If Angelus were still a prosperous farm town and had more children than chickens, then maybe the two-story brick schoolhouse would still be a school and not a chicken coop. But it isn’t and it doesn’t. So instead of students, the ground floor of the century-old building is occupied by poultry, goats cavort on the muddy front lawn and there are reports—unconfirmed—of pigs in the gym.
The situation is raising hackles among the 28 residents of Angelus, as well as former students and history buffs elsewhere in northwest Kansas. “It saddens you every time you go by there,” said Bill Bixenman, 89, whose eighth-grade class in Angelus had 13 pupils. “But it is what it is.” The school’s owner, Josh Rumback, acknowledges that his decision to convert school to barn has left some locals “butt sore.” He built a wall that somewhat blocks the view from the gravel road that runs through the center of Angelus. … Local tension over the school’s decay reflects a larger truth: America’s small towns have been shrinking, sometimes into nothingness.
Source: Wall Street Journal.
