Survival school

The village of Nikolsk is rare for Russia: it is growing and developing. But he can be erased from the card for the sake of 5 million rubles

On February 5, a meeting of deputies will be held in the Vilegodsky district of the Arkhangelsk region. An ordinary event with an ordinary agenda: the issue of abolishing a secondary school in the village of Nikolsk will be decided. There are no plans to close it completely yet: they will only make it a branch of the district school and reduce the senior classes. And it may seem that there is nothing special about this: in Russia, since 2000, 24 thousand educational institutions in villages have been closed. People are moving away, the economy is falling into disrepair, there are fewer and fewer children - nothing can be done, it’s a natural process.

But the case of Nikolsk is not like that. The village is not going to die at all. There is a large agricultural enterprise operating here - recently it even bought a dairy plant in neighboring Kotlas and now supplies all neighboring areas with butter, there is a timber company, a full range of social institutions - from a kindergarten and post office to an outpatient clinic. And even a museum, which is visited annually by about five thousand tourists and which every summer holds its own festival with folk music, oven-baked dishes and an ethnographic component, bringing together guests from various regions.

The population is growing: in 2010 there were 613 residents, now there are at least 700. This is because local entrepreneurs transport people who are ready to work: they help with housing. On the outskirts of the village, 50 plots have been allocated for future construction.

There are few such villages in Russia, and maybe even fewer, because trouble is looming over Nikolsk.

Last November, residents were told that the school in the village would be cut. The head of the district, speaking to them, said that the decision had been made and people’s opinions would be asked, but only formally - it would not be decisive. She also added that

reductions await all district schools, except for the one located in the regional center: the rest will turn it into branches, their senior classes will be reduced, and some will be completely closed.

In response to local indignation that it was incorrect to compare them with dying villages, she replied: “Nikolsk school will not be an exception, because you are so good here.” To be convincing, she clarified that what was happening was an initiative of the Ministry of Education: it was not us who came up with this, it was a decree from above. And she outlined the goal: to reduce one class - to save the budget 2.5 million rubles, to reduce high school - 5 million. And the chairman of the district meeting of deputies, who spoke next, summed up: “Times are difficult now. *** is coming."

The time is not only difficult, but also very suitable for layoffs. Right now there are only two people studying in the tenth grade in Nikolsk, and one in the eleventh grade. If you wait a couple more years, then much larger classes will go to high school - 10 and 12 people each. And then - even more. It just so happened that Nikolsk began to grow rapidly in the last ten years, when the head of the agricultural enterprise changed. It was then that families of specialists with children began to be brought to the village. If this had not happened, 81 children would not be studying at school now and there would not be 32 more kindergarteners on the way.

So, of course, officials need to “optimize” the senior classes now - so that everything looks like a reduction in an ordinary small school. And that the villagers successfully built the future - well, it happens: they didn’t have time to finish it.

If everything goes according to the plan outlined by the district authorities, supposedly handed down from above, the prospects for Nikolsk are clear. What is a branch school? An establishment that can be closed with one order from the director. At least cut all 11 classes at once: save not five, but 55 million. And if there is no school, there will be no village.

Therefore, Nikolsha residents stood up as one: they sent out a lot of appeals, went through all the regional media and even applied for a referendum on preserving the school. However, the referendum did not work out right away - the election commission has already rejected three applications, but residents do not give up and have already sent a fourth. At the end of December, they managed to remove the issue of cutting their school from the agenda of the meeting of deputies. All other schools are eventually being cut, but Nikolskaya is not yet.

But deputies are persistent people. And now they are going to consider this issue again. How much the country will lose from the closure of Nikolsk enterprises - and this, if there is no school, is inevitable, as the entrepreneurs themselves admit - is a speculative question. But only one SEC “Nikolsk” has received a net profit of more than 5 million since 2020. So, the choice is simple: either earn money gradually but steadily, or save a lot, but only once.

They will soon show whether the Vilegod authorities have a long-term planning horizon.

And the Novaya Gazeta magazine will soon publish a large report on the closure of rural schools. And about Nikolsk with its brave people, and about those settlements where the situation is worse, and about officials who are trying to answer the residents’ question: “Why are you thinking about how to save the budget, and not how to fill it?”