Walking through the bright green grass, viewing the surplus of beautiful homes, encountering classmates, teachers, and family while wandering into a park you’ve seen dozens of times before. This is Fort Thomas.
Fort Thomas is a rural-class city in Campbell County, Kentucky. The Fort Thomas Independent School District consists of Robert Johnson Elementary, Ruth Moyer Elementary, Samuel Woodfill Elementary, Highlands Middle, and Highlands High School. All schools are around a five-minute distance from each other. Living in such a small community has both struggles and advantages.
Getting into the school environment, Madeleine Foster, a student who has lived in Fort Thomas her entire life was interviewed. When asked how living in a small community affects her social life Foster said:“Good, because everybody is living so close it’s easier to go see them. It helps because everyone knows at least one person.”
Students at Highlands can find at least one person they know in each of their classes, however, seeing everyone in your community when going out can create some awkward tension between students.
Living in a small town affects not only the students but also the staff. English teacher Katie Simon points out the faults of living in a close society:
“Sometimes, the disadvantages can be that everybody knows everybody else and you can’t escape what people think of you. Or if you have a sibling, everybody knows your sibling.”
While some cons come from living in a close-knit community, there are also plenty of benefits. Such as proximity to events, a safe environment, and making school communication less stressful. Middle school Language Arts teacher Brian Alessandro said this about the advantages of living in a small town:
“I think it helps our school environment because when you have a close-knit community people are more invested, especially in education and the sports.”
As Alessandro said, parents from every family contribute to our school activities, they turn up to football games and soccer tournaments, buy food from student-led bake sales, and donate money to fundraisers. All this is possible due to our close-knit town. Our school’s superintendent had similar opinions.
Fort Thomas’s school district superintendent, Brian Robinson, had his own opinions on running most of the school district here in Fort Thomas. He comments on the assets and liabilities of how a small community affects the schools. “Well, I think it’s, we’re a really unique and blessed community in that there’s one school, one public high school, one public system that is really fed by one community. And so in a lot of ways, our communities and schools identify together.”
Overall, the consensus was that a tight-knit community helps the school because everyone comes together to help the school.