School closures have become an incendiary issue in nearly every corner of the country, as enrollment declines and expenses climb. For the past five years, an average of 750 public schools nationwide have joined the graveyard of closed schools, with elementary schools leading the way. Urban, suburban, rural schools — they are all among the disappeared.
And then there’s Seiad Elementary School in Northern California, with its 19 students, one teacher, three para-professionals, and five rooms. After a lifetime visiting public schools across the U.S. and championing small schools where every child is well known, I’d never set foot in a truly small school.
A few weeks ago, I met the Seiad Elementary students and their teachers at a gallery exhibit in Yreka, California, where my 93-year-old artist friend, Betty LaDuke, was exhibiting her latest tribe of large, carved wooden turtles carrying wisdom on their backs. Captivated by these curious and thoughtful students, I asked the teacher, Laura Jaffe-Stender, whether I might visit the school, an hour and a half drive south of Ashland. She agreed.
Two weeks later I headed out. Siri notwithstanding, I’d pieced together my own directions. “Take Interstate 5 to CA-96, pass the sign that warns that there are no services for the next 47 miles, hug a winding stretch of the Klamath River through forests decimated by wildfire, eventually make a hard left to cross the Klamath, and then look for the Seiad Valley general store around the next bend. If I pass the store, I’ve gone too far.”
Note: The students’ names that follow are all aliases.
______________________________________________
A day in the life of Seiad Elementary School, May 26, 2026 (B. Cervone)
On this late May morning, where clouds and sun fight for dominance, I arrive at Seiad Elementary School just in time for mid-morning recess.
Four boys are shooting hoops on the basketball court against a background of tall fir trees. Girls dominate the swings and climbing structures at the other end of the play yard. A third group of students — girls and boys — share a couple of tennis racquets and try to hit the balls pitched to them.
I followed the largest group, ages seven to twelve, into a third classroom where they grab their grade-level math workbooks and face the large, interactive flat panel display (blackboards are long gone) at the front of the classroom. A guide to the “California Assessment System” fills the screen.
Eleven-year-old Max comes over to me and shakes my hand. “Welcome!”
I had asked the teacher, Jaffe-Stender, if I might first commandeer the classroom and ask students some questions: What are the best things about attending a small school like theirs? The challenges? What are their favorite subjects? Their favorite traditions and moments? What do they want to “be” when they grow up?
To virtually every question I ask, almost all of the students raise their hand — a first for me.
“You learn to be resilient here,” Jaffe-Sender says, to which the students agree. “You have to figure it out on your own.”
“The best thing about the school is it’s easy to make friends,” says Jacob, a response other students echo. “We’re a family,” “It’s safe,” “Here, no one is better than anyone else,” others add.
The biggest challenge? “You’re with the same kids year after year,” Emma sighs.
Teacher Jaffe-Stender inserts another hurdle: overcoming the school’s remoteness and isolation. She and the students share stories about field trips being cancelled at the last minute, bad weather prohibiting car travel along the area’s windy roads, and wildfire evacuations upending life.
As for favorite subjects, the students rush to raise their hands and give an answer I did not expect. Evan leads the way: “Math and Science!” Spelling wins two votes and art, lunch, and PE each win one.
What do they hope to “be” when they grow up? Among the boys, several dreamed of becoming a professional football player, several wanted to become a fire fighter like their dad, and one was interested in graphic design. A hand shot up from the back of the room, “I want to be a lawyer!” Rose exclaimed. Another girl leaned toward becoming an artist, a third a veterinarian. I asked if she had a lot of animals at home. “Cows!” she said and rolled her eyes.
Treasured traditions? Students talked about Spirit Week, the last week of school, which includes sports competitions, water games, crazy hat and crazy hair day, show ‘n tell, a community lunch, a student play, jump bands, and more. But the hands-down favorite was playing kickball against the parents.
“Who usually wins?” I asked. “The kids,” Sophia says.
“Red-headed step child in a blue California”
Founded for its mining and timber potential, Seiad Valley is a small unincorporated town in Siskiyou County, California, 15 miles south of the Oregon border. It is the ancestral home of the Shasta Indians until the arrival of gold miners decimated the tribe in the 1850s. Its current population of 300 residents are clustered around the Klamath River and the Klamath Mountains. The legendary Pacific Crest Trail, which draws avid West Coast hikers each summer, passes through the Valley — and a stone’s throw from the school.
The majority of the residents are of European descent, a small minority are Hispanic, and another minority are Native American (Karuk or Yurok), although these proportions fluctuate as residents come and go. Most live in houses scattered about the mountains, usually along paved side-roads or former dirt logging roads. A small number live entirely off the grid.
Wikipedia notes:
The local economy includes forest service workers and wildfire fighters, farmers, health service workers, utilities managers, construction workers, Caltrans workers, pack mule trainers, elementary/high school teachers, social workers, secretaries, cooks, and self-employed business workers. A large number work in nearby Happy Campor farther away in the county seat of Yreka.”
In a state where 45 percent of registered voters are Democrats and 25 percent are Republican, the numbers are reversed in Siskiyou County (28 percent Democrat and 44 percent Republican). As Jaffe-Stender put it: “We’re the red-headed stepchild in a blue California.”
The politics also have a particular wrinkle here. Seiad Valley is within the fictional, secessionist “State of Jefferson,” a movement that encompasses Siskiyou and several other northern California and eastern Oregon counties, and whose members yearn to join the state of Idaho, with its culture of rugged individualism and embrace of local control.
Rising together
For five years in the 1990’s, I sat on the board of a national coalition devoted to supporting rural schools across the country (the Annenberg Rural Challenge). I quickly learned that in small rural towns, schools matter. They are the center, the social network bringing together youth and adults into what they value most: community. In isolated rural places, the community and its school rise (and fall) together, I learned.
The Seiad Elementary School District greeted its first students in 1872. When it became overcrowded, a new building was constructed where the general store now stands. In 1955, the present school was built, a few yards east of the main town. At its peak, in the 1950’s, 70 students were enrolled. It is one of the oldest public elementary schools in California.
Not surprisingly, there is no record of Seiad Elementary’s first one hundred years. It seems that the arrival thirty-five years ago of a new head teacher, an adept educator and musician named Patricia DeDeo Kelner (“Mrs. De” ), set the tone that endures today — a school that marches to its own drummer, privileging thinking, kindness, and engagement over rote learning.
Inspired by Kelner and veteran teacher Carol Lawrence, Laura Jaffe-Stender joined the school in 2007 and became the sole teacher in 2021. Her daughter had attended the school from kindergarten through eighth grade, heading on to high school in nearby Happy Camp. The paraprofessionals, Jaclyn Ownsbey and Veronique Kelner, who oversee kindergarten and first grade, are relative newcomers. (They are both Karuk; Kelner is the daughter in-law of the veteran teacher Dee Kelner. Another aside: For a while, Dee Kelner who played the clarinet, Jaffe-Stender who played the flute, Ownsbey who played the trumpet and a handful of students created a small “pep” band that entertained at community events.)
Lighting fires, not filling pails
When students enter Seiad Elementary, a hand-written schedule for the day greets the 8 – 12 year olds. Students are grouped by ability, not grade level — what Jaffe-Stender says is one of the school’s greatest assets. And they work at their own pace.
“We place kids where we think they will be most successful,” she says. “Low self-esteem is not a formula for success. We want them to be excited about learning.”
Jaffe-Stender is also mindful of the special attention a student may need when they’ve missed a lot of school. “They can quickly become lost. We give them all the tutoring and support they need to catch up.”
The school library, meanwhile, is one of a kind. It occupies a large room of its own and contains more than a thousand titles, including a huge collection of (used) novels and nonfiction books for young readers on every subject imaginable. Generous donors have provided many of the books. (Jaffe-Stender says that she and her staff yearn to sort through and filter the books, but never can find the time.)
As part of the school’s literacy push, twenty minutes are set aside each day for” “Novel Study” (shared reading) by students. The school has secured new copies of award-winning novels for this purpose.
Breakfast and lunch, too, are a decidedly different affair at Seiad. The school’s cook, Savana Oliver, who has prepared meals for years, works out of a small kitchen (I do mean small) off the main hall. She plans the upcoming week’s meals, drives an hour to Yreka on the weekend to shop for groceries, and then cooks up her selections for the 19 students. Students eat in the school cafeteria (a zero has been added to the 25 on a maximum capacity sign but no one knows quite why). Today’s lunch is steamed rice topped with fresh vegetables and grapes for dessert.
When not shopping and cooking, Oliver drives the school bus each morning and afternoon, as well as cleaning and landscaping as needed.
Thinking hard
When I asked Dakota, six going on seven, what he liked best about this school, he paused and then said, in a quiet voice, “They make you think.” “Anything else?” I asked. “There are only three rules,” he answered. “The first one is be kind. There are no bullies here.”
I told him that in most of the urban schools I’ve visited, there are a lot of rules. “Why’s that?” he wondered. I explained how there are often 25 – 30 students in a classroom. He thought for a while and then said, “Ah, that means there must be a lot of ruckus. I guess you need a lot of rules.”
I asked what he thought might make teaching in these schools challenging. Again, he paused, then answered: “The teachers have to work hard to tease the meanness out of some students.”
Later, when I explored the library, I came across an assignment that older students had been working on. After reading the young reader’s version of Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly — the story of four female African American mathematicians at NASA who helped put a man on the moon — Jaffe-Stender asked the students to create a historical timeline of pertinent events drawn from the book.
Eleven-year-old Max’s timeline, with over 30 entries, included “Black Tuesday,” the start of the Great Depression (1929); the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Library establishment of the first female computing pool (1935); VJ Day (1945); the Space Act that created NASA (1958); the racial riots in Greensboro, NC (1960); John Glenn’s historic orbit of Earth (1962) and more. The last event on Max’s timeline was the 2026 Artemis II Mission. Indeed, Seiad students’ names were included in the SD card that accompanied the Artemis II Mission to the dark side of the moon.
When I stopped by the kindergarten room, the students swarmed me with drawings they wanted to show me and games they wanted me to play. One of the things they were also eager to share was a recent addition: a fishbowl with tadpoles and plants. We talked about the day the tadpoles-now-frogs would be released into a nearby pond and what that would be like. When Emma realized that this would mean that these small creatures, once a family (or at least cousins), would be parting ways, she said “How sad!”
Enduring
As a district with only one school and 19 enrolled students, Seiad faces tight funding.
While other districts depend on their enrollments to generate the state funding they need, Seiad is among the 105 districts in the California classified as a “necessary small school,” which are typically located in rural areas. The designation qualifies the districts for a flat base amount based on its number of students and teachers plus additional funding based on the number of low income and other high needs students. At Seiad, this figure fluctuates every year along with the enrollment.
Will Seiad Elementary School endure, I asked Jaffe-Stender.
“Absolutely,” she answered. She notes that local real estate agents actively recruit families to settle in town and that there are a number of younger siblings who will be joining the school next year.
“I feel like I’m the luckiest teacher on the planet,” she smiled. “Great families, great kids, a school community that cares for each other. What more could I ask for?”
Postscript: In 2025 – 2026, 89 percent of Seiad Elementary students scored at or above the California proficient level for reading and 80 percent scored at or above that level for math.
SUBSCRIBE Add your name to the email “blast” announcing new posts. Please send your name and email address to: postcardsfromtheRV@gmail.com
