Hardtner ? The education budget situation is so gloomy that the school board serving this town of about 200 couldn’t just cut spending or jobs. Instead, it’s closing down the community’s only school.

It was a close vote last month, 4-3 in favor of closing the South Barber Middle School at the end of the current school year. Folks aren’t happy about it, and some hoped at least that the South Barber school board would have delayed the closing for a year.

People in Hardtner and other tiny Kansas towns facing similar problems now wonder what impact closing their schools will have on education — and on their communities. In towns that revolve around schools, residents worry that their communities will vanish soon after the schools do.

In Hardtner, the school accounts for 25 percent of the city’s utilities, purchases $700 to $800 worth of gas each month from the only gasoline station, and dominates the incoming and outgoing mail.

“Everyone is very upset and mad and disappointed in our school board,” postmaster and resident Linda Platt said. “Everyone is up in arms. They are ready to start a war.”

Platt said she expected Hardtner to survive the closing, but she also thought utility rates would increase and the swimming pool might close.

The pool — with a slide and two diving boards — helps attract visitors from surrounding communities. But without the school to generate utility revenues, the town might not be able to afford it, City Treasurer Wesley Rader said.

“It’s a real nice big pool, and the city works real hard to try to keep that going for the kids in the community,” Rader said. “And it’s going to be in jeopardy.”

Hardtner’s school employs a custodian, a secretary, two cooks, and several teachers and bus drivers — a considerable amount of the town’s population.

“We don’t want anyone to leave — we can’t afford to have anyone leave,” Platt said. “We need some kids. We need some industry. We just need some help.”

The tiny town of Shallow Water faces the same problem. Scott County’s school district voted in February to close the elementary school there.

“It’s a really hard decision to make for everybody, and there’s so much emotion involved, and it’s not easy,” Scott County Supt. Dean Katt said. “It’s not easy whatsoever, but you just have to look at the big picture and what’s best for the future, and bite the bullet and do it.”

The state has cut and withheld millions of dollars in funding for schools in attempts to balance the budget. The lack of funding forced schools to slash their budgets. Making the situation worse, schools with declining enrollments receive even less aid. The combination means doom for some small schools.

Closing the school at Hardtner, a south-central Kansas community just above the Oklahoma border, will save the South Barber district about $135,000 a year. The Scott County district’s annual savings on the Shallow Water closing is about $245,000.

Katt said the closing would allow the district to expand its programs and staff while cutting expenses. He said he expected other districts to do the same thing if the state’s budget crisis continued.

“I don’t see any way around it, and that’s the sad thing,” Katt said. “I do anticipate this happening a lot more, and I think we’ll have a lot more schools consolidate for no other reason than financial.”

The potential harm on towns like Hardtner and Shallow Water is an unintended side effect.

Randy Turk, associate professor of educational leadership at Wichita State University, says many small communities lean on schools as their largest employer and social center.

“They can survive, but it’s going to take a lot of community spirit, a lot of civic organizations,” Turk said, “and you almost need a cause to keep a town going — a mission.”