Shchelykovo’s School Closure Debate and Rural Education

Rumors swirled about the closure of the village’s primary school in Shchelykovo, a place that stands apart in the Kostroma region. It is not quite a village, not quite a city, but a settlement tethered to a memorial museum dedicated to the playwright Ostrovsky and to a sanatorium operated by the Union of Theater Workers. The area once hosted a collective farm named after Ostrovsky, but that entity no longer exists. Today, most residents work either at the Ostrovsky museum or at the sanatorium. The settlement also hosts a post office, a police station, two small shops, a sawmill, a paramedic station, and a kindergarten.