Elk Grove Tutors Come To You

What was school like in Elk Grove, California, in the late 1800s? Elk Grove Unified School District students get to find out firsthand during a field trip to the one-room Rhoads School. Dressed in pioneer garb, they start the school day when the bell rings. Inside they sit in wooden desks and learn reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, elocution, penmanship, music, and science from the same books their ancestors used. They address each other with old-fashioned names (Charity, Fergus, Penelope) adopted just for the day, and they speak to their teachers with courtesy not often heard by today’s Elk Grove tutors and teachers: “yes, ma’am”; “no, sir.” The room’s furnishings are simple: a wooden desk and chair for the teacher, a broom, a clock, a bucket and dipper for drinking water, and, in the middle of the room, a wood stove. At lunch, the students play recess games outdoors: jacks, marbles, jump rope, hoops and sticks, hopscotch, Ante-I-over, kick-the-wicket, dare base, or walking on stilts. Indoor games for rainy days include hang-man and puss-in-the-corner.

The first Rhoads School was built in 1850 near the Consumnes River by pioneer Jared Dixon Sheldon. Because of frequent flooding, though, mosquitoes were abundant, and so were mosquito bites. Children often became sick with what is now assumed malaria. The school shut down in 1868 (although the reason for closure is unknown), and a second one was built in 1872, this time on Sloughhouse Road. To raise money for the school, the townspeople sold cakes, pickles, subscriptions, and $3.50 tickets to a benefit ball. The cost of the new school was $1,312.60, which included the schoolhouse, one outhouse, insurance, and some furnishings. After one year, a second outhouse was built.

The school accommodated first- through eighth-grade students. Rhoads School was rated “first grade,” which means its teacher had scored at least 85% on an exam administered by the county. When the school opened in 1872, teacher Agnes S. Jaycoax had twenty-one students. She was paid $60 per month plus room and board with a local family.

Both schools were named for pioneer John Pierce Rhoads, a resident who lived by the river and was part of three search parties meant to rescue and bring provisions to the Donner Party. Rhoads paid a personal price for his rescue efforts, catching pneumonia during the final party. He suffered for the rest of his life with respiratory illnesses and died at the age of forty-eight.

Rhoads was used as a school until 1946. In 1976, the school was moved to Elk Grove Regional Park, and the newly formed Elk Grove Historical Society was commissioned to care for it. Today, visiting students experience an old-fashioned, “ungraded” classroom, in which each student progresses at his or her own pace, and older students act as the first-ever Elk Grove tutors to younger students.