The Mass Exodus of Southeast Missouri

I was at a superintendent meeting last week. We were talking about health insurance. If it sounds exciting, it wasn't.

At the meeting I ran into a superintendent I know from Southeast Missouri. He mentioned that he was going to retire next year. It's common knowledge that when he retires his assistant will take his place. Then he said something that surprised me. He said, "I don't think we'll replace that assistant superintendent position."

This surprised me because this is a 3A school. It's one of the larger schools in that area. I asked him why they were cutting that spot. He said, "Our enrollment is way down, and has been for a while. It's just time to make this move."

I know the same sort of thing is happening where I grew up, at Scott County Central. I know enrollment is way down compared to when I was a student there. We always, ALWAYS had two teachers at every grade level in elementary, and we had full classes. Now there are a lot of grade levels where they only have one teacher. The enrollment is just down from where it was years ago.

The most famous example of declining enrollment in Southeast Missouri is Charleston. "The Factory" was once a Class 3 powerhouse when there were only 4 classes, meaning they were probably larger than 65-70% of schools in the state. Now that we have 5 classes, the rumor every year is that Charleston will drop down to Class 2, meaning their probably smaller than 65-70% of schools in the state. Their enrollment has decreased dramatically over the past couple decades.

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I was talking with another friend of mine, an administrator from that part of the state, and he talked about how "down" basketball was in that area. He mentioned that the days of the great coaches like Ronnie Cookson and Lennies McFerren and Jim Bidewell and Paul Hale were long gone, and how most coaches just don't last as long anymore.

A lot of coaches - myself, Jim Vaughn, Mike Kiene, Dustin Ferguson, etc - have got into administration. The way teacher salary schedules and coaching stipends work, it's just hard for a lot of coaches to ever make more money unless they move into administration. Other promising young coaches get run off by overzealous school boards. Times are just different than they were 20 years ago.

While I can't argue that fact, I pointed out to my friend that there were still some great coaches in that part of the state. You still have Danny Farmer (Hall of Fame), Greg Hollifield (Hall of Fame), Brad Botsch (a couple Final Four trips on his resume), Brandon Blankenship (15+ years at the same school, great coach), Aaron Bidwell (great coach) at Hayti is good every year, Joe Shoemaker (a couple Final Four trips AND a state title), Travis Day (long tenure at one school and a Final Four trip), Seth McBroom came back to coach at his alma mater, Will Durden is a good coach at Poplar Bluff, Drew Church has done a good job at Cape Central, Darrin Scott is a veteran coach that's done a good job at Jackson, Andrew Halford at Malden, Josh Dowdy is doing a great job at Dexter, look at what Bubba Wheatley has done at Advance, Casey Knight at East Prairie, and Lamont Bell at Caruthersville just to name a few.

That's not even counting the "young coaches" who are just getting started, like Mike Kilgore at South Pem, Patrick Morton at Neelyville, my brother Toby Heeb at North Pem, Jordan Bidewell at Clarkton, Dom Johnson at Bell City, and Nathan Martin at Puxico to name a few more.

(Sorry if I left anybody out... the point is, I think we've got some good coaches in Southeast Missouri).

I told him, "I don't think the problem is the coaching. I actually think we have less "bad coaches" than we did 15 years ago, no doubt about it. I think the problem is the enrollment. The kids just aren't there anymore."

So I pulled the data, and the results are SHOCKING! The table is below if you want to read through all of it. I pulled 43 schools that truly are in "Southeast Missouri," the 9 counties outlined above: Bollinger, Cape, Mississippi, Scott, Stoddard, Butler, New Madrid, Pemiscot, and Dunklin.

Of these 43 schools, from 1991 (as far back as the date goes) to 2017, only 10 schools have increased their enrollment: Chaffee, Cooter, Holcomb, Jackson, Leopold, Meadow Heights, Oak Ridge, Poplar Bluff, Puxico and Kelly.

Of those 10 "gainers" on the chart, they gained 2,129 students over those 26 years. Jackson gained 1,552 of those students. So the Jackson school district is responsible for about 75% of the growth of these 10 schools over the last 26 years.

Of the remaining 33 schools, Woodland (-1 student) and Oran (no change at all) didn't really change in size at all. Even taking that into consideration, the "losers" on the chart lost a whopping 8,094 students over the last 26 years.

Let that number sink in for just a minute... in the last 26 years.... 8,094 students... have moved away from Southeast Missouri... and haven't come back.

Pick your jaw up off of the keyboard and keep reading.

When we talk about basketball history in that part of the state, I had a hard time coming up with a "Mount Rushmore" of programs. The first two are really easy, Scott County Central (18 state titles) and Charleston (11 state titles). Really, the third school, Portageville (5 state titles) is also easy.

For my final two on the list, I picked New Madrid (4 trips to the Final Four and 3 state titles) and Sikeston. I had a hard time picking between Sikeston, Bernie, and Advance. I gave Sikeston the nod because they're a bigger school (so it's harder to get to state), they've won a state title (went 30-0), and like Bernie and Advance have multiple Final Four trips over the last decade plus.

Taking a look at those five schools: SCC, Charleston, New Madrid, Portageville, and Sikeston (38 state titles, like a gazillion trips to the Final Four)... their total enrollment is 67% of what it used to be.

Charleston's enrollment is 52% of what it was when Lennies McFerren coached there. Scott County's enrollment is 76% of what it was when Ronnie Cookson's Braves went 33-0 with Marcus Timmons and Mark Mosely. New Madrid is at 59%. Portageville is at 69% of what they were when they won four straight state championships. Sikeston, one of the largest schools in that part of the state, has lost over 1,100 total students and is at 75% of what they used to be.

Sure, other schools like Cape Central or North Pem or Poplar Bluff have made the occasional run at a Final Four, but these five programs are historically the "power programs" from that part of the state. They're the schools that are routinely making a deep run in the playoffs and hanging up banners.

Their enrollment is two-thirds of what it used to be.

And forget about basketball for just a minute... how hard does that have to be on administrators (funding), teachers (loss of funding = loss of critical supplies and support), students (less teachers, less resources), and parents (do I stay, or do I go?). With so much going on in the political realm right now (charter schools, voucher programs, etc), I think we are missing the broader point.

Our rural schools are doing MORE with LESS than they've ever had to work with. So instead of pointing fingers at these coaches and teachers and administrators, we should be asking "What we can do to reverse this trend?"

Thanks for reading. #JWT

Here is a link to the entire chart. Sorry it won't show it on here, you have to click the link LOL.