TYLERTON -- Maryland's last one-room public school is down to nine students -- five of them in the sixth grade -- and going the way of the oyster industry that once sustained this island village in the Chesapeake Bay.
Opened in 1911 and with a $110,000 wooden structure built in 1974, the Tylerton School has been the pride of Smith Island for generations.
But the decline of the seafood industry, tidal erosion and the gradual sinking of the 16-square-mile island have forced many families to leave.
Tylerton's population has declined to about 80, and no one is replacing those who've departed.
The school, on the southern tip of the island within sight of Virginia waters, had 21 students two decades ago.
The other Smith Island school is in Ewell, reachable from Tylerton only by boat. It is down from 80 students in 1974 to 28 now, although officials say its enrollment has stabilized in recent years.
Just as they rallied to replace the old school, so the seven families with children in the Tylerton school (there are two sets of siblings) are rallying to keep the current version alive, and they've even volunteered to pay for seventh-grade textbooks.
April Tyler, the teaching principal, is taking courses at Salisbury State University to allow her to teach through the eighth grade, and the five sixth-grade families have agreed to stick with the school if it remains open.
In Princess Anne, Dr. James G. Horn, Somerset County superintendent, is sympathetic, but, he said, "The outlook doesn't look too good; I just don't see people moving over there."
Dr. Horn said the school is safe at least for the rest of this school year, after which a decision will be made. "It would be hard to justify running a school for four children," he said.
Dr. Horn has another problem: The state's only school boat, a 20-year-old craft that carries about 30 Smith Island high school students (four from Tylerton) to and from Crisfield, needs replacing, he said. Money for the new boat -- about $400,000 -- is in Gov. William Donald Schaefer's proposed 1996 state budget, Dr. Horn said.
"Now we have to fight in the legislature to keep it there. We can't tell kids on Smith Island we're not going to educate them, even if it's one student."
The Tylerton parents -- whose parents, and their parents, attended the school -- are intensely loyal.
"It's the environment," said Dora Corbin, former PTA president, occasional substitute and mother of first-grader Casey and sixth-grader Adam. "You know the teachers personally, you know their back grounds. One of the best things in life is to know what to expect from people, and in this day and time it's important to know whose hands our kids are being placed in."
On the desk of Evelyn Tyler, April Tyler's assistant (and no relation), is a photograph of Cody Bradshaw, the only child due to attend Tylerton School. But Cody doesn't turn 2 until February.
The school is a cheery place, colorfully decorated last week in a Thanksgiving theme. "Miss April's" area is to the right of the entryway, "Miss Evelyn's" is to the left.
The pupil-teacher ratio, 4 1/2 -to-1, would be the envy of a private school. Four of the seven grades have one student each.
"It's hard, working with such an age range," said Evelyn Tyler, "but you get used to it.
"Last year, I taught the young ones and April the older ones. This year we're trading them off. She has the older guys in the morning, me in the afternoon."
Tylerton School features a standard elementary curriculum, according to Evelyn Tyler. "In the science classes, we try to make use of the bay, because we're so close to it."
The students had been exchanging letters for a year with a member of the parliament of American Samoa, and last spring he was invited to Tylerton for a crab feast.
"His town was in very similar circumstances," said Evelyn Tyler. "Isolated, Methodist, losing population, dependent on water for survival and suffering from erosion. We had the best time that day!"
Test scores at Tylerton School are "about in the middle, not the lowest and not the highest," said April Tyler.
The state's new sophisticated "performance assessment" tests have been a problem for the two teachers, she said, because they involve group work and require students to edit one another's writing.
"I always put in a footnote before we send the tests off so they'll recognize our special circumstances when they're grading," she said.
Evelyn Tyler, who speaks with the Elizabethan vowels of the Methodists who settled Smith Island in the 1600s, can reel off the names of all 59 students she has taught in 22 years.
Asked to describe the current crop, she starts with the oldest and moves to the youngest with the fondness of a proud mother:
"Lee Smith, now he's our seventh-grader. He's going to be like his dad. He's always got his mind on boats and seafood and crabbing. He's going to be a waterman. . . . Casey Corbin, he's our first-grader, Adam's brother. He's a clown, loves to read, has a dry sense of humor."
The school is far from backward. There are four computers and a well-stocked library that doubles as the Tylerton public library.
The school's playground is a 3-foot-high deck that allows children to run and play when tides are high.
A teacher comes by boat from Ewell for twice-a-week physical education classes.
It's a short walk from the school to everything in a town with no cars -- the tiny post office, the church, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation center, a grocery store and, of course, the docks and crab shanties.
April Tyler is in her fifth year of teaching. She, Evelyn Tyler and the Tylerton parents speak of the "family" that is theirs, of holidays that are celebrated in the school and nearby Methodist church, of houses that are never locked. This is the community school to end them all.
"In some ways, I suppose, this is not the real world," said April Tyler. "These kids will need the real world. They'll get the real world eventually, but here it's still possible for them to get a wonderful education."
In Tylerton, everyone concerned with the school is considering options if it closes. April Tyler said she'll try to get a job at the Ewell School. (She is married to a Ewell waterman and usually takes the school boat on the 10-minute trip between Ewell and Tylerton.) If that fails, she doesn't know what she'll do. "I'm going to have to fight to stay on the island," she said.
Dora and Harvey Corbin, too, are worrying about a future without Tylerton School. If the end comes, Ms. Corbin said, they may move to the mainland during the winters (when there are no longer oysters to harvest) and enroll their children in a Christian school.
Their eldest son, who takes the school boat to Crisfield High School, has found the transition difficult, said Mrs. Corbin. "I always say it's like going from Sunday School to an inner-city school, but Crisfield isn't the inner city."
Evelyn Tyler, when the end comes, will probably stay where she was born and raised. One day last week she looked out of a window of the Tylerton school. "The men went out [oyster] tonging last week," she said, "and there were no oysters to catch. It makes for a very long year in Tylerton."