RISON - Eighty years ago, the combined enrollment for the school districts in Cleveland County was nearly 3,700 students.
Today, using the latest official figures from the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE), the combined enrollment of the county’s two remaining districts, Cleveland County and Woodlawn, is 1,193. In his Other Days page published in last week’s (June 17, 2026) issue of the Herald, county historian Stan Sadler reported the following from the June 19, 1946, edition of the Herald: “Cleveland County’s school population is shown to be 3,696 in a recent census, for a slight decline. The population figures show 532 students at Kingsland; Woodlawn, 598; New Edinburg, 516; and Rison, 1,068. Among the smaller districts, Rose Hill had 88 and Free Hill, 91.”
So, over there past 80 years, Cleveland County has lost 2,503 (nearly 68 percent) of its student population.
Keep in mind that the most recent combined total for Cleveland County and Woodlawn includes 165 non-resident students who transferred into the two districts using the School Choice Act. With the majority of those transfer students being from outside the county, the actual number of students who reside within the two school districts is likely less than 1,100.
Most that loss in students can be linked directly to population decline.
Back in 1946, Cleveland County was still in riding a population wave, and families that were living here were, on average, much larger than they are today.
The 1940 census showed Cleveland County had a population of 12,570, down from the 1930 census of 12,744 but up from the 1920 figure of 12,260. The all-time high was 13,481 in 1910.
And much of the population during that era was children. U.S. Census data showed the norm for rural families across Arkansas during the 1940’s was four to six children with some farm families having seven to 10 children.
But there were already signs in that 1946 article indicating changes were coming. While it is hard to imagine there being 3,700 st…