition to the declining enrollment, the building at Arlie Boggs is old. One part dates to the early 1930s and another to 1961, Yonts said.
That limits the work the state will allow the school district can do on the structure, she said.
Another issue is that because of the small enrollment, there are split classes at the school — kindergarten and first-grade students together, for instance — and middle-school teachers have to handle more than one required subject area in multiple grades, Terry said.
“The teacher shortage is real,” he said.
But parents and grandparents at the meeting attended by Yonts and two board members made impassioned pleas for the board to keep the school open.
Several said the students benefit from close attention from teachers and a tight-knit atmosphere.
“It’s more than a school,” said Waylon Fields, whose wife Candace, a Veterans Administration social worker, is on the site-based council at the school. “It’s a family. It’s a home.”
Janie Sturgill, an emergency-room nurse, said one of her daughters has a learning disability and struggled at another elementary school, but improved significantly after moving to Arlie Boggs.
“I believe it’s the small classroom size. I believe it’s the one-on-one care,” Sturgill said.
Fields said staffers at the school worked closely with his son Elijah, a first-grader, to deal with his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Elijah is reading at a fifth-grade level, Fields said.
“I don’t even have the words to even thank them,” he said. “He’s flourishing.”
‘The heart of the community’
The school is in the Eolia community, separated from the county seat of Whitesburg and much of the rest of the county by formidable Pine Mountain.
Parents said if Arlie Boggs closes, students would face more time on the bus to reach Cowan Elementary, the next-closest elementary school.
Crossing Pine Mountain on U.S. 119 also raises safety concerns.
The road has sharp curves, steep grades and there can be fog and slick pavement on the top even when the bottom is clear, parents said.
High school students from the Eolia and Patridge communities already cross Pine Mountain to Letcher County Central High School, but the trip would be harder on younger children, parents said.
Parents said moving students to another school in the county would knock some out of participating in sports or other activities because people couldn’t afford the extra travel cost and time.
Arlie Boggs is the only county school south of Pine Mountain, an area were people already feel somewhat cut off from the rest of the county.
There is no public water service in the area, and if the school closes that will reduce incentive for the county to ever install waterlines, some residents said.
The school has been a community focus for decades, educating multiple generations of families.
Many fear losing that.
“You close the school . . . you close the heart of the community,” said Mindy Boggs, a former school board member.
The school is such an asset to the community that a coal company once offered to pay teachers’ salaries for a year so the school board could spend the money on upgrades, Fields said.
This spring, with the potential that there won’t be an Arlie Boggs school come August, Terry, the principal — whose parents and sons attended the school just as he did — paid for every student to receive a yearbook.
Tammy Day, whose granddaughter Lillian is a 5th-grader at the school, said it shows how special the school is.
“You can’t beat this kind of school,” she said. “We’re hoping to keep it going.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
