What is Walton Rural Life Center?

Walton Rural Life Center is an Agriculture/Technology charter elementary school in rural Kansas. We are part of the Newton, USD 373 school district and have 115 students in Kindergarten through fourth grade. We have students from Walton Kansas, Newton, North Newton, Peabody, Sedgwick, Whitewater, Halstead. We use Project-Based and Problem-Based learning and integrate our core content into Ag projects. Each classroom is paired with a local farm family and works closely with these families to learn more about agriculture and takes trips to the farms. We have the most amazing students, staff and families ever! Parents and the community are an active part of our school and learning experience.

On our campus, there is a greenhouse, multiple gardens, wind turbine, windmill, barn with 3 goats and 2 bottle lambs, a chicken coop with 16 hens that our Kindergarten class hatched from eggs, and a prairie restoration area in our outdoor classroom.

The first 20 minutes of each day our students are broken up into multi-age family Homeroom Groups to exercise, learn Character Education and do chores. Once a month, we eat lunch in our homeroom groups. We pass the food "family style" and have table discussions. Last year, the fifth graders raised 3 pigs from baby to adults. They showed the pigs at the fair and sold them at auction. The Kansas Pork Producers paid to have the hogs processed and we are using the meat for breakfast and lunches at the school. We also eat some of the produce from our garden for snacks and meals. We even eat some of the eggs in our meals.