The great majority of America's population now resides in urban/suburban locales and consequently most Americans do not struggle with the question of whether their community can, or should, maintain its own school. Nevertheless, this question continues to confront many rural dwellers in all states. What follows is an action research project intended to examine the consequences of the decision to keep or remove a school from a rural community. The subjects in this study are two Kansas towns that exist a mere five miles from one another. The town that kept its school continues to sustain itself, while the town that lost its school has almost disappeared.