In the fall of 1970 a group of residents from the Arbon area went before the Oneida School Board at Malad to talk about how their children got to school. For most of the year the district counted their part of the valley as a "non-transportation" area. The Idaho State Journal gave the matter two short paragraphs in a report from Malad printed on Monday, November 23, 1970, and those two paragraphs are all this site has found about it.
Why Malad
Arbon Valley lies across a county line. The Arbon community itself is in Power County, and it had its own school district at the time; in August 1971 the Journal reported that the American Falls and Aberdeen boards, talking over a possible consolidation, had also discussed taking in the Arbon and Rockland districts. The south end of the valley, around Buist and part of the Summit country, is in Oneida County, whose schools were run from Malad. The Oneida-side schools in the valley had closed long before. The site's Buist account dates the Buist School to 1916–1931 and the Mountain View School to 1914–1935, and the Summit account says the Highland School was discontinued around 1941.
The 1970 report does not say where the residents lived. Because they took their question to the Oneida board rather than to Arbon's own, they were most likely people from that Oneida County end of the valley, but the article does not say so.
The arrangement
A bus made the trip into the area in only twelve weeks of the school year, six in the fall and six in the spring. For the remaining weeks the district carried the area on its books as "non-transportation." During those weeks the children met the Holbrook bus where the Arbon Road joins Idaho Highway 37, and getting them that far fell to a single vehicle whose mileage the district paid. The paper put the children's distance to school at 22 to 30 miles.
The Arbon group came to talk about changing this setup, and the report goes no further. It does not name any of them or say how many came, what change they wanted, or whether the board did anything about it. It does not name the school the children rode to, say whether the 22 to 30 miles was one way, say who drove the vehicle the district paid mileage for, or explain why the bus came only in those twelve weeks. The Arbon discussion was one item among several in the report, which led with the board's study of vocational education, music, visual aids and a new gymnasium.
The same words, later
The phrase came back to the valley almost fifty years later. In 2018 Arbon Elementary School District #383 told parents that, as of July 10, its bus route for the south end of Arbon Valley was a Non-Transportation Zone until further notice, and that the school would pay mileage to families who drove their children to school. That notice is preserved on this site.
Other pages here touch the same subject. The Firsts page finds the valley's earliest school-bus driver on record in 1950. In 1976 Jessie Hubbard, whose family dry-farmed in the valley, told a Utah newspaper that her husband David had driven a school bus route in winter while she drove the children in spring and fall. That column does not say which school or route, and nothing found so far ties it to the Oneida arrangement described in 1970.
On this site: the Buist and Summit area accounts tell the history of the valley's Oneida County end, and the Schools page gathers the valley's school memories and photographs.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, November 23, 1970, page 12 (section B, page 1). The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
MALAD — People from the Arbon area talked over with the Oneida School Board whether the busing of their children could be changed, wrote Norma South, the Journal's correspondent at Malad.
For most of the school year no bus came into the area. In those months the area was classed as non-transportation, and children met the Holbrook bus at the junction of the Arbon Road and Idaho Highway 37, with the district covering the mileage of the one vehicle that ran them down to that point. A bus came into the area itself for just twelve weeks a year, half in the fall and half in the spring. According to the report, the Arbon children had 22 to 30 miles to go to reach school; it did not name anyone in the group or say whether the board acted.
People from Stone Elementary School had come before the board recently as well; their topic was whether that school could take on more pupils and staff.
Most of the report concerned an attempt by the board to sound out county residents on the curriculum and the school buildings. Lay members appointed to work alongside the board would study four projects: better vocational education, music facilities and visual aids, and a new gymnasium. The four committees went to Merlin Bastian (vocational education), Foster Ipsen (music), Herman Miller (athletics) and Earl Gillies (visual aids). Each group would go see what nearby towns of about the same enrollment had in place and then give the board its findings and advice. Separate chairmen were picked to handle lectures, small-group meetings, personal visits, posters, voting, information and publicity.
Under other business, the board heard from principals Jerry Esplin and Phil Gillies, who laid out several possible formulas for administrators' salaries. The board signed off on Steve Zumbach, the Future Farmers of America's national president in 1969, to give the 1971 commencement address. Superintendent Lloyd Sorensen gave the holiday schedule: a 2:30 p.m. bus departure on November 25 to start Thanksgiving vacation, and the same on December 23 for Christmas.