On Madeline Island, Elementary-Age Students Have a School of Their Own

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It’s early April as I make my way on the ferry to La Pointe, Wisconsin, the hamlet on Madeline Island that during the last 300 years has served a variety of residents from a large Ojibway community to loggers, fishermen, fur traders, farmers and seasonal visitors.

April is the crossroads of the seasons, and Mother Nature is typically schizophrenic. After a week of warm weather, a major late-season snowstorm is predicted, the source of no small amount of chit-chat among those of us taking the 15-minute crossing from Bayfield. This is the first week of the ferry season, and Island Queen must muscle through large sheets of floating ice.

Most passengers on this gray, low-slung morning are seasoned ferry commuters, taking the trip several times a week if not every day. Yet when ice comes into view and the engine emits its loud anticipatory down-throttle and a rumble of the hull, not one person in the heated cabin fails to stand up, walk to a window and watch with expressions perched between curiosity and caution.

Today the thin ice is easily marshaled, but the curious trepidation of the other passengers reminds me of my destination – La Pointe School – and of its elementary-age children. I can fully understand why the island’s 250 or so year-round residents prefer their younger children to be educated near home. Since 1872, there has been at least one school on the island. The current elementary school offers a more secure daily trip to class than sending them across the waters. Modest class sizes – this year 23 students in two classrooms – make for an intimate relationship among students and teachers that may be the envy of larger districts.

Up the road from the ferry dock, the school’s inauspicious white facade is easy to miss. I enter into a long, brightly lit hallway that runs between the halves – kindergarten, first and second grade on one side, third, fourth and fifth grade on the other.

There is no clamorous ringing of a bell to direct the children between sessions; a few quiet announcements from the teachers suffice.

When I arrive, teacher Carol Sowl is reading The Diary of Anne Frank to the upper grades. Nine children are seated in a semicircle of desks. They enjoy a midmorning snack while listening to Carol.

“Does that old fattie want to do some fighting?” Carol reads out to a ripple of laughter.

A moment later, Carol pauses as a girl shows off the oddly shaped carrot in her snack pack, which also gets an outburst of giggles. Carol waits a few more moments, then continues. The children munch contentedly; they’re a little squirmy, but that’s not out of place in the relaxed atmosphere.

A glance around the room tells me how out of place my “Little House on the Prairie” stereotypes are about this island school. I’m surrounded by backpacks, pencil boxes and tennis shoes emblazoned with SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer, Hannah Montana or Hello, Kitty. It’s easy to see that these children might live on an island but they are certainly not isolated.

Carol Sowl and Sheri Milburn are the school’s two teachers. Both are qualified to teach through eighth grade, but Carol says that after fifth grade most island children are sent to Bayfield to take advantage of programs like sports, band and drama. The pluses and minuses of attending a school like La Pointe stem from the same element: the small number of students.

“The largest class size that I’ve had is 13,” Carol says.

Before other teachers become too envious, they should know that the La Pointe teachers must develop rotating curriculums that simultaneously cover multiple grades, meet state standards and change each of the three years that each child is in a classroom.

“It’s taken some time. I’ve been doing this for 10 years now; I’m confident that the kids are getting everything they need,” Carol says.

This day, across the hall from Carol’s classes, Sheri is teaching melodrama to her kindergarten through second-grade students. Each child has a line or two to read and must effuse the appropriate emotion – anger, fear, sadness, happiness. Although the larger of the two groups this year, there are still only 13 students. Sheri has no trouble keeping their attention. A parent volunteer helps this morning, one of many who take an active role in the day-to-day goings-on.

Community aid and volunteers are critical to the school’s success. Parents, even whose children go to the mainland, help out. Three other certified teachers living on Madeline can provide substitute service. And when weather or other problems stop hot-lunch delivery from the mainland, the Bell Street Tavern prepares meals.

For coursework, Carol and Sheri often use local history, stories and Lake Superior. They take advantage of nearby places like the Madeline Island Museum, where curator Sheree Peterson jokes that it’s a school “annex,” says Carol.

Museum Site Director Steve Cotherman appreciates how the students feel about the museum. He was thrilled at a conversation he recently overheard between two fourth-graders in the museum after school.

“One said, ‘I’ve lived here all my life and I never realized how much stuff is in here. I have to come more often!’”

The variety of ages in each classroom can actually help to speed children’s learning, the teachers say.

In the third grade, “cooperative learning” is a part of the curriculum. Cooperative learning is when children help each other to study – a necessary component when the lone teacher needs to concentrate on one grade level. “I really think it’s what makes us special,” says Carol. “The older kids kind of help out the younger kids, and the younger kids look to the older kids as role models. All the while, they’re interacting with each other.”

Sheri agrees about the benefits. “The multiage setup is critical, really at the heart of everything. I think the children learn to socialize and depend on each other, and they feel like they’re part of a family. Truth be told, sometimes there are family-style arguments, too, but then they have a chance to learn conflict resolution.”

One parent, Beth Griggs, knows well the benefits and challenges of La Pointe. She also attended there – the only girl in her grade through most of her elementary and, back then, early junior high years. Having only boys in her age groups, she played what they played.

“I’d go and play football with the guys because that was what everyone was playing, or I’d play basketball.”

Beth agrees that it can be a challenge to teach children that are either related or act like they are related. “It’s like you’re a big family. You definitely have big-family squabbles, but you also have the support.”

The children “just have to learn to get along, work together,” says Carol. (Most of her students knew her as “Carol,” a friend of their parents, long before she was their teacher.)

Greg Nelson, town chairman for the village of La Pointe, is a lifelong resident of Madeline Island and a former student of the La Pointe School. “There are two ways of viewing it,” he says of the two-classroom school. “On the one hand, it’s a small school lacking resources so you make the best of the situation. But on the other hand, we students were given a  lot of personal attention because the same teachers were instructing us year after year … and got to know us as people rather than just students. I think that is very advantageous.”

While the history of schooling on Madeline Island is long, it’s never had lots of students. The tradition began with Bayview School in 1872 with a parcel of land purchased for $300. In 1888, 33 children attended Bayview; today there are 22 in La Pointe School. The building that houses La Pointe School today is not the 1872 original. A new one was built in 1927 and expanded over the years to contain today’s gym, kitchen, multipurpose room and two classrooms.

In the days when La Pointe bustled amid logging, fishing and farming concerns, there were three schools on Madeline Island.

The La Pointe School was part of the Ashland, Wisconsin, district until 1987, although in the 1970s an informal agreement allowed high school students to attend school in Bayfield.

The arrangement proved unsatisfactory because La Pointe parents could not vote for the Bayfield school board. La Pointe is in Ashland – not Bayfield – County.

In 1987, after island residents petitioned the state, the La Pointe School officially became part of Bayfield School District.

During a state budget crunch a few years back, when it seemed the island school might be closed, there was tremendous local support to make Madeline Island its own school district, independent of Bayfield and Ashland, says Greg Nelson.

The growing popularity of Madeline Island has drawn people buying or building expensive summer and year-round homes, which has resulted in a tax base that now provides about half of Bayfield school district’s tax income and more than a quarter of Ashland County’s tax base (93 percent of Ashland County’s waterfront property is on the island.)

The very thing that benefits the local school district may one day bring about the demise of the island school.

High property and rental prices make it difficult for younger families, those most likely to have school-age children, from settling on the island. But young families, Carol says, are vital for a healthy community in need of volunteer firefighting services, law enforcement officers and other high-activity jobs.

High prices are not new.

“Everything costs more over here,” says Carol, who has lived on the island since 1981, “for the simple fact that it has to take a boat ride. If you want to build a house, all the materials have to be ferried over the water. Food, fuel, clothing, what have you ... it all has a transport-related surcharge.”

The village of La Pointe has had conversations with the Wisconsin Economic Development Association about land trust agreements that make home ownership more affordable, Carol says.

Regardless of student numbers, Carol says, La Pointe’s unique circumstances are reason enough to keep the school open.

First and foremost: It is simply not safe for young children to cross on a windsled – the only mode of transportation in shoulder seasons of too much ice for the ferry but ice too thin for vehicles. Parents, residents and even the windsled operator agree on that. Carol puts it bluntly, “There’s no one in their right mind going to send young children on the windsled.”

Another issue is the extended length of any school day that includes over-water commutes – too long, many say, for young children.

Bayfield’s K-8 school principal Michael Malyuk, visiting on the day I was at the school, believes the little school has a lot in its favor to keep it going. On the top of the list is the support from La Pointe and its residents – whether or not they have children in school.

“So many people get very involved in what’s going on here,” he says. “I’ve worked at a number of districts, and never seen anything like it. The school is very much part of the community. This is true in many places, of course, but it’s really an exceptional relationship here.”

Michael also cites the competence of Carol and Sheri. Carol is a National Board Certified instructor and both teachers are well-suited to wear the many hats needed.

In the midst of our conversation this April day, Michael receives news that sets the La Pointe School abuzz: There will be no ferry tomorrow because of the approaching storm.

No ferry!

Immediately, the children gleefully speculate that school may be canceled. Their older siblings will not go to the mainland for school. Then reality sets in: Sometimes the ferries don’t run and classes still take place.

If you are a child age 5 to age 11 on Madeline Island, the rare days of school despite no ferry is perhaps the only real drawback to having a great school like La Pointe on your own home island.

Jared Glovsky, the author of several books, is a freelance writer who never feels quite right straying too far from the Big Lake.