A Country School

Nearly 100 one-room schools were built in Johnson County by 1880. Only about a dozen of those schools remain standing. One of those structures is the Virginia School in northwest Johnson County. The one-acre plot where the building now stands at the corner of 71^st Street and Clare Road in western Shawnee was deeded to School District #33 on December 28, 1875. The school was probably constructed during the following year. The old Virginia School is associated with both the establishment of the rural school system in the post-Civil War period and the end of that system during the unification movement of the 1960s. the school closed in May of 1962 when several rural districts were incorporated into the DeSoto school district.

At the turn of the century, the Virginia School was a typical one-room rectangular school with three windows on each side. A 1934 photograph shows the building as it stands today with an entryway ornamented with a small bell tower. On later years, an additional structure was constructed on the site. In the 1950s, one building was used for students in grades 1 through 4 and the other housed older students in grades 5 through 8. The newer building was sold and moved away when the school closed.

Ruth Lynn, who taught from 1955 to 1962, was the last teacher at the Virginia School. She recalled that the school never had plumbing in the buildings so there were separate boys’ and girls’ outhouses. Water had to be hauled to the school and stored in a cistern.

To provide education after the eighth grade, rural high schools in Johnson County were established in the early 20^th century. Students from the Virginia School who wen ton to high school usually attended Bonner Springs or Shawnee mission Rural.

Almost all remaining country schools were consolidated in the early 1960s. In 1962, the Virginia School and other northwest Johnson County schools including Wilder, Holiday, Round Prairie, Moonlight, Lone Elm, and Waverly were closed. The Wilder, Moonlight, and Waverly schools are also still standing.

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