Clinch School — Hawkins County, Tennessee

The Clinch School is something of an anomaly in the current public education structure, in this part of the country at least.  This is the former Clinch School, a brand new structure to replace this one was built a few miles on down the road back in 2009.  The new Clinch School serves approximately 150 students in grades K-12.  It has the distinction of being the smallest school to serve grades K-12 in the entire state of Tennessee.

The Clinch School originally opened in 1938.  Built as a public works building the school was the first in the Eidson area of Hawkins County to provide education past Grade 10.

Prior to 1938 students from the remote area of the county had to go to school at Rogersville to go past 10th grade.

As you can tell, the  building is signed as “Clinch High School”.    This building was used until the end of the 2009-2010 school year when the new building was completed.

The site of the former school is largely abandoned now and the grounds are unkept.

The new school currently serves 140 students in grades K-12.

In this time of school consolidation and the thought process that bigger is better, you have to commend the people of Hawkins County and the community around this school for fighting to keep their school in operation.

Rocky Branch School — Wayne County, Kentucky

Rocky Branch School is located in the eastern part of Wayne County Kentucky near the McCreary County line between the communities of Rocky Branch and Coopersville on Kentucky State Route 92.

Rocky Branch School is a prime example of a school building built during President Franklin Roosevelt’s  New Deal and the WPA.

The school was built sometime in the 1930s and is built out of the same cut sandstone that was used at the Wayne County High School on down the road in neighboring Monticello that is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

At some point, probably in the 1960s the school recieved a small addition on the building’s south side.

Rocky Branch closed to students after the 1984-85 school year as Wayne County began a consolidation process that left them with more centralized schools in the county.