The Double O school has one room, one teacher and six pupils. It's 15 miles from a paved road and, until recently, the phone lines would go down for as much as a month at a time. While it harkens to the little red schoolhouses of times long past, it is as up to date as most other schools.
Computer screens glow in the corner.
Each child gets private music lessons. And the teacher has her hands full. Double O, named for the nearby Double O Ranch, has been there in one form or another since the 1890s. Seven in one county Of the 21 small districts that survived the move, seven are in Harney County, an expanse of sagebrush, rimrock, desert and isolated ranches the size of New Jersey, Rhode Island and Delaware combined. These schools are not rural, they're remote.