DEALING WITH A LACK OF MEANS TO COMMUNICATE

    The next day I drove over back roads through private and national forests where I saw only two cars in 50 miles. This back way to Bovill reminded me how sparsely populated much of this state still is. After getting lost on a forest service road near Elk River, I was surprised to see how many people are permanently camping in small trailers on federal land, another indication of the housing and employment problems of this area.

Bovill is very small. There is no town center, and the filling station has long been converted into a rock shop selling Idaho crystal, but there is a post office and a tavern which displayed a hand-lettered sign that Bovill Cable was starting up and if cable was already installed you could subscribe for $10 a month. After driving the few blocks around town it was easy to find the Bovil Grade School, which has children in grades from K-3. Pat Eck, a native Pennsylvanian who came west to study forestry at the University of Idaho and then switched to education, is the principal. He was having a staff meeting at the time I arrived, and the office was empty. I read the posters, handouts for parents, and the clippings from newspapers that he felt were significant: an editorial about support for Idaho schools, A web page printout publicized "Kidstown" "Trevor Case loves his job, despite the fact he only earns five cents a day. Case, age six, is a postal worker at Bovill Elementary's Post Office." Eck and his staff change the school in to Kidstown each spring for six weeks. The kids each have a post office, and they send and receive mail. They use their own special money while they are learning various life skills.

When Eck came out of the meeting, it was clear that the end of the school year was keeping him busier than usual, yet he agreed to spend more time with one more visitor from Kellogg. Our meeting was short because of an unannounced visit from the district superintendent but intense because we shared a number of the same interests and concerns. Eck said that of the 300 people in Bovill, about thirty were part of the MIRA team. A few other places had ten percent of their population listed on the roles for training, but Bovill seemed to have taken to this project with more enthusiasm than some others. Two young people from Bovill were charged with taking attendance for all the Idaho groups.

Eck had learned some of the community development skills in other projects. Bovill had taken part in Colin Powell's America's Promise, and Eck believed the future was in their children. The technology planning was new for him. As the Bovill MIRA team discussed the needs of the small town, various projects were suggested by the group. They got a voice mail system with a system for calling a phone tree. However, it was so slow in calling people that they decided it would be a liability if the fire department were slow in responding. The school uses it for with some effectiveness. Another project was the renovation of the fire department siren. Although some might think this is a rather low-tech application, it does address a central problem in Bovill: lack of means to communicate. Computers and Internet connections were installed in the town offices and the public library, which has become one of the busiest places in the small town. This area has poor cell phone coverage, and Eck feels that those towns with a good telecommunications infrastructure will keep from falling behind. The school benefits from an e-rate connection, but that cannot be used by any entity but schools and libraries for non-commercial purposes. He is pursuing other grants for a Department of Labor kiosk for unemployment and is involved with a project out of Portland northwest regional research lab for the Department of Education where schools are trying to connect with their communities in order to foster progress. Finally, Eck and others are forming a non-profit that can undertake projects that neither the town or school is willing to back. The Bovill Improvement Society hopes to be granted its IRS tax status soon.