Low turnout causes delay for Colorado City schools
 Religion forbidding public education
 
By Mark Shaffer
The Arizona Republic
 
School officials in Colorado City have delayed starting the fall semester for a week as they plan for the withdrawal of hundreds of students by polygamous religious families.

Public schools in the town on the Arizona-Utah line had been scheduled to start Tuesday but have been pushed back until next Monday as the school tries to address an attrition of teachers and students.

"There have been a number of community meetings and discussion about what to do next," said Mike File, Mohave County's school superintendent in Kingman.

More than 1,000 students attended schools in Colorado City during the last school year, and File said school officials estimate that between 450 and 500 students will be on hand next week when classes begin.

Leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who broke from the mainstream Mormon Church in the late 1800s over the question of multiple wives, demanded in late July that all its congregation school their children at home or in private schools sanctioned by the church. The church also told its followers to quit dealing with outsiders who don't believe in the religion.

Only 94 students turned out for the first day of classes Monday at Phelps Elementary School in neighboring Hildale, Utah, Principal Max Tolman said. The school had nearly 250 students last year.

But Tolman also is having to teach because 10 of the 12 teachers quit during all the controversy in the past two months. The school was able to hire only one other staff member after the church pronouncement, a part-time kindergarten teacher, school officials said.

Neither Tolman nor Rex Wilkey, assistant superintendent for elementary schools for the Washington County School District in Utah, would speculate on the religious beliefs of the students at Phelps this year. But Wilkey said he recognized a few kids from last year.

School officials said students at Phelps now enrolled this year are either from Apple Valley, Utah, 10 miles west of Hildale, or from an offshoot of fundamentalist leader Warren Jeffs' sect, referred to as the "Second Ward." That sect of polygamists broke from the church during the 1990s and built a community called Centennial, on the other side of Arizona Highway 389 from Colorado City.

Alvin Barlow, Colorado City school superintendent, announced last month that elementary and middle-school classes would be consolidated because of the anticipated decrease in students.

Schools in the two towns have cooperated since Phelps opened in 1986. Utah students attended Phelps up to eighth grade and then moved into upper grades at Cottonwood High School across the line in Colorado City.

"We find it important to still maintain professional rapport (with the private schools) as the public school district in the area," Barlow said.
 
azcentral.com
Originally published August 23, 2000
 
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