“Well, we want to welcome all of you to the 2015 Divide School graduation and promotion ceremony,” said the superintendent, Bill Bacon, as a small crowd settled in on metal folding chairs. “We want you to know we have some great stars for you here tonight and a wonderful program.” He motioned to a preschooler to join him on the tiny wood stage. “This is Grady,” he said. “He has thoroughly entertained us with stories about bad guys who are really good and imaginary heroes who almost die.”
Bacon went on to introduce the other preschoolers: Dax, who was so shy he wouldn’t open his eyes onstage; Savannah, who liked to sing “Five Little Monkeys”; and Savannah’s twin brother, Caden, who was known at school for giving the girls imaginary flowers. Masyn, another preschooler, had been unable to attend the ceremony, noted the superintendent. Then he presented the other students: Grady’s brother, Cody, was a second grader who obsessively watched the Weather Channel and always announced when it was about to rain; he was also the school’s current-events reporter, the first to offer details on a person hit by a truck or struck by lightning. Kameryn, now graduating the fourth grade, had legs so long she was beginning to run like a deer, just like the fifth graders, twins Eimy and Sofia. Sixth grader Caroline, Bacon’s own daughter, could take charge of any situation, such as when she’d answered the phone while the secretary was on maternity leave. And third grader Lidia had matured into a girl whose favorite subject was English, even though when she’d first enrolled she had been a scared, Spanish-speaking preschooler who would stop crying only when Bacon held her. (“I held her for about a month,” said Bacon. “One of my arms is still longer than the other.”)
Other students had come and gone over the year, which was typical: the school district, the smallest in Texas by population, serves families whose fates are inextricably tied to the land. Children of ranch hands don’t always stay, and they are often replaced by new arrivals, so that when asked about enrollment, Bacon had to try to reconstruct the year. “Let’s see,” he said, closing his eyes, “we started with eight, then we had nine, then eleven, then back to nine, then ten, then back to eight, then back to eleven.”
Bacon has run the Divide Independent School District, which consists of only elementary grades, for seventeen years. More specifically, he has been the superintendent, the principal, the third-to-sixth-grade teacher, the ESL instructor, the special-ed teacher, the repairman, the contractor, and the transportation director for the “bus,” which is actually a white limousine he purchased for a steal from a dealer in Dallas. He is not the only employee—there are four others, including two pre-K teacher’s aides, a kindergarten teacher who also teaches first and second grade, and a secretary—but he is the most involved. He says exactly what he thinks, though you might wonder why he bothers, since he often wears his emotions on his face, changing expressions with such frequency that it would take about fifty seconds to fill a gallery show titled “The Fifty Faces of Bill Bacon.” He is tall and skinny, with a graying mustache in the shape of a horseshoe, and when he’s talking, he hooks his thumbs in the pockets of his starched Wranglers. He keeps his cellphone in a belt holster. It almost goes without saying that on most days he wears a white straw hat to school, which sits on his desk while he’s in the classroom.
Bacon shares the values of the area ranchers and their hands, stressing hard work and pride in a job well done. He’s long on praise, especially if a student is exerting effort (“Oh, that’s a good sentence,” he’ll say. “I like that sentence right there”). He’s not above teaching practical problem-solving, as he did one day when he asked the upper grades to replace a doorknob, and like all good teachers, he draws on ideas that his kids can relate to, whether that’s in mnemonic devices (“She’s a pistil-packin’ mama” to remember the female part of the plant) or math word problems (“If sweet feed costs fifty cents . . .”). He’s also big on manners. Early in the school year, he asked a second-grade arrival from Kentucky if she was done with her work, and she turned her paper toward him to show that she was. He raised his eyebrows, then whispered with a wink, “It would have been just as easy to say, ‘Yes, sir.’ ”
As other, bigger districts in the state face the unwieldy challenges that come with managing more students and resources—superintendent problems in Dallas, budget woes in Austin, charter school debates in Houston—Bacon is mindful that he oversees one of the only schools of its kind in the country. Yet his job requires the very same commitment and creativity. Around ten-thirty one morning the first week of class, he’d noticed that Caroline couldn’t seem to keep her legs from bouncing and that Eimy and Sofia were starting to slump like melting snowmen. “Second row,” he called out, “take a lap.” The three girls darted out the side door, their long hair waving as they disappeared past Bacon’s border collie, Ace, and into a back field, hopping over cow patties.
above is an insert from Texas Monthly
