The last couple of weeks I've written about school consolidations, and I've written about the same subject at least a time or two in the more distant past. So, while I'm far from an expert on the subject of school consolidation, I know from my limited experience and research that school consolidations were rarely accomplished without some degree of controversy or disagreement. Often, the extent of the controversy was simply that one school district, usually a smaller one being taken in by a larger one, did not favor the consolidation while the other one did. Occasionally, though, the controversy involved two larger school districts contending over which one would take in a smaller school. The consolidation of Ritter School with the Springfield (MO) School District is one example of this phenomenon.
In the fall of 1949, a county-wide school reorganization plan under which the rural Ritter School, located between Springfield and Willard, would be taken into the Springfield district was rejected by Greene County voters. Then on October 18,1950, a group of Ritter patrons petitioned the Ritter School Board for annexation to Willard, and an election was set for November 6. On October 20, however, the county school board approved a new reorganization plan under which Ritter would be taken into Springfield.
One of the main problems with the proposal for Ritter to consolidate with Willard was that the two districts did not join each other. But on November 2, patrons of Schuyler School District, which lay between Ritter and Willard, voted to join Willard, and Willard agreed the next day to accept Schuyler.
On November 4, the Ritter patrons who'd gathered the first petition filed a new petition to join Willard, because the legality of the move had been questioned when the two districts did not abut each other. At the November 6 election, Ritter residents voted overwhelmingly to approve the first petition to join Willard.
Then in January 1951, they also voted, by an even greater margin, to approve the second petition. One of the reasons Ritter residents cited for preferring to join Willard was that they did not believe in "progressive education," which they felt was taught in the Springfield schools and instead preferred the old-fashioned 3-Rs.
Later that month, patrons of Springfield and Ritter voted, by order of the county school board, on a proposal for Ritter to consolidate with Springfield. Ritter patrons voted solidly against the proposal, but, because Springfield voted in favor of it, it passed easily, since Springfield patrons greatly outnumbered Ritter patrons.
The Greene County attorney sought the opinion of the Missouri attorney general on the matter, and the state official said the Springfield annexation was legal and that Ritter belonged to Springfield. The Ritter School Board then turned its funds over to Springfield.
Boiling mad, some Ritter patrons filed suit in circuit court to overturn the ruling. The judge's sympathies were clearly with the Ritter patrons. He said, "Here a rural school district having at most a population of only a little more than 200 qualified voters, after having twice declared its desire to be annexed to Willard, a neighboring consolidated district with adequate schools, is gobbled up by its city neighbor which has a hundred times as many voters--a rural farming community has been absorbed in a metropolitan school system where instead of managing its own school affairs, it will be hopelessly out-numbered and out-voted, where its school children may feel out of place among strangers."
However, the judge said he had to follow the law and that the annexation of Ritter into Springfield, according to the school reorganization law in Missouri, was legal and binding.
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