Orick Elementary School District in northern Humboldt County operates a single kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school with nine students. California spends $118,000 per pupil per year to keep it open — more than five times the state average. The town of Orick has about 300 residents, down from 3,000 in the 1960s, as the logging industry collapsed and families departed.
The school’s cost illustrates California’s struggle with rural consolidation. As enrollment declines statewide and budgets tighten, state officials question whether the state can afford schools in every small community. But local leaders argue that closing schools would hollow out towns that have already lost their economic anchors.
Orick Elementary School District operates a single kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school in northern Humboldt County, California. Its enrollment is nine students. California spends $118,000 per pupil annually to keep it open—more than five times the state average.
The town itself has shrunk from 3,000 residents in the 1960s to about 300 today. The lumber mills that once sustained the economy have closed. But the school remains open, and the community views it as a lifeline worth any cost.
“Close the school? It comes up all the time,” said Superintendent Justin Wallace. “But I’d say it’s an equity issue. We have families who can’t afford a lot, and this school provides the most consistent setting for our kids. They’re safe, they’re well fed, they’re learning.”
The Economics and Decline
California funds schools based on average daily attendance. Small districts receive most of their revenue from state and federal grants, protecting them from enrollment swings. Orick received $774,000 from those sources last year—nearly the entire budget.
Most money goes to salaries. The district employs four full-time staff: two teachers, an administrative assistant, and Wallace, who serves simultaneously as principal, literacy coach, and special education director. Part-time employees include a janitor, cook, counselor, special education teacher, and after-school instructor.
Operational costs are substantial. Heating bills run $1,100 monthly. When students need swim lessons, they travel 30 miles south to McKinleyville for transportation.
Beyond the classroom, the school functions as a community institution: food pantry, clothes closet, host for Narcotics Anonymous meetings, toddler playgroup operator, and provider of laundry facilities for residents who lack them at home.
Why does this small school cost so much? The answer lies in Orick’s history. The town sits in a lush valley along Redwood Creek, between the Pacific Ocean and the Coast Ranges. The name comes from the Yurok language of the Indigenous people of the region. A herd of 60 elk roams through town. Students observe falcons, deer, coyotes, and occasional bears from school grounds.
In the 1960s, Orick operated seven lumber mills and had 3,000 residents, with nearly 300 school-age children. The town supported grocery stores, restaurants, churches, a movie theater. Then the mills closed. The National Park Service claimed surrounding land. Residents departed. Orick’s average household income is now just under $39,000 per year—a third of the state average.
According to the school’s accountability plan, residents “experience high rates of poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, domestic violence, substance abuse, and run-ins with the criminal justice system due to limited resources and high community rates of intergenerational trauma.”
Kimberly Frick, the school board president and fifth-generation Orick student, remembers when the classrooms were full and students won trophies. She and Wallace now visit every new family that moves to town, attempting to enroll their children.
The Consolidation Question
California once had more than 3,500 school districts. The state gradually consolidated to 1,000 today. Some holdouts remain: Sonoma County alone operates 40 districts, some with only a handful of students.
“Everyone in the community agrees it’s too many,” said Eric Wittmershaus, spokesman for the Sonoma County Office of Education. “The problem is that no one wants to close their school.”
California permits intervention only when a district’s average daily attendance drops below six students. A 2011 recommendation by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office to raise the minimum district size to 100 was never implemented.
Instead, Governor Gavin Newsom’s current budget includes a 20 percent funding boost for schools the state deems “necessary small schools”—elementary schools with fewer than 97 students located at least 10 miles from the nearest alternative, or high schools with fewer than 287 students.
A straightforward merger exists: combine Orick with neighboring Big Lagoon Union Elementary District, 15 miles south. The consolidated district would save less than $200,000 annually—facility costs and one superintendent’s salary. But it would incur substantially higher transportation costs, busing younger students 30 miles round-trip daily. Neither community wants to surrender local control.
Carrie Hahnel, senior associate partner at Bellwether, an education research nonprofit, framed the underlying policy question: “Do we need to provide a school in every community? A post office? What if that community barely exists? We guarantee a free public education to every child, but do we guarantee a school in every community?”
Some closures do occur. Green Point Elementary District in the Klamath Mountains consolidated when enrollment fell to three; its per-pupil cost was $108,000 annually. Kashia Elementary District in Sonoma County, with eight students last year, faces closure next year.
Enrollment in Humboldt County has been declining since at least the 1990s with no rebound expected. A century ago, the county had about 100 school districts, essentially one in every mill town. As mills closed, districts closed with them. Some towns have disappeared entirely. Falk, an old logging town with a school, mill, post office, dance hall and about 400 residents, gradually emptied when the mills shut down. Sierra Pacific lumber company, which owned the land, demolished the remaining buildings in 1979.
Michael Davies-Hughes, Humboldt County superintendent of schools, encourages small districts to plan ahead rather than face abrupt closures. “For some, the current model may be increasingly difficult to maintain,” he said.
Why Orick School Remains Open
Frick and Wallace argue that the school’s educational value justifies the cost. Orick School operates an exemplary outdoor-education program with students conducting regular wilderness excursions, raising trout and steelhead for release in local waterways, testing water quality, and observing regional ecology. Students learn to fish, camp, raft, and surf.
About half the students are Native American. The school offers robust curriculum in Native traditions and history, with a Yurok community volunteer regularly teaching Yurok language, culture, and practices such as collecting acorns and extracting pine nuts.
“I mean, come on, how many other schools are in such an incredible setting?” Frick said. “The facility is clean, safe, well maintained. We provide a high-quality, individualized education for each child.”
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