trust me; i know what i'm talking about here
In the June 8, 2005 De Smet News, one of the front page articles is: "School history stretches back to De Smet's beginning." I quote:

The De Smet School District isn't quite as old as the town.

The school celebrates its 117th year as an independent district this year; the city is celebrating its 125th birthday...

By 1883, according to history written by former Superintendent Lyle Lester, there was a formal school organization.

The school here was originally established on May 7, 1883, as a subdistrict of the De Smet Township School District. When the city incorporated under general law in 1888, an independent school district was automatically formed within the town's boundaries...

I don't know where people come up with this stuff, but I've already written to the editor of the News about it. It's not like the organization of schools wasn't recorded at the local, county, and territorial level at the time!

March 9, 1880, Amos Whiting was appointed the first superintendent of Kingsbury County. June 14, Whiting authorized the formation of two school districts: Number 1 was in Nordland (now Arlington), and Number 2 comprised 18 sections of land surrounding the village of De Smet. The first meeting of School District Number 2 was held at the Ingalls building in town. At that time, they elected a board, and decided where the school was to be built.

The first three teachers in Kingsbury County were certified on October 28, 1880. One of these was Florence Garland, and she was hired to teach District 1 school. This was an independent district; at that time, the schools were a law unto themselves (meaning that each school had its own school board), but they strictly followed Dakota Territory School Law.

The reason 1888 is such an important year is because in 1883, Dakota Territory abandoned the district school system in favor of the township one. Under this system, multiple schools in a "school township" (which might or might not have had the same boundaries as the civil township) became under the jurisdiction of a single school board. This system didn't last long in Kingsbury County, because the school board found that it was too hard to travel to multiple schools that might be miles apart, so they went back to the system in place before, but this time they called the schools "independent" - meaning they were independent of each other and independent of the township, which, gee, was exactly what they had been in the first place.

Sorry, folks, but the De Smet school was established on June 14, 1880, and both De Smet and the town school should be celebrating their 125th anniversaries this year.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:04 AM