Ghost School

The townspeople gave their schoolhouse a new coat of paint inside & out; the well water was tested, and the grass was cut. On the first day of school the teacher, Mrs. Norman Melius, unlocked the doors and sorted out the textbooks. Not a pupil appeared. Every day for a month she showed up at the schoolhouse, but still no pupils came. Mrs. Melius was not surprised: it had been that way for three years.

Last week Mrs. Melius (who has no children of her own) went back to being a housewife again. The taxpayers of tiny (pop. 53) Mount Washington, Mass, paid her $120 for her month-long vigil, and considered it a bargain. Under a Massachusetts law, every incorporated town is required to offer its citizens "an opportunity" for elementary education, or bear the cost of sending the local kids elsewhere. Parents of Mount Washington's three elementary pupils boycott the local school because the one across the state line in Hillsdale, N.Y. is bigger & better.

By opening their ghost school a month each year, the Mount Washington school board avoids paying the bills for the three local pupils at Hillsdale. But Mount Washington's parents are up in arms: they say they are paying twice for their children's schooling. Their case is pretty hopeless: the majority of Mount Washington's taxpayers have no children in school.

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