The Union School Corporation in the tiny town of Modoc — population 157 — fits many stereotypes of quaint rural Indiana, with its corn fields, dirt roads and Angus cattle farm right next door to its school campus. 

But it’s a different type of cow — the cash cow of an online school — that makes Union anything but a typical rural school district. 

State legislators say they have put Union on the chopping block because of poor performance. But district leaders believe the real reason is so the state can reap the benefits of the Indiana Digital Learning School, a virtual school Union has overseen since 2017 — growing to 7,500 students and paying the district an estimated $3 million in oversight fees annually.  

That school is now the latest battleground in a years-long controversy in Indiana and nationally over who should oversee and earn money from online schools and the millions in tax dollars flowing through them.

Citing poor test scores, Indiana’s state legislature voted in April to close the Union schools by 2027 and send its 300 students who attend classes in-person to neighboring districts miles away. 

The online school would then be on its own and either shut down or bring its millions to another partner, either another district, the state or as a charter school.

Tucked into a major state tax reform bill as a last minute amendment, the legislature’s vote came as a surprise to the district, with no opportunity for debate.

Union is challenging the vote in court, saying it was singled out and that the legislature violated state law. Angry residents are defending the district, with even the electronic sign outside the Modoc United Methodist Church switching between listing service times and stating: “We Support Union School Strong!”

“I don’t know what to do,” said Danielle Baker, who has a son going into sixth grade in the fall. She called the vote “alarming” and is struggling to figure out where her son can finish school. “I feel helpless. So I’m just trying to put on a brave front, I guess, and just see what happens.”

Republican state representative J.D. Prescott, who called for the closure, said the move was necessary because Union has “some of the lowest reading scores in the state.”

But the district believes the real reason is the millions it receives from the INDLS, which is run by the , formerly known as K12 Inc. 

“It has nothing to do with the school performance,” said Union Superintendent Galen Mast. “It has nothing to do with school size. It has everything to do with a greater plan that’s behind it.”

Union attracted statewide and when it partnered with K12 in 2017 to start the online school as a . Private companies can’t just open a school and take in tax dollars for students who attend. So they need either the state or a school district to approve them to operate, or a designated agency known as an authorizer if they want to operate a charter school.

Union’s arrangement allows Stride/K12 to run the for-profit digital school as part of the district. In return, it gives Union 5% of the virtual school’s revenue, a huge bonus for a tiny district, especially now that the online school has grown dramatically.

Union school board president Christina Ogden said a state senator told her INDLS must close because the state wants to create its own online school. She and Mast said Prescott also told them the district could avoid being closed if it gave up its money from the digital school.

“I think they had to take out the one (online school) that had the most students first, and then it’ll be easier to go ahead and go around and close all of the others,” Ogden said. “The state wants to control those funds.”

She said Prescott withdrew the offer as soon as he found support in the legislature to pass his amendment that will close Union schools.

Mast also believes the vote was about the virtual school money.“We’re not the smallest school. We don’t have the worst results, but we are tied to NDLS,” Mast added. 

The future of the online school is unclear, since it’s not even mentioned in the law. Stride/K12 declined to directly answer multiple questions from The 74 about its options, with spokesperson Brooke Gabbert saying it was too early to speculate. “Our priority is to ensure that Indiana Digital Learning School remains an option for families across the state,” Gabbert wrote in an email.

The Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association also objected to the legislature’s decision, saying the state should let small districts decide their own fate, not order changes, especially without debate.

“We’re just trying to figure out what is the threshold,” said Christopher Lagoni, the association’s executive director. “What is it that says ‘This is the standard for closure?’ Or is it an individual, case by case basis?”

“Everybody’s kind of in the dark on that,” he added.

Prescott did not respond to written questions from The 74 about whether he asked Union to give up the online school. He repeated concerns about Union’s test scores, though the state not giving districts grades each year since the pandemic makes comparing districts complicated. 

“This amendment is about starting a conversation on how to better serve these students and ensure they have access to a quality education,” he wrote.

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said the state isn’t planning an online school right now, but said the state education department will review Indiana’s entire online learning system next year. That review will look at all parts of online schools, including how many virtual schools Indiana should have, their funding and who can create or oversee them 

“Everything,” is how Jenner described the review. 

“The question is, what guardrails or flexibilities do we need to have in place to make sure we’re getting the outcomes that we need for kids,” Jenner said.

That review won’t be an easy one because multiple districts, including one involving an influential Indiana family, all have an interest in having online school money in their budgets. 

Union and the Clarksville school districts are the only districts with statewide e-schools. Many other Indiana school districts have created or are exploring online schools that serve local students to bring in more money or to keep them from departing to other online schools. 

There’s also a much broader debate nationally within the school choice community about overseeing online schools as a way to earn money. 

That has flared up mostly with online charter schools, whose relationship with their authorizers is similar to Union’s with INLDS. of organizations that are supposed to make sure online schools are doing a good job but are also making more and more money if schools grow, even with poor results.

Oversight fees for online schools have since been a major controversy in several states, including California where , even when receiving fees that far exceeded what it cost to oversee the schools.

Though NACSA isn’t using such strident language today, it recommends that authorizers be paid only what it costs to oversee the schools, not a percentage of revenue. It also recommends that school districts should not authorize statewide virtual schools — a parallel to what Union and Clarksville are doing. Instead school districts should only oversee virtual schools serving students in their area.

Indiana state officials also have little confidence in after two virtual charter schools overseen by the 1,000-student Daleville school district were found in 2017 to be defrauding the state with inflated enrollment numbers. State and federal investigators have estimated the schools improperly received between $44 and $154 million and have pursued separate cases, both criminal and to recover money.

Most recently, the superintendent of the two schools as part of the case. Efforts to recover money are still ongoing.

Scott Bess, a state school board member and founder of the Indiana Charter Innovation Center, said he believes online schools can work well, but local school boards aren’t prepared to oversee giant virtual schools run by companies like Stride worth $3.5 billion.

“I would never advocate for a local school district to partner with a virtual school operator to run a large virtual operation, because that’s not what that school district does,” said Bess. “The school districts are set up to be local, community driven.”

Applying that belief evenly, however, would put the state at odds with the Clarksville school district.

Clarksville also partners with Stride/K12 and the Indiana Gateway Digital School, is run by a family with political influence Union lacks. Clarksville’s superintendent Tina Bennett is the wife of Tony Bennett, the former state superintendent of Indiana and Florida. He was also an executive at Stride/K12 before retiring in March.

The Union School Corporation, which also includes a few other small towns, has long had a budget and enrollment problem. With few students and all separated by acres of crops, enrollment has always been low. And while it’s not quite a one-room schoolhouse it has one strip-mall style school building that houses district offices, its elementary school and combined junior/senior high school.

It has also almost shut down a few times.

The district has explored merging with other districts more than once, while the state has also debated ordering small districts to consolidate. Union’s future has been so uncertain, district officials and residents say, that parents have sometimes sent their children to other schools to avoid having to change schools later.

The partnership with K12, now Stride, changed that. The district added the online school as a district program, offering a few rooms in its offices as a base, in return for 5% of the e-school’s revenue.

The school isn’t a charter school, but the arrangement is similar to how online charter schools pay their authorizers, the non-profits that allow them to open as schools and then oversee them.

As the online school grew, the district’s budget improved and Mast, who just joined as superintendent a year ago, said the school uses the virtual school money to improve its facilities and special education classes.

Sarah McCord, the owner of the Modoc Diner down the street from the school campus, said she lives in a neighboring town but sends her two children to Union because it has small class sizes and helped her daughter with a learning disability improve rapidly.

“A lot of parents are choosing Union because of the attention that their children are getting without having to pay private school costs,” McCord said.

She believes Union is taking unfair criticism for test scores because parents are sending their children for personal attention and a chance to catch up. If they improve, but don’t score at grade level, McCord said, the district looks bad and is unfairly targeted.

“I think it’s an injustice,” she said.

When a federal judge earlier this month ordered the Trump administration to restore AmeriCorps funding, there was no relief for the hundreds of service groups that tutor children and staff summer programs in Republican-led states that sat out the lawsuit.

Even in the 24 Democrat-led states that , the logistics of reinstating funding remain unclear. Some states are hesitant to turn on the tap when a higher court could still uphold the cuts. And with , the department has limited ability to actually restore the grants and provide guidance to states. The uncertainty is complicating school partnerships and recruitment efforts for the next school year.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

State commissions that oversee AmeriCorps now are navigating “a really uneven field,” said Kaira Esgate, CEO of the , a national organization overseeing state service commissions, governor-led public agencies that distribute AmeriCorps grants.

Rural communities who tend to rely on the agency to fund both public service and job opportunities have been particularly hard hit.

AmeriCorps supports educational programs, conservation efforts, and community service across the United States. It funds national programs such as CityYear and Teach for America as well as smaller grassroots organizations. For many communities, AmeriCorps programming also provides a pipeline for recruiting future educators.

More than 28% of organizations receiving are in states that did not have their funding reinstated, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

This partial restoration of AmeriCorps funding is one example of a broader pattern �ٳ󲹳�’s emerged, , while Republican-led states don’t. For example, federal courts have and only to states that sued, leading to unequal access to services and funding across the United States.

This Wednesday, a U.S. District Court in Maryland will hear a lawsuit brought by AmeriCorps-funded nonprofits, educational advocacy groups, and the AmeriCorps Employees Union AFSCME Local 2027. The lawsuit in every state and put AmeriCorps agency staff back on the job before the 2025-26 school year.

“Our summer school and after-school programs have a lot of AmeriCorps people who work there, and suddenly all those people are no longer serving,” says Chris Giorlando, the grant manager at , an AmeriCorps-funded K-12 school whose funding was not reinstated. “It limits what we can do for students.”

Rural communities hit hardest by AmeriCorps cuts

Mahpiya Luta serves the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, a state that did not join the first lawsuit. The school is one of the plaintiffs in the AmeriCorps lawsuit to be heard on Wednesday.

AmeriCorps staff at Mahpiya Luta provided one-on-one instruction for students, worked as classroom aides, supported after-school programming, and coached the school’s state-recognized sports teams.

“The AmeriCorps members who served here, the young Lakota people who served our program, really changed a lot of lives,” said Giorlando, an AmeriCorps alum. Giorlando received an email on April 25 notifying him that the school’s AmeriCorps grant would be terminated immediately by the federal government.

Following the termination of its grant, Mahpiya Luta was able to pay AmeriCorps members for the last three weeks of the school year by drawing from the school’s reserve budget. Originally, the AmeriCorps members would have been paid through the end of June, and AmeriCorps funding would have supported summer programming at the school.

Rural communities like Pine Ridge Reservation . Many staff members at Mahpiya Luta programs.

“We used our AmeriCorps program as a kind of pipeline to get people interested in education and get into teaching,” said Moira Coomes, superintendent of Mahpiya Luta. “One of the really big problems in all rural areas is you just don’t have a bank of people waiting to become teachers.”

By offering job opportunities to people in the local community, AmeriCorps grants allowed Mahpiya Luta students to benefit from one-on-one mentorship from young adults on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Around 53% of children on the Pine Ridge Reservation live below the poverty line, according to 2023 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“It’s super important for kids, especially kids in a setting like ours, that they’re seeing adults who look like them, who come from where they come from,” Coomes said. “So that they see that as something they can aspire to.”

In the fall, Mahpiya Luta is hoping to find the money to hire at least kindergarten and first grade aides in the absence of grant funding, but without federal funding, the school’s ability to provide robust in-classroom support and after-school programming will be limited. Giorlando is still searching for alternative means of funding to help fill the void left by AmeriCorps cuts, but he noted that in rural communities, there are limited sources.

“Those are just holes that will not get filled,” Coomes said.

AmeriCorps funding uncertain despite federal judge’s order

Many of the states that should be receiving reinstated funds from AmeriCorps due to the federal judge’s order are still unsure when and how that will happen.

AmeriCorps notified nonprofits whose grants were reinstated the day after the June 5 injunction, but the American Service Commission is still waiting for further information from the agency in order to offer states guidance on next steps.

Following the grant terminations on April 25, a number of states placed “stop-service” orders in effect, immediately ending the work of AmeriCorps-supported programs by the following Monday, April 28. Many of these states have decided not to lift these restrictions as they wait for further clarity. The federal government has 60 days after the June 5 injunction to file an appeal, which could disrupt programs once again, although the federal government has yet to do so.

“We’ve got 52 commissions,” said Esgate of the American Service Commission. “I wouldn’t say that we have 52 different ways that people approach this, but quite a few different ways that we approach this.”

For example, AmeriCorps programs in Wisconsin have already restarted for the summer.

, a summer camp for people with disabilities, is already in the process of onboarding new AmeriCorps members, a week after camp began. But Cally Ehle, the Easterseals grant manager, acknowledged that “there’s a possibility that they may shut us down again.”

“It’s a lot of scrambling now because there were a lot of things that needed to be done for enrollment and the handbooks and training. With everything being terminated, it just kind of shut down,” Ehle said.

By contrast, Michigan has kept its stop-service order in place, preventing AmeriCorps programs from returning to work, even despite the injunction. That’s hurt programs like the , though some work can continue with other funding sources.

“The injunction got lifted, but that doesn’t mean that money is showing up,” said Holly Windram, the founder of Michigan Education Corps. “We lost about $130,000 of reimbursable dollars that we should have been able to get from AmeriCorps. With the injunction, in theory, we should be able to get that. Well, no one knows how �ٳ󲹳�’s going to be facilitated.”

AmeriCorps grants for next school year are unsettled

As of now, AmeriCorps grants for the 2025-26 school year are still supposed to be allocated for all states. However, the majority of AmeriCorps staff has been placed on leave, severely limiting administrative ability. The case to be heard Wednesday seeks the reinstatement of this staff to ensure that grants for the next year can be properly allocated.

“We don’t know what that date is going to look like quite yet, but it is going to be later than normal, and I imagine �ٳ󲹳�’s going to be incredibly disruptive,” Esgate said of when programs will get 2025-26 funding. “Typically education programs are always working to get members recruited, hired, trained, and that they’re ready to go the first day of school and that is definitely not going to happen this time around.”

The Michigan Education Corps has assured the schools in their network that they will continue providing programming, but they haven’t been able to follow up with individuals who have reached out to tutor with them for next year.

Given the delays in the group’s recruitment cycle, Windram worries that they might not have the volunteers they need to provide academic interventions for their students.

“It’s our kids that lose,” Windram said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

On any given Wednesday, all 370 students from the junior and senior high school in Union City, Indiana, break into teams to address one aspect of their hometown’s needs. One group heads out to work on improving their city’s park and playground. Another serves in an animal shelter. A third visits elderly residents in a nursing home.  

The students may operate in teams, but those we spoke with consider Workforce Wednesday one big project. “Wednesday was my favorite day,” one student told us via Zoom. “Workforce Wednesday gets us out into the community,” said another. “Teamwork is what we do best.” As one teacher said, “We show up for each other.” 

Shared projects create community 

The Union City effort is just one example of community projects binding people together in rural schools. We spent the past few months interviewing rural students, learning how their schools are building a sense of belonging and functioning as community hubs. We also explored ways that these rural schools are promoting pluralism and a diversity of viewpoints even in homogenous communities.

Service projects represent a powerful way to strengthen the social tolerance in these communities. It allows people to work together despite their differences. “Workforce Wednesday lifts each other up and lets students get dirty while they do it,” one teacher said. 

In Milano, Texas, 70 miles northeast of Austin, we found high school students working together similarly. Every Friday, members of Family Career and Community Leaders of America provide food to kids in need. Other students host coat drives. Some students helped families devastated by a shooting in nearby Rockdale. One dressed up in a festive costume to entertain the kids along the sheriff’s big Christmas parade route. 

“I like to help people,” one Milano student related. “Picking up trash on the road makes you feel you can do more.”  

Several cited the town’s role in pushing students to do more. “The community helps us help others,” one said. “They get us to try harder.”  

Students in each rural school we visited emphasized how everyone needs to pitch in at school or things don’t get done. Unlike on big urban or suburban campuses, everyone in a rural school must participate, or a sport doesn’t get played, a concert doesn’t get conducted, a school play goes unperformed, a community project doesn’t get done. You could call it multitasking on steroids, but the need for all to lock arms breeds relationships. 

“We depend upon one another,” said one teacher. “This is all we have.” 

Not that everything is done perfectly. It isn’t. Nor must students have all the right skills. “You don’t have to be excellent to participate,” one student told us. But activities don’t occur, and needs don’t get met, unless people step forward in rural schools.  

The lesson is to find projects that bring together volunteers from different backgrounds. Think of it as a social investment that pays dividends in the form of building trust, developing friendships, and providing purpose. Not only does such work address a community’s need, but it creates bonds with others who may see the world differently. We then can start having the kinds of conversations that help us better understand each other. Importantly, we start seeing each other as friends or neighbors, not as “the other.” 

Taking advantage of a small size and common identity 

A second significant lesson from rural schools is that breaking groups down into manageable sizes makes it easier to “practice pluralism.” It’s much easier, after all, to get to know and understand others in a workplace with only a few dozen people, an intimate house of worship, a small school, or a neighborhood association rather than in, say, a massive lecture hall, a large corporate setting, or even on the wide-open internet. 

The sheer proximity of people to each other breaks down barriers in places like Marfa, Texas, which sits about 60 miles from the U.S. border with Mexico. “We are so small,” one Marfa administrator told us about her district’s 58-student high school, “students have to see everyone. You can’t ignore your ex-boyfriend walking down the hall.”  

True, such settings can breed drama, as one teacher told us. That’s an unavoidable part of human nature. But that can’t last too long in a small setting. “Everybody knows everybody, so you have to come to terms,” the administrator explained. 

What we heard from students as well as administrators is that the small size of their schools and communities creates a sense of belonging. “The small community culture takes on a bigger purpose,” one administrator told us in Thrall, Texas, which sits northeast of Austin. “Every member counts.” 

The challenge, though, is to create a sense of belonging for those who feel like outsiders. Thrall ISD, which serves about 800 students, holds a “New Tiger” night for students and parents entering the district. They learn about the history of the town and about traditions such as the community’s harvest festival. The district also offers “Thrall dogs,” special hot dogs, on those nights as a way to celebrate the town and create a common identity.

Marfa ISD, which consists of two campuses that together serve students from elementary school through 12th grade, is somewhat unique in that the ranching and farming community became an arts destination when the late artist Donald Judd set up shop in the far-flung West Texas town in the 1970s. His high-concept, minimalist art became a destination for artists and their patrons. Today, Marfa combines a creative class of artists and writers with residents who, in some cases, have worked the land for generations — or who come from Mexico to work each day.  

This duality has created what some students described as two Marfas. Tourists and newcomers may stroll through the galleries, but students do not necessarily visit them. As a result, the small community has had to be intentional in building bridges.  

That includes events like the annual Marfa Lights Festival and Labor Day pageant. Marfa’s high school’s volleyball games also bring residents together, as do churches and youth religious organizations like Young Life. We also found that some students bonded over interests in agriculture and rural life: raising livestock, fishing, and hunting. One described a rural ethic of commitment to work.  

A common identity can be a two-edged sword. Too much homogeneity can create a chilling effect where some issues don’t come to the surface or people don’t express their true feelings. But a shared identity can benefit a group in other ways, such as providing a common set of values. Debate about different topics can take place more easily within that context. Knowing that you share common values helps people disagree about some topics in a more respectful way. After all, you may know your neighbor in a way you don’t know someone living far away.  As one educator in Union City put it: “I have never met a president, but I know my neighbor’s needs.”

The lesson here is to start small in building relationships, use shared beliefs to engage in difficult conversations, and welcome the outsider.  

Schools as a community hub 

About 760 of Texas’ 1,200 school districts have fewer than 1,500 students, according to the Texas Association of Rural Schools. Not all of those districts qualify as rural in the traditional meaning of small towns and open lands. But many do, and each district is woven into the fabric of the community. “The school is the community,” says Randy Willis, executive director of the Texas Association of Rural Schools. The school district often is the biggest institution in town.  

We found schools to be the hub of the communities we studied. For one thing, campuses are the source of entertainment. Sporting events. Music and theater performances. Festivals like the Marfa Lights. “School activities drive the culture,” explains Willis, who previously led Granger ISD in Central Texas. 

Schools also bring together the larger community for other reasons. Thrall ISD recently hosted a memorial service on its football field for a former student who died while attending the U.S. Air Force Academy. “Make schools a second home,” a Thrall teacher said.

The teacher/student relationship also plays a role in schools serving as a community hub. In our interviews, teachers described knowing kids personally. This helps them hold those students accountable if they start causing trouble. “We only have one hallway,” a Milano teacher smiled as she made the point about knowing what might be going on with students. 

That makes it easier for teachers to forge common ground among students. “It’s the skill of the teacher to bridge differences,” Willis told us. “Managing nuances is the art of teaching.” 

Ironically, avoiding insularity may be easier in small settings. Principals and teachers, even superintendents, know where students live. They may know their parents. Or see the student in stores. Maybe even teach them in Sunday school.  

This interaction creates a relationship that transcends the classroom. When the relationships work well, teachers can help all students feel a sense of belonging. “The staff is devoted to helping young people develop civic responsibility,” a veteran Milano ISD teacher told us. “We jump on kids if they go after another person.” 

That level of accountability, along with the visibility it provides, can help develop the character of students and inspire them to be better citizens for the community. This doesn’t have to be limited to small, rural districts. One educator told us some mega-Texas high schools are trying to replicate the same environment.  

Let us hope they do. 

Yes, differences exist 

We’re not trying to create some idyllic, romanticized picture of rural schools. Differences exist, just like they do elsewhere. 

One teacher said it was hard to find common ground among adults in his community. And, among kids, their adolescent anger can make finding common ground difficult. “Kids can be brutal,”  the educator said.  

Students in Milano said they don’t like when someone pushes an agenda on them. 

We also heard from teachers across the districts about how social media makes it harder to break down siloes or get students’ attention. “Social media is about promoting yourself,” one Milano teacher lamented. 

Here’s another challenge: In a place like Marfa, where separate cultures exist, students and adults can feel like they live in between cultures. In small towns with a homogenous population, people may keep things to themselves out of fear of upsetting the peace. “It’s harder to stick out,” said one student of her district. 

Still, despite the differences they encounter, rural schools can and do “practice pluralism” allowing for a diversity of viewpoints. An Indiana teacher told us that people find a middle ground when they approach an issue with an open mind. “Voice your opinion, but don’t attack each other,” one Union City student emphasized, capturing the essence of pluralism. 

In Milano, all heads nodded when we asked if differences exist. Yet students talked about how conversations help them understand how others think. “We had a respectful debate about abortion,” another reported. One concluded that he would rather win a baseball game than an argument. 

In essence, relationships matter.  

Practicing pluralism can be particularly challenging in homogenous communities, where there can be tension between beliefs and institutions that form character versus forces that push people into going along to get along. Navigating this tension is why we need a pluralistic society, and that is no different for rural schools. As Randy Willis says, each district is a microcosm that requires managing conflict.

The lessons we have learned include understanding that some level of homogeneity can be positive, allowing for a common purpose or mission to develop. That could take the form of values like those laid out in America’s founding documents, a unifying project, or even adversity.  

We’ve seen this idea repeatedly as we write for the Pluralism Challenge. For example, in our essay,  we described how the Dallas-Fort Worth Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council finds shared struggle in fighting against bigotry committed against their respective faiths.

We recounted various festivals, sporting events, community service organizations, local rituals, and simply the daily interactions and routines of attending school in rural towns. These social touchpoints welcome people into the community as well as contribute to a sense of belonging. That in turn fosters the relationships and community trust that creates a small town effect. 

However, too much homogeneity can suffocate the practice of pluralism with its pressure to “go along, to get along.” Why rock the boat by offering a different point of view or argument if it only disrupts social harmony? 

If that mindset solidifies broadly within the community, the proximity, accountability, and visibility in these rural communities could morph from curbing bad behavior to coercive peer pressure. This could stifle the free flow of ideas, disagreement, or even the ability to hold different identities simultaneously. 

In one town we heard how these negative aspects were perhaps manifested in an unexpected way. Teachers shared with us that they overheard some students made insensitive remarks about a particular ethnic group in front of friends who were of that ethnicity. When confronted by teachers, the offending students seemed genuinely confused. They suggested that they weren’t referring to their friends because they were “one of us.” And their friends denied being offended or targeted by the remarks.

Was that really the case or were they going along to get along? We don’t know, but it’s easy to imagine how one might be hesitant to disrupt social peace or call out a friend.  

The big takeaway is that practicing pluralism requires balancing homogeneity with the ability to express opposing views or maintain different identities while remaining connected with the community. Admittedly, that line may not always be clear or universally applicable. In true pluralistic fashion, communities themselves are responsible for defining what norms are acceptable and how to enforce them. 

Practically, though, it’s helpful to have local processes, forums, or institutions –- like town hall meetings, school boards, local newspapers, classroom debates, and clubs –- where people feel comfortable arguing ideas or maintaining different identities. At the very least, these things can be a bulwark against groupthink. 

Conflict can be managed when people in a community are intentional about putting these points into practice. Once they do, they can start having those difficult conversations that explore the differences people have about politics, culture, religion, or any other potential points of division. This isn’t always easy to do.

Perhaps, though, we can draw inspiration from these rural communities that seem to be fine-tuning that balance between homogeneity and individuality. This is encouraging at a time when many Americans seem bitterly divided over national politics or culture war issues. Those in larger urban areas across the United States should find ways to replicate the positive rural-town practices and institutions that are fostering a greater sense of belonging, citizenship, and purpose.

They are journalism advisors, volleyball coaches, mentors, authors, learners, environmental conservationists, meditation guides, literacy coaches, and equity advocates.

Their communities range from a small island in America Samoa serving multilingual, Indigenous students; a rural town in Pennsylvania; an immigrant hub in Denver; to a proud but underserved Black neighborhood in Washington D.C. 

Though the communities they serve cover a broad spectrum, 2025’s Teacher of the Year finalists recognized by the Council of Chief State School Officers are united in their commitment to children. 

Chosen from a pool of 56 local winners,they have found ways to make kids excited about school in a particularly difficult period in public education’s history. 

The finalists, all English and history educators, have designed lessons and extracurriculars for students to reflect on some of the most pressing issues today: Gun violence, substance abuse, suicide, poverty, food insecurity, health and hygiene, and the environment. 

They acknowledge the world outside school walls, involve local organizations to expand students’ opportunities, and prioritize building relationships with kids and their families. 

“Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care,” said elementary teacher Jazzmyne Townsend, Washington D.C.’s finalist. 

Utilizing family interview projects, field trips to hydroponic farms and herbal gardens, all four find ways to bring students’ experiences, cultures and curiosities into the classroom.  

At a time when public education is under fiscal and political threat from the Trump administration, finalists share what has nourished their careers and how they keep joy in learning: 

Mikaela Saelua 

All of ’s high school students are learning English as a second language. Their mother tongue is Samoan – poetic, full of expressive vowel sounds and unique – leaving most words without a direct English translation. 

To break up the monotony of reading and writing, she launched a song translation project. In what culminates in music videos, students learn figurative idioms, metaphors and words to capture the soul of Samoan songs. 

“The goal isn’t just to teach them English; it’s to help them appreciate and express themselves in a way that feels true to who they are,” Saelua wrote in her finalist . 

Saelua encourages student expression outside the classroom as an advisor for a peer leader club, which with the help of a local nonprofit, performs skits at local elementary schools to discuss hard topics, from substance use to suicide. 

America Samoa for suicide for over 20 years. Saelua’s school in particular has lost two students in the last three years. Their teachers are learning to spot warning signs in things like journal entries. 

Saelua, a proud product of America Samoa’s public education system who returned after  a spell of homesickness in California, is the first finalist from the seven islands in the program’s history. 

“I’m carrying that with me and I don’t carry it lightly,” she said. “… it’s more than just me. It’s now me and all of American Samoa.” 

Ashlie Crosson

As wildfires raged in Los Angeles earlier this year, two former students ran into ’s Pennsylvania classroom, cell phones in hand. 

The sophomores shared headlines about the Trump administration’s – exclaiming how taking away resources during a catastrophe was exactly like what they’d read in Dry by Jarrod and Neal Shusterman. 

They were curious: How was the media covering this? What would happen next? 

Dry was the only fiction text from their course Survival Stories, a half-year elective designed by Crossen for students to build media literacy and talk about what they see happening in the real world. And though they’d read it months earlier, they were making connections and eager to chat.

In Survival Stories, they’d discussed humanitarian crises through the lens of young people surviving them – such as and stories about families navigating the Darién Gap. 

Survival is not new to their community, deeply impacted by the opioid epidemic. 

Crosson brings in texts that show them “what you’re experiencing here isn’t isolated. These are problems that exist all over the place. Your hometown is not the ‘problem.’” 

Now in her fourteenth year teaching, she stays attuned to body language, emotional reactions, attendance. A kid’s experience in her classroom clues her into their world.  

She has also found ways for young people growing up in poverty to challenge negative associations with their area and build hope for future careers by .   

“I teach English, but I can’t really get to that content if I don’t have a rapport and understanding of my students and what their needs are,” Crosson said. “… There’s no content mastery happening in American schools right now if we’re not evaluating and meeting the needs of students and families.” 

Jazzmyne Townsend 

Coming from a family of teachers, wanted to carve her own path in business. 

But today the Washington, D.C. Teacher of the Year is a self described “big kid” – eager to be on the floor, immersed in sand, Play-Doh, and paint, modeling active listening and motor skills.  

“I’m willing to hold your hand and walk you through it until you are in a place where I can release you to do that independently,” the special education teacher explained about her approach with her second and third graders. 

She’s the teacher that knows their families and weekend plans, who notices their haircuts and new shoes, who shows up to games that are important to them. 

Townsend launched a , a place for kids to gather twice a week to chat about their bodies, social media, healthy relationships and whatever was weighing on them. 

She makes a point, too, of sharing her experiences with kids so they can dream big. A children’s book author, she explained the process of drafting a manuscript, pairing with an illustrator and publishing. 

Her kids then became authors and illustrators themselves. Their book publishing project became a community showcase, with one student choosing the ability to manage the world’s trash, to keep the planet clean and healthy. 

“I’m showing you in my actions, how we interact and how we engage,” she said. “I’m showing you that I’m invested in you… Kids need people who are irrationally passionate about them.”

Janet Renee Damon

After 25 years in the classroom, high school history teacher finds herself working at a transfer high school, a culmination of “all of my skills, all of my heart and all of my joy.” 

She spends her days joking and encouraging introverted, empathetic “diamond souls,” kids who’ve faced undue pressure who are still shining through parental death or incarceration, the trauma of immigration, homelessness, gun and gang violence and teen pregnancy. 

Over half of Damon’s students are immigrants, from Rwanda to Honduras and Iraq. All have mourned someone killed by gun violence. 

She guides students in breathing and meditation exercises, a tool for emotional regulation. They create “life maps,” imagining how to prepare for life’s milestones, like renting an apartment. 

She explores, “how history has impacted your own community, your own family.” After a project where students explored how the body’s DNA is impacted by generational trauma, one student told her he never used substances again. 

She and her administrators are committed: When kids don’t show, a team goes looking, conducting home visits. 

Damon also helped students’ bridge past and present through an ongoing podcast program. Students researched the history of mental health disparities and called attention to their high needs for support amid clinical shortages, landing on Colorado Public Radio.

Only 5% of registered psychologists nationwide speak Spanish. After their podcast went on air, a Therapists of Color collective reached out to provide care free of charge. The student podcast project led another to discover her family were survivors of the federal government’s Indian Residential Schools. A different high schooler interviewed a relative about his history with incarceration. Both said the work was “healing” and helped them feel closer to their families and identity.

“We have to make school a place where kids want to be,” Renee Damon said, “not just have to be.”

Rural school districts — already beset with financial struggles — are furiously scrambling to save a century-old funding source that Republican lawmakers last month eliminated from the federal budget. 

The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, which has been approved almost continuously since 1908, is intended to compensate rural counties that have large swaths of non-taxable national forest land. Last year, the bill brought nearly $40 million to 39 California counties, funding everything from after-school programs to school roof repairs. 

The  that, because of lower enrollment, receive less money from the state than their urban and suburban counterparts yet tend to have large numbers of high-needs students and higher costs, such as providing bus service to remote areas.

In December, amid the flurry of last-minute budget negotiations, the bill died in the House after House Speaker Mike Johnson did not put it forward for a vote. The bill’s original sponsors hope to reintroduce it in the next few weeks in a last-ditch effort to get it passed before the final budget deadline in March.

It’s a longshot, but school officials are renewing their fight because the loss of those funds could have deep repercussions for rural school districts.

“It might not seem like much, but it’s real money for us,” said Allan Carver, superintendent of schools for Siskiyou County, which last year received $4.3 million from Secure Rural Schools. “If it was to go away, there would be a hole in our budget that would have an undeniable impact on children.”

GOP promises to cut federal spending

Republican Congressional leaders did not respond to interview requests from CalMatters. But , they have vowed to reduce government spending, including . President-elect Donald Trump has also proposed eliminating the U.S. Department of Education and making other cuts to schools. His advisor, Elon Musk — whom Trump recently named head of a yet-to-be-created Department of Government Efficiency — has been outspoken in his desire to cut federal programs.

That’s been frustrating for rural residents, many of whom supported Trump in November and feel Secure Rural Schools is neither a partisan issue nor a government handout. 

“This is not a ‘gift’ of Congress,” said Lonnie Hunt, a retired judge from rural Texas who’s head of the National Forest Counties and Schools Coalition. “It’s a pact made more than 100 years ago between the government and local communities. If the federal government had not made this deal, they’d never have been able to create the National Forest Service.”  

“Yet somehow it’s been lost in the politics,” Hunt added. “It’s a shame that rural America is being victimized here. And I’m pointing fingers in all directions, not just one side.”

Mold and layoffs in Trinity County

Secure Rural Schools dates from the creation of the National Forest Service in the early 20th century, when the federal government set aside millions of acres of land for logging. Because that land was removed from the local tax rolls, nearby communities were left with budget shortfalls — and few options to make up the cash. To compensate, the federal government agreed to share a portion of timber profits with those areas. When the logging industry started to decline in the 1990s, the government started augmenting the payments through the modern version of Secure Rural Schools.

Congress gave these counties $35.8 million for rural schools last year — but no more is coming

In 2024, these 39 California counties received money through the Secure Rural Schools program because they have National Forest Service land.

The money goes to counties that have National Forest Service land, where it’s divided between schools and public works. California, with nearly 21 million acres of national forest, receives far more than any other state. And within California, Trinity County receives the second-highest amount – $3.5 million last year. 

Located in the mountains of northwest California, Trinity County spans 3,208 square miles and is more than twice the size of Rhode Island. About 80% of it is owned by the federal government, which means it has limited ability to raise money through local tax measures. Due in part to the decline in logging, it’s also one of the poorest counties in the state, with a , compared to 12% statewide.

Trinity Alps Unified, the largest district in the county, received about $600,000 from Secure Rural Schools last year, about 5% of its overall budget. That money was crucial for paying for things like teachers’ aides, art and music programs, field trips and after-school programs, Superintendent Jaime Green said. 

Local residents know all too well what could happen without Secure Rural Schools. In 2016, the only other time in recent memory the bill didn’t pass, Trinity County school districts didn’t have money to make basic repairs to school buildings, leading to dangerous outbreaks of toxic mold at numerous campuses. Students’ and teachers’ lives were disrupted by school closures, and the state had to spend more than $50 million to help districts rebuild. 

This time, Green is warning that the district may have to eliminate seven jobs, leading to bigger class sizes and fewer enrichment programs. He worries that the students who need the most help will suffer the worst impacts.

“We’re an impoverished county, and the only way to reverse that pattern of poverty is through education,” Green said. “Cutting funding hurts kids. We have to be realistic about that.”

Keeping the pressure on

Green and other rural superintendents have traveled to Washington, D.C. almost a dozen times in the past year or so to lobby for Secure Rural Schools. Their work paid off, at least in the Senate, where the bill passed unanimously.

Green and his colleagues plan to keep the pressure on through emails and phone calls to Republican leadership, in hopes of convincing them to support rural schools even as they face pressure from Musk and Trump to slash federal spending.

Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore, president of the National Association of Counties, has also been persistently lobbying for Secure Rural Schools. He said there’s usually some last-minute wrangling before the bill passes, but this year “was vastly different.”

“Every time it comes up, all the cowboy hats show up” to advocate for the bill in Washington, D.C., he said. “This year we had a lot of momentum and we thought we’d get it over the hump. It was a gut punch when it didn’t go through. We were shocked, to be honest.”

Rural areas’ lack of population and money often means that politicians overlook residents’ needs in those areas, Gore said. Likewise, few people outside of rural areas would hear about the impact if programs are cut, he said. None of the House Republican leaders, including Johnson, party leader Rep. Steve Scalise and House Majority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer, represents areas that receive Secure Rural Schools funding. None of the three responded to requests for comment.

“It’s a catastrophe that no one knows about,” said Gore, referring to the bill’s failure. “But we have an absolute responsibility to these small towns, who are the stewards of these largely unmanned federal lands.”

The last Secure Rural Schools payment was in April. Even if Congress returns to funding the bill next year, even one missed year of payments may leave an impact, superintendents said. Children will have fallen behind academically and teachers will have lost their jobs. In small communities where jobs are scarce, layoffs can have a disproportionate impact, sometimes leading to families moving out of the area entirely.

“In the past, we’d go through the motions but we always got it solved by the buzzer,” Hunt said. “This year we’re past the buzzer and we’re in OT. But we won’t quit.”

This was originally published on .

Much has been written about the of getting rid of the Department of Education, one of .

Little of the discussion that we’ve seen has focused on the impact on rural schools, which than urban ones on federal funding.

In fact, rural education often to policymakers and scholars, who aimed at urban and suburban areas, even though students are educated in rural schools.

---

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

---

This lack of rural research and focus has about rural education that overlook the strengths and opportunities for students who attend rural schools.

As , we compiled a list of three facts about rural education accompanied by the myths that would help policymakers better design programs to support rural students.

1. Rural communities are becoming more diverse

There’s a myth that . While it’s true that most rural counties are majority white, .

The share of people of color in rural communities , according to U.S. Census data. In addition, people of color .

This is because while white people are leaving, people of color are moving in. From 2010 to 2020, over 2 million white people left rural communities, while . The number of rural people who identified as multiracial doubled to nearly 4 million over the same period, and all rural communities except those in .

While the Black population in rural America shrank somewhat during the 2010s, it remains the case that the . In fact, 81% of Black people who don’t live in cities live in the South, a legacy of slavery and how generations of Africans were forcefully taken to work the land as free labor.

Without truly understanding who resides in these communities, educators and policymakers cannot adequately address students’ needs. Failure to do so , particularly those who reside in the South.

2. Rural educators know how to succeed

Another myth is that rural communities or resources to .

As such, policymakers to include rural communities’ cultural capital when they develop textbooks, teacher training plans and education policies. By , we mean the knowledge, skills, education and advantages that people inherit and use to achieve success in society.

One glaring example is that rural communities in teaching materials and curricula, which frequently ignore their local knowledge, traditions and values. This creates a gap in students’ ability to see themselves in jobs and positions outside of their personal contexts. And it hampers teachers’ ability to leverage student strengths when teachers are unprepared to connect with their backgrounds.

is another example of rural students’ cultural capital being overlooked. Too often, funding policies penalize rural schools for their smaller sizes by supporting the closure and consolidation of schools and overlooking their need for more money to account for lower revenue from local and property taxes. This results in a disruption of rural communities’ strong social cohesion and abandoned buildings that reduce economic opportunities.

Community initiatives and local programs provide important resources that larger urban districts might take for granted.

A new grant initiative at Michigan State University that all three of us are involved with aims to help change this. Focused on helping teachers better engage high school physics and chemistry students, the in the rural South to provide rural students with access to more advanced science courses. By working with Alabama A&M University and Winston-Salem State University, it helps ensure local communities’ cultural capital are part of the program. It also seeks to pull together community partnerships to advance science access and learning in the South.

By redesigning policies to take advantage of rural cultural capital, communities and policymakers could unlock untapped potential within rural schools and enhance educational outcomes for all students regardless of where they live. We believe such policies could foster stronger connections between rural K-12 public schools and their surrounding communities, creating more relevant and engaging learning experiences for students.

3. Rural students are high achievers

A third myth is that . As a result, their academic success is too often overlooked by researchers and educators.

In reality, students in rural areas meet the same measures of success as in urban ones – especially in the early years. For example, in rural than nonrural schools before the third grade, according to the Center for School and Student Progress. After that, the higher scores begin to fade due to summer learning loss. After schools close over the summer, rural students are generally left with , compared with those in more urban areas. There is a strong need for more state and federal money to increase access to summer learning opportunities.

Despite this widespread learning loss, graduation rates among rural students than those of nonrural students.

But once again, policymakers fail these students, who have than in urban areas.

factors contributing to this trend include limited , the distance between students’ hometowns and colleges and universities, and lower awareness of financial aid opportunities. In addition, students in the rural South to advanced science courses like physics and chemistry, which can block postsecondary opportunities.

We believe debunking these and other myths and recognizing the diverse strengths of rural communities would help ensure that all students across the nation, including those in rural areas, can attain long-term educational and economic success.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

A science class for middle school students at Panorama Middle School commonly involves a trek out to the prairie behind the school, a sketch of native seeds under the microscope or a homework assignment to track the progress of a backyard bluebird from its birdhouse.

Teacher Mark Dorhout created an outdoor education program at the middle school in Panora to “connect (students) to the natural world,” foster environmental stewardship, and give students a real-world application to the science they learn in the classroom.

Dorhout, who has a degree in wildlife and fisheries sciences, spent the majority of his career teaching or administering at middle schools and has been teaching sixth through eighth grade science at Panorama Middle School for four years.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

He started the outdoor education program by taking students out to a recently restored prairie behind the school, and using the school’s backyard in his lessons as much as possible.

“This has been a long-standing passion of mine that has become more and more apparent as we move along in this society,” Dorhout said. “And really the main thrust to that is that kids are out less and less into this environment.”

Now the class and its non-traditional classroom has a reputation among the middle schoolers — all of whom will go through the project, make a birdhouse, and get to meet Dorhout’s Labrador retriever, which never misses a field day.

Dorhout said he’s thankful the school district has been very supportive of the program and works with him to supply materials and promote the course in newsletters to parents.

“They get it,” Dorhout said of his district. “They understand the value of a program like this.”

Dorhout said the 11-acre prairie behind the school has been there for over 20 years but really fell out of use until seven or so years ago when the local members of the Izaak Walton League worked to “grub out” some of the trees that had overtaken the area, and replant it to prairie.

Each grade has a different project. Seventh graders build either a bluebird or a wren box that they take home, hang on a tree, and monitor through the rest of their time in middle school.

“They never knew that there was the whole other thing going on … and then all of a sudden they’ve started paying attention to the birds in the neighborhood,” Dorhout said.

Eighth grade students get to work in the greenhouse as part of their curriculum on genetics and climate change. Last year he added sixth graders to his docket and uses the prairie for their lessons in water quality and chemistry.

Dorhout said going out and conducting water quality tests gives the students a real life application of the chemistry they learn in the classroom.

And all of the students get about 50 field days over the course of their time in middle school. Throughout the program, Dorhout has his students gather seeds, add plants into the prairie and analyze what makes one section of the prairie better than another. All of it leads to pretty “rich conversations” around soil quality and biodiversity.

“Kids that you wouldn’t think would like doing prairie work, just totally get into it,” Dorhout said.

Brody Steenblock, a ninth grade student at Panorama High School who went through Dorhout’s program, grew up hunting and farming and said he considered himself outdoorsy, but that Dorohout’s class was “a next level of outdoors.”

Steenblock said he persuaded his parents to plant multiple acres of the prairie grasses he learned about in the class, as part of the Conservation Reserve Program on their farm.

“I don’t think we probably would have planted it, if it wasn’t for the outdoor ed,” Steenblock said.

Steenblock said the class “sparked” a lot of interest in him and he recalls that it was the favorite class for many of his peers as well.

“There was just a whole bunch of kids that either just were not doing the best in school, and couldn’t pay attention in school, and then, you get to Mr. Dorhout’s class, and … kids were just like a whole different person,” Steenblock said.

Cross curricular

Dorhout spoke about his class during a Watershed Talk with the Dec. 17.

Mike Delaney, a member of the league and a prairie advocate who lives near Dorhout, called the outdoor education program “phenomenal.”

“I’ve been thinking about prairie as a teaching tool, and I’m not sure there’s any limits to what you can get into,” Delaney said. “Anything you want to do you can use prairie as an example, and �ٳ󲹳�’s what you’re doing.”

Dorhout doesn’t teach just science in his classroom, but engages students across disciplines.

The middle schoolers each keep a journal where they take down field observations and are encouraged to draw diagrams and doodles of what they study.

Dorhout has also posted the cardinal directions on each of the four walls of his classroom with a corresponding theme. The north wall, for example, faces the prairie and is labeled with “environment”, the east wall faces town and says “community,” South is recreation and West is legacy. He has students write notes about each of these elements and post them up on the wall.

“I always try to get them to understand where we’re at in this world,” Dorhout said.

Students also get about 25 minutes of moderate exercise every time they walk to the prairie, and on days where the school has an unusual schedule, he’ll take his classes to do longer hikes at Lake Panorama, which is walking distance from the school.

Dorhout has also been known to turn a blind eye to some of the fun – like perhaps a friendly snowball fight – that inevitably takes place between 20-30 middle schoolers in the open air.

“Just enough organization so we can have a meaningful lesson, and just enough goof around time that the kids think that it’s awesome,” he said.

Lasting impact

Dorhout said one of the coolest things about the prairie is its visibility from the school and to the community. This means as the students get older, they can still see it and remember the work they did to improve that land.

“I just see that as a really powerful thing, when you look at the life of a prairie and what it looks like now compared to what it did six years ago when you guys first started this reconstruction,” Dorhout said.

This was also Steenblock’s favorite part of the class.

He started seeds in sixth grade and throughout his time in middle school he got to watch them develop through the prairie.

“We can still go back to this day and then see what we had done because we were part of that,” Steenblock said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.

This Thursday, join The 74 and the Progressive Policy Institute for a special conversation about how rural collaboratives can transform life trajectories for rural high school students and create sustainable economic development for their communities. 

The Rural Collaborative model, inspired by Texas’ Rural Schools Innovation Zone (RSIZ), aims to better align educational pathways with local economic needs. Speakers will include RSIZ Executive Director Michael Gonzalez, Texas State Rep. Brad Buckley, Colorado State Rep. Eliza Hamrick and Empower Schools CEO Alyssa Morton. RSVP right here. 

Sign up for the Zoom or tune in to this page Thursday at 11 a.m. ET to stream the event.

More rural education and career pathway coverage from The 74: 

• Q&A: Nation’s First School Counselor Residency Launches in Rural CA 

• NJ Nonprofit Offers Hands-On STEM Learning to Low-Income Students at 150 Schools

• Campus Road Trip Diary: 8 Things We Learned This Year About America’s Most Innovative High Schools

• Report Shows Millions of Rural Students Facing Multiple Crises after COVID

• STEM with a Purpose Sparked Better Learning, and a Patent, for My Rural Students 

COLUMBIA — Citing multiple late audits, reports of possible misspending and the potential to lose federal aid, the state Board of Education agreed Tuesday to take control of Jasper County School District’s finances.

Unlike a state takeover of a school district, which allows the state superintendent to fire the local school board and make decisions in its place, financial control gives the state Department of Education the district’s purse strings but no other decision-making power, a department attorney told the board Tuesday.

“This is essentially like helping them complete their homework,” said board member Chris Hanley, a family doctor in Summerville.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The state will remain in control of Jasper County schools’ finances at least through June, the end of the fiscal year. However, the state can retain control for as long as necessary to get the district back into fiscal shape.

of the countywide district’s 2,600 students live in poverty. It receives about $21,000 per pupil this school year, with just over a third of that coming from state taxes and 11% from federal aid, according to the latest estimates from the state .

Having control of the finances will allow state officials to intervene and ready the district for state- and federally required audits, which haven’t been done since 2022. The district has contracted with an auditing firm but has not taken any more steps to prepare for auditors to come in and review the district’s finances, said Daniel Haven, a fiscal analyst for the education department.

State officials will also train the district’s financial workers to better track the district’s money and be prepared for upcoming reviews. And the state will help find and train a permanent chief financial officer, since the district has had someone in charge in only a temporary capacity for the past year.

In Jasper County School District’s case, the move came after years of missed deadlines for district-wide audits.

“They need our help,” Haven told the board.

The district, located in South Carolina’s southern tip bordering Georgia, first missed its deadline in December of 2022, prompting the state to put the district on fiscal watch, the lowest of three escalating tiers.

The district turned in that year’s audit and a plan to avoid missing the deadline again. But come 2023, the district again failed to complete an examination of its finances, moving its status to the next tier, fiscal caution.

It submitted another plan to avoid further problems to the state, but state officials declined to accept it until they had the 2023 audit.

Meanwhile, in July, that district officials spent $228,000 on travel and lodging during the prior 3½ years. That same month, the board voted to put then-Superintendent Rechel Anderson on paid administrative leave. The board fired Anderson in October without giving a reason, .

By August, state officials learned that the district had no timeline to complete its audit and the potential to lose federal funding because of the unfinished review, Haven said.

Because of that, state Superintendent Ellen Weaver declared a financial emergency in the district, the highest level of scrutiny from the state. She also called for an investigation by the state Inspector General’s Office for any signs of potential financial waste, misconduct or law-breaking, according to an August letter.

That investigation will continue during the state’s control over the district, Haven said.

As of Tuesday, the district had not submitted its 2023 audit. State officials had not received the district’s 2024 audit by the Monday deadline, Haven said, though districts are allowed to continue submitting without penalty .

A spokesman for the district said it welcomes the agency’s help.

“They will provide guidance and expertise to help us resolve the delays in delivering our 2023 and 2024 financial audits,” Travis Washington said in a statement Wednesday to the SC Daily Gazette. “Additionally, they will assist us in the search for a permanent finance director and help improve our financial practices to ensure quality and efficiency within our finance department.”

The Jasper County district is one of three school districts in danger of a full state takeover, based on its financial and academic performances, a spokesman has said previously. A district is eligible for takeover if the district consistently receives scores of “unsatisfactory” on its annual report cards, if its accreditation is denied, or if the superintendent decides the district’s turnaround plan is insufficient, .

Jasper County schools have not met that criteria, though the district is on the state department’s radar. Four of Jasper County’s six schools were rated average during the 2023-2024 school year. One was below average, and one was unsatisfactory, the lowest possible grade.

Two rural school districts remain under total state control.

Williamsburg County’s local board is , so long as they get state education department approval, in the first step toward moving decision-making powers back to the board. Allendale County remains under complete control, with no clear timeline as to when local leaders might be able to make decisions again.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

A new initiative from the University of Vermont hopes to address the shortage of mental health professionals available to support the state’s youth.

Known as the Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools, the program plans to train and place 52 school counselors, social workers and mental health clinicians in rural schools throughout Vermont for the next five years.

 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found rising levels of depression and anxiety among Vermont middle and high school students. 

Despite this, Vermont lacks an adequate number of . In 2023, the state’s Workforce Development Board estimated a need for 230 more providers to meet growing demand. 

The new Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools aims to address the gap. 

Through the program — funded by a $3.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education — University of Vermont graduate students are expected to contribute at least 25,000 clinical hours annually to support rural communities.

“Vermont mental health needs are pervasive and complex and they’re currently underserved and this is a way to reach them,” said Anna Elliott, associate professor of counseling.

Elliott, the principal investigator for the grant, has experience running a similar initiative in Montana, where she spent five years developing a program to support rural communities with mental health professionals. 

A key part of the program, Elliot said, is to encourage graduates to continue working in rural schools or mental health facilities after completing their training. She said she tailored the program to Vermont’s unique needs. This included analyzing various statistics from community needs assessments on issues such as suicide rates, substance use disorder and the stigma associated with seeking mental health services, ensuring the program aligns closely with the landscape of Vermont’s mental health needs.

“One of our primary goals in setting up the training program was attending to students’ reports that they often didn’t feel prepared to go and work in a rural environment,” she said. “Having an intensive and intentional training program that sets them up to really understand what they’re walking into and how to be prepared and how to ask for support incentivized students to stay, so we’re hoping to replicate that here.”

The program offers a stipend to those who remain in their assigned schools for at least one year, helping to ease potential barriers like securing a full-time job or finding affordable housing.

In Montana, Elliott said she noticed some graduate students couldn’t stay in rural schools due to limited funding for permanent positions. Other challenges, including housing and job security, also made it difficult for them to remain in these high-need areas.

“I’m taking the model that I did in Montana and integrating that in with the community schools model to not just say, ‘here’s a couple graduate students that will be here for a year’ but let’s actually take a systemic look at what’s happening in the school — what are the needs, resources, barriers and strength,” Elliott said.

To address these challenges, the program focuses on recruiting graduate students who already come from rural areas. By offering low-residency options, the program allows these students to complete much of their coursework remotely. This means they can stay at home rather than moving to campus, making it easier for them to balance their studies with their existing commitments.

“This grant provides significant opportunity to bring students into the helping professions who might not otherwise have access to this kind of specialized training,” said Danielle Jatlow, a co-principal investigator and social worker who coordinates UVM’s bachelor’s of social work program, in a press release from the university.

UVM faculty, including program co-leaders Robin Hausheer and Lance Smith, both associate professors of counseling, are starting outreach to rural schools. They hope to place graduate students in schools as early as this semester, according to the release.

“There are people and kids that are getting served this year that might not have been otherwise,” Elliott said in the release. “So that feels like everything.” 

This was originally published on .

In partnership with Fresno Pacific University and six school districts throughout Tulare County, the year-long program housed within the county’s California Center on Teaching Careers hopes to curb shortages that have left schools throughout the state with student to counselor ratios at 1:461, nearly double the . 

Since its launch at the start of this school year, the has provided one on one support to a small pilot cohort of twelve counselors and looks to expand statewide. Counselors in training earn a master’s of arts in school counseling and a $45,000 living stipend while being mentored by experienced counselors in their region. 

“Through this pathway, we’re truly able to grow our own, which means preparing individuals of our own communities who grew up here, who know parents … students of our own schools, to then be part of our system,” said Marvin Lopez, the Center’s executive director.

The program is hands-on, requiring 1,200 hours of clinical training and field experience, 400 hours beyond the required amount to obtain a credential. 

Like other residencies to boost teacher pipelines, the model aims to recruit a more representative pool by eliminating the financial barriers and loans professionals often take on to enter the field. 

Graduates of teacher residencies, which the SCR program has been modeled after, stay in their school districts at much higher rates than those who have entered through traditional or other alternative pathways, “stabilizing” the force, according to the . The pools they recruit are also more racially diverse. 

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why launch this residency now, and what’s at stake without it? 

Marvin Lopez: I’m going to take you back a decade. In 2012, we began looking at residency models, specifically for teachers, across the nation. We spent six years looking at models in California, Chicago, New York City, to see what are best practices and spend time with some universities that have been running teacher residencies for some time. 

We realized we needed to bring a pathway like that to our area – we’re in this central region of the state in California, near Sequoia, Yosemite, Fresno, Bakersfield. It’s very agricultural, rural, low-income with many high needs schools. We realized that not only do we need a model like this for preparing teachers, but also mental health professionals – school-based social workers and school counselors. We tackled the entire ecosystem of our school. 

Through this pathway, we’re truly able to grow our own, which means preparing individuals of our own communities who grew up here, who know their communities, who know parents. The students who were students of our own schools to then be part of our system. 

To your question of why, when you look at the student ratio of school counselors and students in our area, it’s 1 to 460+, which is double what is recommended nationally. There’s a gap that we’re trying to close and bridge. By having this pathway in place, it’s allowing us to not only recruit from local talents, but also prepare them in a way that gives them a full year of clinical experience. The doesn’t lie.

What challenges did you all come up against before launching, and what did you do to overcome them? 

As a new pathway, [it required] a lot of informing and educating school leaders about the benefits, and sharing retention data about residencies. I wouldn’t call it a challenge, it was a learning experience. 

How might this residency impact what you all are seeing with regards to the youth mental health crisis, particularly as you mentioned that this county you’re serving is predominantly high needs, schools that, as you mentioned, have large shortages of mental health support staff? 

We’re looking at the entire ecosystem of our schools and the workload that teachers have, specifically after the pandemic. The silver lining is that a lot of mental wellness issues came to light and the public are more open to conversation. It’s now more important and obvious that we do need more services; school counselors play a big role in that ecosystem as well as social workers. Providing another part of the support that our students need in the classroom, that’s the impact that we see. We’re providing more wrap-around support to our schools and students by preparing teachers, social workers, and school counselors through our residency model. 

I‘m wondering about the scale of this, what’s interest been like since you launched in September and how large of a cohort do you hope to recruit this first year? 

Initially our plan was to have a small pilot cohort of 8. We launched with 12, and now we’re getting requests from districts for next year already. It looks like that might double, and it’s because of the needs of our districts and the value they see added by having residents at their sites and the impact they’re already having with their students. 

Our goal is to actually scale up and expand our program throughout the state. We’re working closely with a couple of county offices around this work, and we are always willing to share best practices as well as guide and provide support to any other regions that are looking to implement a similar program. 

If you had to boil it down, what are three things that you think that folks who are taking on this kind of work should keep in mind? 

First, having a vision that’s student centered. Second, building and nurturing partnerships with your districts and universities. And ultimately, providing quality mentorship for the residents, working alongside district leadership to make sure that those individuals are the right fit for a school. 

Is there anything I haven’t asked you but that’s on your mind or just that you want me to know? 

Beyond the living stipend for residents, we also provide a stipend for the mentors that’s $4,000. That’s unique because they’re spending quite a bit of time throughout the year. It’s important to recognize the efforts that not only the residents are putting into this, but the mentors who play a huge component in this process.

COLUMBIA — The Williamsburg County school board will be able to start making decisions again with oversight from the state Department of Education, marking the first move toward regaining local control in six years.

The rural, county-wide district of 2,800 students — located in the Pee Dee between Sumter and Georgetown — has been under the state’s control since 2018, meaning the district Board of Trustees can meet but can’t make any decisions for the district.

The return of some power is the first step in returning control to the locally elected board members, according to a Tuesday news release.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

“We’re excited to serve in the capacity the citizens elected us,” said board Chair Marva Cannion, who was elected in 2019.

A report on the district’s improvements, which a state budget clause requires the state education agency to produce, could offer other poor, struggling school districts some insights into how they might boost performance and avoid a state takeover, Rep. Roger Kirby, D-Lake City, told the SC Daily Gazette on Wednesday. The directive in the state budget was his idea.

When the state first stepped in under then-state Superintendent Molly Spearman, the district was in dire straits financially and academically.

Officials had to repay more than $280,000 to the federal government and use another $368,000 to hire help in following federal spending and reporting requirements, at the time. Less than a quarter of all students could read on grade level, and even fewer third- through eighth-graders were passing their state-required math tests, according to state education data.

The district had been under notice for three years by that point, but little had changed, Cannion said. When Spearman declared a state of emergency and outlined the issues, Cannion agreed something had to happen, she told the Daily Gazette.

“At the time, it was warranted,” Cannion said of the state takeover. “But it is now time, definitely, for local governance.”

Improving grades

District officials thought they had hit the goals Spearmen set for them by 2022. The district’s finances were in order. The past several years of audits found no major issues. And students were improving academically, Cannion said.

When state Superintendent Ellen Weaver started her term last year, she gave a more specific benchmark. All eight of the district’s elementary through high schools needed to be rated at least “average,” Cannion said the department told board members. As of 2022-2023, the district still had three schools falling behind that goal.

When the state for last school year, though, officials saw marked improvements.

The scores were enough for to receive at least an average rating, which takes into account student progress: Five received an “average” rating, two were rated “good,” and one — an arts magnet middle school — rated “excellent,” the highest possible.

Scores in every subject increased from the school year before. The largest jump was in the number of students passing their end-of-course Algebra 2 tests, which went from 20.7% to 59.2% — an increase of nearly 40 percentage points.

Improvements were even more significant when compared with scores during the 2017-2018 school year, the year before the state education agency took over.

On average, the percentage of third- through eighth-graders able to pass the end-of-year English test — showing they can read on grade level and are ready to advance — jumped from 24% to 42%.  In the same group, 25% received passing math scores at the end of last school year, compared to 18% six years before.

Still, just in the district’s Class of 2024 were considered , while 60% met benchmarks for being prepared to enter the workforce.

Students’ performance remains below the state’s , showing the district has more work ahead of it. But the improvements are promising, Kirby said.

“It certainly is an indication that improvements are being made, but I don’t think anyone would argue there’s not progress to be done,” Kirby said.

The state department will continue to monitor the district’s progress over the next year and will discuss next steps with district leadership when the 2024-2025 report cards are out, according to the news release.

How it happened

Monitoring student progress and helping those who lagged behind played a major role in improving test scores, said district Superintendent Kelvin Wymbs, who was hired by the state agency.

After the takeover, the district started assessing students weekly to check their progress, Wymbs said. Teachers could then use those scores to determine which students needed extra help.

Teachers shifted their focus to what is known as tiered instruction, grouping students based on their skill level and giving them different versions of the same lesson in an effort to make sure every student grasped the concepts being taught, Cannion said.

That gave students who were struggling smaller groups to work in, she said.

Beginning in 2022, the district started offering specialized classes for eighth- through 12th-graders who had to repeat a grade at any point and were not on track to graduate.

Students in the program, known as , could enroll in middle and high school-level classes simultaneously, with smaller class sizes than typical, in an effort to make up any credits they may have missed, according to the district.

“These were students who may have been counted as dropouts,” Cannion said.

Partnerships with outside groups have helped give students access to opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have, such as that offers cybersecurity courses. That, in turn, encourages students to engage with their other schoolwork, Kirby said.

He credited Wymbs’ leadership in pursuing those sorts of opportunities.

“It’s those types of things that could create exceptional outcomes, innovative things that previously were lacking,” Kirby said. “There are new ideas that are yielding results that point to visionary leadership.”

Part of the change came from a shift in culture, Cannion and Wymbs said.

Teachers and administrators tried to drive home a sense of ambition and confidence in students, more than 90% of whom live in poverty, Wymbs said.

“Our students are competent. They want to compete academically,” Wymbs said. “I think we’ve done a good job of instilling the idea that poverty, your ZIP code, none of that matters if you really engage in what we’re trying to teach you.”

The district also hired security officers and started using wands as metal detectors at school entrances in order to bolster security and students’ feeling that they were safe at school.

And a hired consultant helped officials come up with plans and coached teachers, especially the district’s growing population of teachers from other countries, Wymbs said.

“It comes down to personnel and having people who truly care about student success,” Wymbs said.

What comes next

Other school districts, particularly those at risk of a takeover under state law, could use similar methods to improve their own academic performances, Kirby said.

Kirby’s proposal for the state budget directive came out of frustration from Williamsburg County’s board of trustees, who met with him. Inserted by the House during floor debate on the budget, it required the department to give legislators a report on why Spearman took over the district, what the state has done since then, and what specific benchmarks the district must meet to receive full governing powers.

The budget clause, which ended up in the state’s final spending package, was meant to give clarity to the school board, which was “truly almost in the dark for the past four years,” Kirby said at the time.

The report is due by Jan. 1. It must be provided to legislators representing the county. The entire delegation consists of one senator and two House members, with Kirby representing the majority of the county.

The report should give district officials in Williamsburg County a more detailed idea of what to expect moving forward. It could also help other districts understand what, exactly, the department considers success in struggling schools and what help is on the table, Kirby said.

Agency spokesman Jason Raven said the department offers extra support to districts underperforming academically to keep them from getting to the point of a state takeover.

Three districts “facing potential takeover” — Colleton, Jasper and McCormick counties — improved in their report cards this year, he said in an email.

, the former state superintendent, took over three failing districts in a . State law has authorized such takeovers of schools and entire districts since 1998, but no other superintendent had attempted to take control of so many.

The other two were , which remains under state control, and tiny Timmonsville (Florence 4), a district so small that all of its students were on one campus. State control ended there following a with neighboring Florence 1, the county’s largest school district, which includes the city of Florence.

Kirby said the agency’s report could give Allendale County officials a better idea of what benchmarks it needs to meet.

Without that information, Kirby’s not sure what must happen to improve rural districts’ performances, he said.

“I’m anxious to see what the department is recommending,” he said. “What is their answer to this?”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

Students in rural America still lack access to high-speed internet at home despite governmental efforts during the pandemic to fill the void. This lack of access negatively affects their academic achievement and overall well-being. The situation has been getting worse as the urgency of the pandemic has receded.

Those findings are based on a new study we did to determine the post-pandemic outlook on .

During the pandemic, school districts quickly deployed emergency resources such as Wi-Fi hot spots to facilitate remote learning. In rural Michigan, student home internet connectivity soared to 96% by the end of 2021, a remarkable from 2019.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

However, these gains are proving temporary. By 2022, student access in rural Michigan began to decline. Today, many more students are disconnected . The downward trend is likely to continue as

We surveyed students in grades 8-11 from and , tracking changes in their digital access, educational outcomes and well-being. We found that of rural students still lack high-speed broadband internet at home.

Why it matters

highlights how rural gaps in access to the internet, mainly the lack of broadband home internet access, were not resolved over the pandemic. And these persistent access gaps could affect students’ , and .

Rural students lacking adequate home internet face significant educational disadvantages compared with their better-connected peers. These lower classroom grades, , lower educational aspirations and lower interest in STEM careers. Our findings link these adverse outcomes, which start with access gaps, to subsequent gaps in digital skills. These digital skills are less likely to develop without reliable broadband connectivity at home.

In early 2020, schools mobilized state and federal relief to provide students with home internet and laptops. Our study demonstrates the success of these initiatives in rural areas, where school-provided Wi-Fi hot spots accounted for nearly all of the during the pandemic’s peak. Importantly, as hot spot funding has ended, many households maintained access by subscribing to local internet service providers.

The success in transitioning students from school-provided Wi-Fi hot spots to paid subscriptions is now at risk. Many low-income households rely on the , the nation’s largest internet affordability initiative, created under the . This program provides a monthly discount of up to US$30 for eligible households and up to $75 for households on Native American tribal lands. The program is set to expire in .

We found that internet access among rural students had in 2022. This trend is likely to accelerate with the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program.

Young people’s time spent online – such as surfing the internet, playing video games and interacting on social media – helps them develop valuable skills. These skills include problem-solving, information literacy and creative expression. These skills apply across both digital and offline environments. Our research shows that digital skills helped rural students , even as these interests declined during the pandemic.

Additionally, rural adolescents are at a heightened level of risk for social isolation. While adolescent mental health within our study – as measured by – , rural students without adequate home internet remain at higher risk.

What still isn’t known

A major challenge in bridging the access divide is pinpointing underserved areas. Accurate maps are crucial to direct billions of dollars in funding from programs such as the , also known as BEAD, and the toward truly underserved communities. As part of the process to receive BEAD funding, each state must identify unserved and underserved homes. Local governments, nonprofit organizations and internet service providers can also develop .

Maps must be finalized and grants must be made to states before large-scale infrastructure improvements will commence. However, some other early initiatives are now coming online. For example, in 2022, the , in partnership with a , started the . Funded with a $10.5 million grant from the , this project increases the bandwidth on Michigan’s education network that is being made available to local service providers. These providers will deliver reliable high-speed internet to 17,000 previously unserved households by the end of 2024.

Still, other major infrastructure improvements across the country will .

The is a short take on interesting academic work.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

When Denise Massey’s daughter was 6 years old, she put the girl, who has Down Syndrome, on a van every morning for speech therapy in El Centro: 100 miles round trip, sometimes braving 120-degree heat, monsoons and severe dust storms known in the desert as haboobs.

Thirteen years later she’s still making that daily trek, because her Imperial County school district is so small it can’t offer a full gamut of special education services, and so remote that there’s nothing closer.

“It was hard at first. My daughter was really tired, and she’d act out,” Massey said. “But it’s been worth it because it’s so important my daughter gets the services she needs.”

Special education is only one of the challenges in rural districts like San Pasqual Valley Unified, a 591-student district in the southeastern corner of the state where Massey’s daughter, Annabelle, is enrolled. Transportation, recruiting teachers, finding contractors, tracking mountains of paperwork and complying with state regulations have become so burdensome that superintendents in those districts are begging for relief. Meanwhile, students like Annabelle  sometimes miss out on opportunities that their peers in more populated areas take for granted.

“We have a system that works through an urban and suburban lens, but leaves rural schools behind,” said Rindy DeVoll, executive director of the California Rural Ed Network, which advocates for California’s hundreds of small, remote schools. “Everyone in education has challenges, but they are amplified for rural districts.”

Rural vs. urban outcomes

Despite California being the most populous state, 35% of its school districts are considered rural – which the state defines as having fewer than 600 students and located more than 25 miles from a city. Nearly every county, including some of the most populous, has rural schools, even Los Angeles.

By most measures, rural students lag significantly behind their urban and suburban peers. They’re well behind the state average in meeting English language arts and math standards, and their graduation rate is 79% — 12 percentage points lower than the state average, according to a CalMatters analysis of California Education Department data. Only 29% complete the classwork required to attend California’s public universities, compared to 50% statewide. The college-going rate is nearly 20 percentage points lower than the state average. 

Despite the hardships, superintendents said, state political leaders rarely consider the needs of rural districts when crafting policies.

“There are those who don’t understand that California extends past Woodland (near Sacramento),” said Jeff Harris, superintendent of the Del Norte Unified School District and chair of a coalition of the state’s six single-district counties. “There’s a lot of well-intended legislation that gives no thought to the impact on rural areas.”

A place of extremes

San Pasqual Valley Unified is near Winterhaven, adjacent to the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian reservation on the California-Arizona border. The area is a patchwork of tribal and non-tribal lands, arid desert and lush green lettuce fields, opulent casinos and a dilapidated trailer encampment called the Jungle. The Colorado River, lined with reeds and cottonwoods, winds slowly to the east. Atop a hill in the center of town sits a historic Catholic mission, a white stucco reminder of the days when the Spanish and Americans colonized the area.

Like many rural communities, Winterhaven struggles with poverty and drug abuse. The town has four cannabis dispensaries and a strip club, but no grocery store. Yet there are also signs of hope and renewal. Cultural festivals are well attended, a modern health clinic recently opened, and a thriving new cafe serves as a community hub.

San Pasqual Valley Unified is also a center of the community. Generations of families have attended school in its tidy cinder block buildings, where the elementary, middle and high schools share one campus. Native American cultural festivals, San Pasqual Valley High Warriors basketball games and science fairs can draw the whole community, and signs in Spanish, English and Quechan adorn school walls and hallways. 

But challenges persist, and state laws can sometimes make things even harder. Last year, for example, California mandated that  by 2035. In San Pasqual Valley, which covers 1,800 square miles of sand and scrub in the Sonoran Desert, the two-hour charge on an electric bus barely gets you through the morning route. 

“It makes no sense,“ said Superintendent Katrina Leon. “I’m all in favor of clean energy, but there’s no way we can comply with this. There has to be some flexibility for districts like us.”

Leon applied for a waiver for the electric bus requirement and is hoping the state grants it — for her students’ sake. One of the district’s bus stops is in a small community called Senator Wash, a remote pumping station on the Colorado River 17 miles away. Leon fears what could happen if an electric bus loses its charge or breaks down, stranding students and the driver in the middle of the desert in extreme heat with no cell service.

“It’s a safety issue,” she said. “We just can’t take that chance.”

Other rural districts face the same challenge. In Mono County, Superintendent Stacey Adler worries whether an electric bus could ascend 8,100-foot Conway Summit in a snowstorm, getting children safely to school. In Del Norte, one of the bus routes runs 70 miles round-trip, on a rugged backroad, and it’s far too risky to send an electric bus loaded with students through the mountains every day, Harris said.

Limited help from government

Small and rural districts can apply for some help through the federal  grant programs. They could use the money for salaries, internet broadband, safe drinking water or other expenses. But the money isn’t much, and not all districts receive funds. In 2022-23, 89 small districts and schools in California shared $5.2 million, with some receiving as little as $6,000. An additional $5 million is available for through a federal grant the state recently won.

The Legislature hasn’t been much help in recent years. Most rural legislators are Republicans, the minority party in both the state Senate and Assembly, with whom urban Democrats often have little incentive to cooperate, said Assemblyman James Gallagher, a Republican from the Chico area who heads the Assembly Republican Caucus.

“California policy largely does not take into account the needs of rural areas. It’s geared toward wealthier, coastal communities. There might be some lip service, but inland, less wealthy areas are stuck with some pretty expensive burdens,” Gallagher said.

DeVoll, of the California Rural Ed Network, said the state can help rural districts by streamlining the bureaucratic paperwork, assisting them in  applying for grants and offering more flexibility with regulations. 

Harris’ single-district counties group, meanwhile, is pushing legislators for  state assistance to build affordable housing for school employees, allow reciprocal agreements with neighboring states to hire teachers and relax student-administrator ratios to accommodate schools that might only have a few dozen students. 

“It’s not a Del Norte County issue. It’s not even a Northern California issue,” Harris said. “It’s an issue of creating equal opportunities for every child, no matter where they live. In small and rural communities, that isn’t always the case and it has to change.”

In San Pasqual Valley, special education is particularly vexing because Yuma, Arizona, only a few miles east, has a plethora of special education services. But they’re off limits to students in San Pasqual Valley because the teachers and therapists are licensed in Arizona, not California, unless the state grants a waiver.

So students like Annabelle, with special needs, either have to rely on virtual services or travel long distances. But in places still more remote than San Pasqual Valley, such as Mono County, even having that choice seems like a luxury. 

“We can’t even bus a child for special ed services, because there’s nowhere to bus them to,” Adler said, noting that Reno is three hours away and Bakersfield five, and in winter the roads are often impassable.

‘Our teachers can’t afford to live here’

But for Adler, Mono County’s school superintendent, the most daunting challenge isn’t special education, it’s housing — or the lack of it. The county is home to Mammoth Mountain, a popular ski resort, and much of the available housing is vacation rentals or second homes.

“Our teachers can’t afford to live here. We get fabulous candidates, but they can’t find a place to live. A lot of them have to turn down the job,” Adler said. “And when you have to hire more specialized positions, it becomes even more challenging.”

Rural schools also find it daunting to hire contractors — especially in districts that border another state. Under California law, districts must hire contractors licensed in California. So even if a district finds a qualified roofer in the next town, for example, the district can’t hire them if the next town happens to be in Arizona, Nevada or Oregon. Few contractors are willing to accept a job that might be hours away, which means many jobs are left undone.

For example, last year the state made two moves to help schools combat extreme heat — a significant issue in San Pasqual Valley, where temperatures can hover in the 100s for weeks on end. In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced  with trees and plants, and in October, he signed  easier for schools to build shade structures. 

Although both initiatives would provide welcome relief for San Pasqual Valley, Leon said it was almost impossible to find California-based contractors to do the work.

“We all go into Yuma every single day. It is not a big deal,” Leon said. “Yuma is our community. It makes no sense that we can’t hire there.”

Harris has the same problem in Del Norte, which is close to Brookings, Oregon, but off-limits for hiring without applying for waivers, which is time-consuming, complicated and sometimes unsuccessful. 

Borders and barriers

San Pasqual Valley faces another border challenge, as well: Mexico. A wall traverses the district’s southern boundary, with the Andrade border crossing just a few miles from the campus.  Several dozen students commute through the crossing from Los Algodones, Mexico to attend school. Many are U.S. citizens who live part-time with family in Mexico, and some are children of Mexican farmworkers who travel across the border to toil in Imperial County’s lettuce fields. 

The district’s school buses don’t cross the border, so students rely on rides from their parents. Waits at the border can be long and unpredictable, which means students might have to leave home at 5 a.m. to make it to school by 8 a.m. In addition, the border closes at 10 p.m., which restricts students’ ability to play sports, perform in school plays or hang out with friends on weekends.

Borders can seem like arbitrary lines dividing communities, creating barriers in many aspects of daily life, Leon said.

“Borders are not a thing here. Most of our families have some connection to Mexico,” she said, noting that some employees rely on Mexican health insurance. “When we drive across a border, nothing happens. Flashing lights don’t go off. It’s just part of life here.”

A sacrifice, but ‘worth it’

Despite the challenges, rural schools can offer benefits that are almost unheard of in urban and suburban schools: tight-knit communities where everyone’s rooting for you.

Micah Ericson, a senior at Mono County’s Mammoth High School, said he appreciates the camaraderie he’s experienced at his 350-student school. He plays football, basketball and baseball, and takes online college classes through Cerro Coso College in Kern County. His previous high school in Los Angeles County had 4,000 students — about a third of the population of Mono County — and sports were far too competitive for Ericson to join anything but the wrestling team. 

“It’s just more relaxed here, and it feels like there’s more opportunities,” Ericson said. “I really like the social aspect. You walk around town, and you know a little bit about everybody.”

Ericson plans to move away to attend college next year, and feels he’s well prepared academically as well as socially.

For Denise Massey, Annabelle’s mother, moving away is unthinkable. Her family is there, and as a member of the Quechan tribe, she feels a deep connection to the area. So even when Annabelle needed speech therapy, Massey felt it was better to put her on a van every day to El Centro than move.

That decision was exhausting for the entire family, including Massey’s two older children. Massey switched to the graveyard shift at a local hospital so she could drive Annabelle, when necessary. And Annabelle, stressed from the long commute and being away from home so long, sometimes had meltdowns. 

Now 18, she’s adjusted and has benefited greatly from the special attention she receives in El Centro, Massey said. Outgoing and confident, Annabelle has a slew of friends and is always giving someone a hug or a high five.

“She’s our little superstar,” Massey said. “So it’s been worth it, but we did have to build our whole lives around it. … I wish we had services closer. I think kids in rural areas deserve the same education that other kids get.”

Data reporter Erica Yee contributed to this reporting.

This story was originally published at CalMatters.

ISSAQUENA COUNTY — The kings and queens of the South Delta School District tossed candy and waved at their families as the mid-October parade wound through a small town several miles north of this rural county. 

“There’s no place like homecoming,” read a sign on a colorful “Wizard of Oz” themed float with a picture of Emerald City on the back. 

Homecoming in Issaquena County, the least populated county in Mississippi — and one of the smallest in the country — is so popular that locals call it “South Delta University.” 

But there is no college here, not for miles and miles; in fact, there is no public school of any kind. Students from Issaquena County attend school in neighboring counties — and it’s a big reason why many of these kids will have no choice when they grow up but to move away. 

There are virtually no jobs for college graduates in this rural county blanketed in farm fields of soybeans, cotton and corn. There are no factories and no hospitals in Issaquena County. There are no public schools – haven’t been for decades. The median household income roughly $24,000, a little more than half of the statewide average. 

A single statistic underscores all these factors. Here, out of the county’s 1,111 residents, just an 42 people aged 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree — meaning Issaquena County’s population has one of the lowest rates of educational attainment in America. 

That’s not because people from this county aren’t going to college. Many of their families want them to get a degree — and then leave. 

There’s little appetite or means in Issaquena to change this reality, a product of generations of decisions that favored powerful, largely white land interests over education and jobs.

“All my grandkids, they’re going to college,” said Norah Fuller, a Black farm manager, as he watched the football game that Friday night. “I’m going to make sure they’re going to college. Do we want the kids to stay? No. What they gonna stay here for?” 

Unless his grandchildren want to work on a farm, it’s hard to say. Outside of local government and a prison, the primary source of jobs are the farms that have existed since before the Civil War. But these days, the white families who own much of the land in a county 63% Black are hiring less, and they have little incentive to make room for industries or jobs that could bring college-educated people back. 

Fuller himself left the area, dropping out of school in the early 1960s. He didn’t come back until he felt mentally ready to do the same kind of labor enslaved people in this area did. 

“I had to get away,” he said. “I stayed away until I could handle it.” 

So the cycle continues in Issaquena: Year after year, more and more people move away, leaving behind fewer reasons for anyone else to stay, for any change to happen, and more reasons for young, educated people to go. 

“Around here, that’s really the only way you’re gonna make money,” said Amber Warren, a 29-year-old mom who has an associate’s degree and has tried to get a job in Issaquena that will support her three kids. After years of applying, she finally landed one as a caseworker aid last year making $11-an-hour. 

Now she’s searching for a better-paying job, up the hills and out of the Delta, away from all her family. 

Issaquena County is flat, desolate and strikingly more rural than anywhere else in Mississippi. The famous “blues highway” largely skirts this southwestern corner of the Delta, where much of the traffic consists of pickups, tractors and trailers. Along the river looms a grassy levee �ٳ󲹳�’s rivaled in height only by large silver grain bins and silos. 

The county has been in a state of economic depression for decades. But that didn’t happen overnight. 

The story of this fertile land starts in 1820, when it was ceded by the Choctaw, whose words for “deer river” form “Issaquena.” Wealthy settlers — cotton farmers from the east — swooped in and set up plantations. By the eve of the Civil War, a of the nearly 100 farm operators in Issaquena owned enslaved people, who made up 93% of the county’s population, the in Mississippi. 

Reconstruction did little to change this imbalance of power. Agriculture continued to dominate the local economy. The “wild lands” were cheap, and Mayersville, the county seat, became , replete with hotels and saloons as the area to more than 10,000 people.

Soon politicians, businessmen and planters all over the Delta were vying for a railroad to come through their town, eager for alternatives to the crumbling, unpaved roads. 

Issaquena’s landowners resisted, believing their land could get a higher price from the railroad companies. That wasn’t the case. The county was circumvented, and Issaquena, as one in 1902 put it, had “repented” ever since. A few run through the county today.

Thus began Issaquena’s first major population decline. Mayersville was soon considered the last undeveloped place in the Delta. By the 1930s, the county’s population had to less than 6,000. Nearly all of the farms were by sharecroppers. 

Around this time, Stan Delaney’s grandfather crossed the river from Arkansas to Mayersville and, with money he’d saved from managing a farm, bought land. Delaney grew up on it. He learned to drive a tractor when he was 7, and he dropped out of the newly formed, private Sharkey-Issaquena Academy in his senior year to farm, working alongside a Black family, the Wallaces, that his dad employed. 

The Wallaces have since moved away, Delaney said. Today, Delaney’s wife and son help him work the family’s roughly 1,150 acres, which are worth about $1 million. One of the county’s 189 farm producers who are white, Delaney rents the land from his mother. 

His daughter, Whitney Delaney, went to college because she didn’t now want to farm. Now she figures she makes less working in a local community college’s student services than her brother does in farming. 

Delaney wants to see more young people in Issaquena — especially so his 28-year-old son can meet someone. He knows industry could bring that. But he’d never dream of selling the land to make way for something different. If his kids didn’t feel the same, he’d set up a trust so it could never be sold. 

“My dad worked so hard, and my grandfather worked so hard and sacrificed,” he said. “That’s your tradition, �ٳ󲹳�’s just your Southern tradition.”  

Like everything else here, the brick building four minutes from Mayersville on Highway 1 is surrounded by fields. Bales of cotton bound in bright yellow plastic greet visitors driving down the gravel road to the Head Start. The school, which opened in 1964, is Issaquena’s sole educational institution. 

LaSonya Coleman logs attendance on her sherbert-green office’s desktop computer around 10 a.m. As the center manager, she oversees the development of 41 students. Just seven, she said, are from Issaquena. 

Today, many residents, Black and white, aren’t troubled by Issaquena’s lack of public schools because the population is so small. In rural school districts across the country, consolidation is a common cost-saving measure. 

But the reason why there are no public schools in Issaquena has nothing to do with population.

In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court took up five cases that it was going to rule on school segregation. Fearing the end of separate-but-equal, white lawmakers in Mississippi . In a special session, they a plan to finally “equalize” the white and Black schools, believing the ruling could be stopped if the state proved it actually funded separate-but-equal facilities equally. 

It was a futile attempt. Instead, the plan how unequal school funding really was: Black students just 13% of education funding around that time, despite making up 57% of the school-age population. 

In Issaquena, which had no white schools, the plan resulted in the of the school district, making it the to not have one of its own. There was little reporting on the local fallout, but according to a 1988 , Isssaquena’s 13 public schools closed too. 

Yet Issaquena County has continued to pay taxes to support public schools that, aside from educating its residents, provide scant economic benefit to the county itself. South Delta is based in Sharkey County; the Western Line School District is in Washington County. Mississippi Delta Community College is 60 miles away in Moorhead. 

Last year, Issaquena paid more than $937,000 in taxes to support all three institutions, the bulk going to South Delta, according to the county auditor. 

“Having a school district does require college-educated people earning not great salaries, but still college-educated salaries, which helps in terms of property taxes, income taxes, all of the above,” said Toren Ballard, an analyst at Mississippi First, an education policy nonprofit. 

Coleman, the Head Start director, had grown up just south of Issaquena in a tenant house her father designed and built on a plantation farm. A “country kid,” Coleman and her 14 siblings would play in a nearby creek while her dad worked the land and her mom, a housekeeper, cared for the farm owners’ kids. 

In 1991, Coleman, wanting to explore after she got her associate’s degree at Hinds Community College, moved to Chicago. She worked at her sister’s daycare center. Four years later, she came back to the area after her dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He could no longer work on the farm, so he had to move out of the house.

By 2016, Coleman returned for good to find the area’s population even smaller than when she’d left. She said she would always tell her sister that local politicians should be working to bring more to the county, like a museum, something that isn’t seasonal like farming or school.

“I mostly stay to myself, but I do a lot of observing of what goes on in the community,” she said. “And I feel that they should bring the jobs in.” 

If anyone wanted to bring more jobs to Issaquena County, it’d be tough to do it without talking to George Mahalitc first.

With more than 9,200 acres, Mahalitc is private landowners in the county. His properties flank Mayersville to the north and south. In a classic tale of American success, his family moved to the area from Texas in 1961. Now, he may be the only farmer in Issaquena rich enough to grow cotton, an expensive crop. If a field is marked by bales of cotton wrapped in yellow, some locals say that probably means it’s Mahalitc’s land.

Mahalitc is also one of the county’s major employers. He hires tractor drivers and mechanics and workers for the cotton gin he owns with his brothers just over the county line in Washington County.  

All told, Mahalitc employs about 30 people — something, he said, �ٳ󲹳�’s getting harder to do. 

He believes that Issaquena has no jobs for college graduates, and few jobs for anyone else, because its people don’t want to work. His point of view is not uncommon among farmers and landowners. 

“What needs to happen is people need to get off their lazy tails and wanna go to work,” Mahalitc said. “Our government is subsidizing paying these people to sit at home. That’s the problem.” 

But it doesn’t take long for Mahalitc to admit that farmers, by and large, want Issaquena to stay this way. 

“Us farmers, we like it like that,” he said. “We don’t want the big population.” 

As farmers have historically provided most of the jobs in Issaquena, they’ve also resisted efforts to develop the land that could bring other industries to the county, even as mechanization means they’re hiring less. And because in Issaquena are Black, most of the people protesting development in Issaquena are white. 

Some farmers want more development. For Mahalitc, it depends on the project; he was interested in selling his land to a solar panel company that recently approached him but, he said, the company backed out.

Waye Windham, another white farmer and the county’s sheriff, said a decade ago, he would hire seven to eight workers for his farm of soybeans and corn. Now he hires two. 

“We can’t stop looking for industry to come here,” he said. “If we do, we won’t ever find anybody.” 

Yet in 1990, farmers across the tri-county area the county board of supervisors’ efforts to get a $75 million hazardous waste incinerator. It would have 79 permanent jobs and increased local tax revenues by an estimated $2.5 million at a time when cities and towns across the southern United States were competing to process each other’s trash. 

And it was a rare opportunity: Issaquena is prone to backwater flooding that can destroy roads, homes and farmland, another factor that the county’s economic opportunities. 

Fearing the damage the waste could cause to local crops, a pair of farmers fiercely it, writing op-eds and sending mailers to every registered voter in the county, which ultimately 413-315 against the plant. 

Mahalitc was one of the 413. The plant would have been across his property line, and he was worried about his crops. Plus, he didn’t think anyone in Issaquena would be qualified to work at the plant.

“Where would they have qualified people to help run something like that?” Mahalitc said. “They’re not here.” 

Those who wanted to develop Issaquena didn’t pin their whole hope for the future on the incinerator. The county also  to legalize gambling (but the riverboat casino  to Vicksburg). Then came along the prison.

When the 376-bed Issaquena County Correctional Facility opened in 1997, it $1 million to the county tax rolls. Today it is the largest in the county — more than 50 people work there, but many are not from Issaquena — and it sits across Highway 1 from Mayersville. It, too, borders Mahalitc’s land. 

Stallard Williams, a board supervisor who represents Mayersville, is skeptical the prison has kept its promise to Issaquena County. So is Willie Peterson, an alderman who has worked in local government for decades. 

“We ain’t got no benefit from it, make sure you put that down,” Peterson said. 

The prison recently has been at risk of shuttering. In 2019, the board of supervisors voted to do just that, the prison had lost more than $760,000 that year. But Williams thought there was more to the story. He’d been getting calls from people concerned the prison would be privatized, so he audited the numbers and determined the shortfall had simply been a mathematical error. 

“I feel like, if something is not right, if it’s something that especially an interest group or anybody else have over the people, over the community, then I speak up,” Williams said.

With what money the county does have, Williams would much rather be spending his time on ambitious projects to finally develop Issaquena. In his nearly eight years as a supervisor, he has led the board to build a park and secured funding for a walking trail outside the county courthouse, right next to the street that could one day be Mayersville’s center of business activity.

But Williams wants to do more. He has a long list. To attract tourism, he wants to preserve the home of former Mayersville Mayor Unita Blackwell, the first Black woman to be elected mayor in the United States. 

The Mississippi River, he says, is Mayersville’s “golden opportunity for economic development,” but the town doesn’t even have a port. He’d like to raise salaries at the prison, which pays just a few dollars above minimum wage. Issaquena, with its quiet swathes of land, attracts hundreds of recreational hunters and fishers — but there’s no place for them to buy gas locally. 

The county’s future, Williams said, should be about “give and take” between landowners and workers.

“I benefit from the farmers,” said Williams, who started with his dad a local lawn business mowing farmers’ yards. “But as far as the people that just want a job here, they’re more likely gonna have to work on a farm or go 50 or 60 miles to get a job.” 

Yet so many of his ideas require land to generate taxes and to build on. In recent years, some of the county’s land was bought by the state to create hunting grounds after former governor Phil Bryant.  

Change also requires political will. Some supervisors, like Eddie Hatcher, who runs a trucking company and privately owned hunting grounds, believe jobs are available in Issaquena if people want to work. 

“When the government is giving able-bodies money for nothing,” he said, “why would you go to work?”

And sometimes even small improvements can be hard to do in an under-resourced place like Issaquena.

In late October, the Mayersville board of aldermen met at the town’s multipurpose complex. The mayor, Linda Williams Short, led the meeting. She has been mayor since she Blackwell by 11 votes in 2001. Like most people in Issaquena, Williams Short doesn’t have a college degree. 

Just two community members attended the meeting. Warren, whose mom is an alderman, and a man who Warren said always comes for “moral support.” 

A heated discussion concerned some of the aging infrastructure in Mayersville, and the local construction company that was struggling to keep up. A few pipes were leaking across town. The water tower needed a new pump, and its gate, which had just been fixed, was falling down. 

One alderman suggested getting “the whole system redone.” Williams Short insisted there was nothing she could do to speed up the work. 

“We all know it’s been too long,” she said. “And all we can do is ask.”

This reporting is part of a collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News‘ , and the , , , and . Support from Ascendium made the project possible.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Arlena Lege is a modern-day traveling saleswoman who represents higher education opportunities at El Paso Community College to hundreds of the region’s rural high school students. Business is good – but it always could be better.

Lege (pronounced leh-JEY) is a “transition specialist” officially, but she is a self-described recruiter. She calls, texts, emails, has virtual office hours and does site visits to provide information to students, parents, families and counselors at high schools in Clint, Fabens, Tornillo, San Elizario and Fort Hancock.

She and two other members of the EPCC Recruitment Services team recently participated in the 2023 TACRAO (Texas Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers) El Paso College Week at Clint High School. EPCC was among the more than 40 institutions of higher education and military service present for the event in the campus gym. While the event was at Clint, students from the other rural schools also participated.

Lege talked about her job as hundreds of students began to mill around the many tables staffed by recruiters from throughout the state and beyond.

“When the students see me at (EPCC) Welcome Days at the start of the semester, they’ll make a point of coming up and telling me how helpful I was to them,” said Lege, who became an EPCC recruiter four years ago. “That just brightens my day.”

Those relationships start or grow stronger at events such as College Week because recruiters often are the initial faces of their institutions.

Lege regularly connects with her rural campuses to talk about admissions deadlines, new degree and credential programs, and work-study opportunities. Her visits along with other special presentations are among the reasons why she accrues approximately 27,000 miles on her car annually.

Campus visits

On this campus visit, the EPCC recruiters covered their table with a purple college drape as well as promotional literature about the institution’s programs and services, as well as SWAG pens marked with the EPCC logo. This day’s crowd is somewhat shy, but the students eventually ask questions about courses, credentials and degree plans in nursing, education, graphic arts, automotive technology, architecture, criminal justice and psychology. Some just want a pen. One group of boys was more interested in the best school for fraternity parties.

The recruiters hand out a bilingual Recruitment Service brochure that features enrollment steps and the, about $1,600 for 12 hours which is called the “best value in El Paso.” Price is important to these students because many of them come from modest backgrounds. Since the 1990s, these rural school districts have been under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Eligibility Provision, which allows districts to provide free lunches to all students because at least 40% are considered low income.

Lege stresses the availability of financial aid and scholarships to offset the financial burdens of college. She knows a good percentage dismiss college because they believe they must work to help their families.

For those students, she promotes EPCC’s technical credentials that could be completed in as little as six months. Some of the more popular options include welding, cosmetology, HVAC and diesel mechanics. Her hope is that they will access the financial aid, do well in school and decide to stay for an associate degree.

Briana Lujan, a senior at Fort Hancock High School, called college a “massive risk” but she knows that it is a ticket to a better job and a financially stable future. She wants to start with a cosmetology credential and then move on to a child care career.

Lujan said her initial concern is the cost of tuition and fees, but also transportation. She said the distance – approximately 48 miles – means she will need a car and that includes gas, insurance and a parking permit.

“College is pricey, but that degree would make my family proud, ” Lujan said.

Lorena Flores, Fabens High School college adviser, said she appreciated Lege’s hands-on efforts to connect with her students because many cannot travel to attend recruiting events at EPCC. Flores said face-to-face visits take the recruiting beyond the brochures and videos to create a sense of inclusion.

“(Lege’s) presence makes them think a little more about attending her institution,” Flores said. “It’s like you’re telling the students that you want them there.”

Socorro resident Eddie Villalba graduated from Clint High School in 2022. He said he did not interact with recruiters in high school, but enrolled at EPCC because he thought a smaller campus would suit him better.

Villalba took as many dual credit classes as possible in high school because they were free and to speed up his time to get a degree. He earned an EPCC scholarship that pays for more than half of his college expenses, and juggles his classes with a job as a veterinary tech. The Clint alumnus expects to earn an associate degree in geology next spring, and plans to apply for a job with the U.S. Forest Service.

Villalba said he has enjoyed his college experience in part because of the freedom to select a class schedule around his job, and because faculty always seemed available when he had questions. It also has helped him grow up.

“Going to school is up to you,” Villalba said. “It’s your responsibility to do better for yourself.”

According to EPCC and University of Texas at El Paso records, a small but steady percentage of the rural graduates enroll at their institutions. In most cases, the numbers are still below their pre-pandemic levels, but EPCC’s focus on career-oriented and short-term credentials should help.

The  recently released the preliminary results of its fall 2023 enrollment study. Among its highlights was the growing student interest in credential programs. In contrast to 2022, enrollment for certifications rose almost 10% compared to 3.6% for associate degrees and less than 1% for bachelor’s degrees.

In a study released in January 2022, the  stated that rural-serving post-secondary institutions play an important role in the academic and social well-being of a rural community. The study showed that rural-serving institutions (RSIs) directly or indirectly affect millions of people. One example was during the pandemic when institutions worked to provide technology to students with poor internet access so they could continue their education.

As part of the report, Andrew Koricich, the project’s principal investigator and the alliance’s executive director, said that RSIs were important academic access points for low-income students and those from marginalized racial backgrounds, and were critical to regional economic development because they often are among their region’s largest employers.

Lege said her main message to her rural students is to dream big and to not stress if they do not have an immediate plan for their lives.  

“I tell them they will be happier if they follow a path that they choose themselves,” Lege said.

Lege said the recent College Week event is a warm up for the busy part of her year in early 2024 when EPCC engages in numerous Operation College Bound activities. That is where counselors, advisers, and representatives from the offices of admissions, financial aid and new student orientation go to the rural campuses to help with registration.

Until eighth grade, Carter Bremer went to school on a standard five-day schedule. After moving to Harrisburg, he stopped going to class on Mondays.

Now a senior at Harrisburg High School, Carter has spent just four days a week in school for the past five years, giving him more time to spend on sports, a job and college-level classes.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

That is because the country is at the start of a massive effort intended to bring semiconductor manufacturing to the Southwest, battery research and development to rural upstate New York and more. It’s an effort that promises to spread good-paying jobs to parts of the country that haven’t benefited from them in recent decades.

More semiconductor manufacturing, more engineering jobs, more tech jobs — over the next 10 years, these and other jobs in STEM fields are faster than all others combined, with twice the median salary. More STEM jobs means the country needs more STEM-ready students, and that means helping elementary schools engage children with a rich and energetic brand of science before sixth grade, when children often start forming career aspirations.

This is particularly critical in rural areas, because if children in these communities don’t have a science-rich education, they will be less likely to be interested in or qualified for the STEM jobs coming to their regions. And if �ٳ󲹳�’s the case, the purpose of locating these jobs there will be undermined, as employers will have to recruit qualified workers from other parts of the nation or world.

Getting young Americans involved in science now in a way that captivates them early in their education will prepare them to fill the STEM jobs of the near future and build the foundation for a strong and prosperous economy.

When children from all backgrounds see themselves as scientists, society reaps the benefits. But researchers estimate this country has missed out on generations of “” because many lack a relevant and relatable science education starting in elementary school, and kids cannot be what they cannot see. 

The found that students in kindergarten to third grade learned science for an average of just 18 minutes a day – less time than many of them spend on the school bus. The results of that are clear: Only 36% of fourth graders tested as proficient on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress science exam. 

If the new approach to industrial policy and STEM jobs is going to succeed, that has to change. Science education must start early, because children develop their interests and passions early. And it must attract all kids, no matter their backgrounds, resources or experiences.

The way to do that is to move students from learning about science from behind a classroom desk to exploring the world outside and around them — whether �ٳ󲹳�’s studying drainage and flooding in an urban area or finding the angle of the sun to determine the best placement of solar panels in a rural community. Children’s minds come alive to science when they see it in every part of their world. They respond to active learning environments that offer the opportunity to collect data, test and solve problems in real time. The organization I lead, , transforms school grounds into real-world labs. Last year, we brought science to life for 53,000 students and 188 schools in 77 communities, starting in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and now extended to historically underserved areas of Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.

These take teachers and students out of the classroom and into the outdoors, where they can study the growth of plants or crops, build landforms to gauge erosion by pouring water on it or use plastic bags to find hidden water through leaf transpiration.

Children make the connection between the science they see in their schoolyards and the relevance of it to their own communities. 

As a Mississippi native who now lives, works and parents in Washington, D.C., I know that kids in rural areas grow up, get educated, work and live differently than those in cities or suburbs. High-speed internet, for example, is not a given. Technology and office work are not the norm. Some schools don’t have the that are taken for granted in many parts of the country. Almost 1 in 5 public school students attend a rural school, yet policymakers rarely address rural needs. Nonprofits and social service agencies often fill gaps in urban and suburban areas, but less so for rural schools. Indeed, the most robust voice for rural schools, the Rural School and Community Trust, no longer has an — a metaphor for the isolating lack of broadband internet or reliable cell service that confronts many rural schools.

For generations, those differences did not affect the nation economically. But now, they matter a lot. Modern society and the modern economy rely more on strong scientific readiness in places like the Southwest and rural upstate New York than ever.

The $80 billion in investments that Congress and President Joe Biden have made are designed to share the wealth of economic growth in every part of the country, not just Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Mining that wealth can’t happen, however, unless every school — rural, suburban and urban — has the facilities and a plan to get young children involved in science.

If this new industrial policy is to succeed in making this country economically sound and secure in the wake of the pandemic, engaging all citizens is critical. Making science real and relevant is, in that sense, a national economic security initiative. This opportunity is too crucial to miss.

So it was a huge help to the family, she said, that their school district used COVID relief funds to facilitate a tutoring program out of their church. There’s a “strong and united” community of people who share their Chin ethnic group identity in the small town, said Far, who left her home in Burma, now known as Myanmar, 16 years ago. And the church is a key shared space.

In the early days of the pandemic, the mother would bring her two older kids, who were in kindergarten and sixth grade at the time, to the Monmouth Chin Christian Church for in-person tutoring after their Zoom classes finished. Two paid instructors, both recent high school graduates and members of the local Chin community themselves, would coach them.

“That was really nice. I liked that,” Far said. She thinks the sessions prevented her kids from losing as much ground during the pandemic as they may have otherwise, and she appreciated the district having met the family where they were by coordinating lessons at their place of worship.

The program was but one example of the creative, no-holds-barred approach to tackling COVID learning loss deployed in Monmouth-Roseville schools.

Education experts worry that, nationwide, most academic recovery efforts have been too anemic to fully counter the damages wrought by the pandemic, but this tiny rural district appears to be beating the trend. Across the school system, students and families have gotten a boost from robust summer programming, new curriculums and no less than four different opportunities for tutoring.

Monmouth-Roseville students receiving tutoring outpaced their peers’ growth in literacy and math in 2022, according to standardized tests. And low-income students in the district made faster progress than comparable students statewide, an shows.

Roughly halfway between Chicago and Kansas City, and more than three hours by car from any major metropolitan area, the Monmouth-Roseville school system serves about 1,600 students, nearly a third of whom speak a language other than English at home. Many parents work grueling industrial jobs: In addition to Smithfield Foods — whose South Dakota facility early in the pandemic — Wells Pet Food and Cloverleaf Cold Storage also have plants in the area.

The school system landed $5.3 million in federal stimulus money, its slice of the $190 billion distributed nationwide to help schools recover from the pandemic. While roughly half that sum has gone to improving the HVAC systems in two buildings, leaders have invested practically every leftover dollar into academic recovery, according to spending records obtained by The 74 from the district.

“It doesn’t make sense [to use relief money] to pave a parking lot if we have students struggling and behind grade level,” Superintendent Edward Fletcher said.

Tutoring, four ways

In addition to the effort at the Chin church, teachers and community members spearheaded two separate tutoring initiatives during the school day — the time window when researchers say programs have the best chance of reaching students who need them most. 

A Monmouth College education professor began bringing a cohort of pre-service teachers into the elementary school, allowing classes to break out into small-group instruction and “hone in on some of those [learning] deficits,” said Katy Morrison, principal of Harding Primary School.

And a teacher in the district launched a science of reading-based literacy effort that has grown into a partnership with the national tutoring program . The initiative each year matches 100 pre-K and elementary schoolers who are behind in reading with individual tutors for intensive instruction.

“We wanted to target those kids … to see if we can get them to bump up,” said teacher Trisha Olendzki, who coordinates the program.

Outside the school day, the district has invested in tutoring at the nearby Jamieson Community Center, devoting $120,000 for three years’ worth of instruction for 20 high-needs primary school students.

Far’s daughter, who’s now in second grade, worked with tutors there this year. Thanks to the extra help, the young girl has mastered material more complex than her brother had at that age, Far said.

In the classroom, the district put more than half-a-million stimulus dollars into curriculum upgrades to make sure teachers have access to “top-notch” reading and math materials, said Amy Freitag, Monmouth-Roseville’s director of grants. Leaders devoted another $150,000 to train teachers in the new approaches.

Outside the school year, district leaders carved off about $73,000 in COVID funds to run four weeks of summer learning and enrichment for three consecutive years in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The figure budgets for 11 teacher salaries each summer and a modest stipend for supplies.

“We still have to teach grade-level curriculum, but we also have to bring kids up to speed,” Freitag said. “That’s where these supplemental programs come in.”

And through it all, district leaders have made sure to cater the interventions directly to the students and families most in need of support. Some 96% of students are low-income, 20% are English learners, 58% are white, 28% are Hispanic, 4% are Black and 4% are Asian.

Tin Tial, now a sophomore at Monmouth College, was one of the recent high school grads hired to spearhead the tutoring at the Chin church in spring of 2020. 

“The students definitely needed the help,” she said, explaining many parents had struggled with virtual learning due to language barriers

To advertise the program, the church sent out an email blast and handed out fliers to every family, she said, which she thinks was an effective approach because “basically all of us go to church.”

Parents in the community knew “they could rely on us,” Tin said, because she and the other tutor shared their culture and language. The young instructor distributed her phone number to families, who would text back and forth with her regularly.

The Chin community in Monmouth formed about a decade ago, she said, and now consists of roughly 50 families. Many, including Far’s, were drawn by jobs at the Smithfield plant, she said. The community immediately established the church and have used it as a gathering point ever since.

To Freitag, who brought the church-based program to life by greenlighting grant money to pay the tutors, the effort was one piece of a wider puzzle to help families recover from the pandemic. 

She’s proud that Monmouth-Roseville parents seeking to catch their kids up have numerous high-quality choices.

“The options are endless,” Freitag said.

Nicole Haynes is exasperated by excuses from the Sheridan School District.

A parent of two children in the district, Haynes lives in daily uncertainty. She never knows if the school bus her children ride will run on schedule. She sometimes receives an automated text alerting her at the last minute that the bus may be very late in the morning or afternoon. Occasionally no text arrives at all and neither does the bus. Her children may be left standing on the road with no way to get to school. It has happened more times than she can count.

A nurse in Little Rock, Haynes often has to leave work unexpectedly to get her children to make sure they are safe after school. Sheridan, a city of 5,124, is about 35 minutes south of Little Rock. Haynes especially worries about her son who has special needs and shouldn’t be left at the bus stop.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

“There’s no one but my husband and I to get our children,” she said. “It’s like the school district doesn’t care, and they don’t want to deal with the problem.”

Haynes isn’t alone.

Sheridan parents are dismayed with the school board’s apparent failure to address bus complaints: late buses, a flawed text alert system, broken-down buses and an ongoing bus driver shortage. Some students don’t arrive home until after 6 p.m.

“It’s too long of a day for these kids, and some kids are left home alone and missing school,” Haynes said.

School district spokesman Andy Mayberry and Superintendent Dr. Karla Neathery say the administration is addressing concerns.

“We understand parents’ frustrations and are working diligently to do all we can to address these issues,” said Neathery. “School districts across the state and nation are experiencing bus driver shortages which cause delayed buses, and �ٳ󲹳�’s no different for us.

“However, we plan to present the district’s board of education a plan tonight [May 8, 2023] that we believe may help us recruit additional drivers, and we’ll continue to utilize various methods to reach out to potential new drivers. We also will be working over the summer to migrate to a different method of accessing data for our transportation’s text alert system that we hope will alleviate communication issues.”

Still, a group of parents and citizens have launched a campaign to collect 50 registered voters’ signatures on a petition calling for a special school board meeting to address the transportation and other issues without having to seek approval as an agenda item in a regular school board meeting.

“I am gathering information now on several issues,” said Glenn Strong, Sr., a grandparent. “Hopefully we can hit them the first of June.”

Parents and citizens can sign up to address the board at regular monthly meetings only on agenda items. A person wouldn’t be allowed to speak, say, about a bus issue unless they submitted a written request to be on the agenda seven days in advance.

“The written request must be sufficiently descriptive to enable the Superintendent and Board President to fully understand and evaluate its appropriateness to be an agenda item. Such requests may be accepted, rejected, or referred back to the individual for further clarification,” the board manual states.

An examination of all Sheridan School Board agendas on the school’s website for the 2022-23 school year shows the topic of buses has not been listed on any of them.

Members of the seven-member school board did not respond to questions for this story.

“They want you to stay quiet,” said Haynes, who has called the school numerous times about her children’s bus. “Just sweep it all under the rug. A lot of people are scared to speak.”

Bus drivers are. No driver was willing to talk on the record for this story for fear of retaliation by the school’s administration.

Widespread shortages

In 2021-22, many school districts throughout Arkansas faced a bus driver shortage because of the pandemic. Shortages still exist in some districts but aren’t as severe as two years ago. For example, in the Cleveland County School District, as in other small districts, the superintendent drives a bus when necessary.

Sheridan’s bus situation appears particularly critical because problems existed long before covid, according to documents obtained through the state Freedom of Information Act. Parents fear the transportation system of “YJ (Yellowjacket) Nation” — as it’s often called — is now failing on all fronts.

Christina Hoffman, another parent who has been vocal about the district’s problems, provided text messages that show the uncertainty parents face daily if they depend on buses.

One recent text from the district said: “Bus #4 will not run morning or afternoon the rest of this week. We are sorry for this inconvenience. Thank you for your patience during this driver shortage. If you know of anyone that is willing to come drive a bus, please send them our way. Please help spread the word to those that may not have signed up in the Transportation Department for texts about their bus.”

“The texts are every day, just about,” Hoffman said. “The administration gets hit hard once a month [at board meetings], people get out their complaints and buses get back on track. Then it goes right back to the way it was.”

Low pay, unruly students and run-down buses are a few reasons drivers don’t want the job. Students tell their parents that holes in bus ceilings are patched with duct tape and bus parts have flown off while traveling, Haynes and Hoffman said.

Most of the district’s 56 buses were purchased in the last 10 years. The oldest buses, bought in 2000, are used as spares.

The responsibility of driving students on winding two-lane country roads adds more stress for drivers, compounded by occasionally driving double routes. Overcrowded buses are another concern.

In turn, parents blame the drivers, bashing them publicly on social media. Drivers said they are doing all they can in a tough situation. One driver who did not want to be identified said the job is “thankless.”

Recruitment problems

Since 2019, more than 30 Sheridan district bus drivers have resigned or retired, according to district documents obtained in mid-April.

In March, two bus drivers and the bus transportation coordinator resigned effective at the end of the school year. At the start of this school year, the district had 27 drivers under contract for 34 routes.

The district covers parts of two counties — Grant and Saline — including the Saline county community of East End, 18 miles from Little Rock. District buses cover 622 square miles twice a day and transport 1,800+ students, according to a Feb. 22, 2023, post on the district’s Facebook page.

Other communities in the district are Hensley, Redfield, Center Grove, Grapevine, Leola and Prattsville, among others.

Documents show email chains, dating from 2016 to 2023, discussing ways to hire, and retain, more drivers.

In a 2021 email, Dennis Emerson, director of administrative services for the Sheridan district, wrote to the Bryant Public Schools director of transportation, asking for “some creative ways to recruit bus drivers.”

Competition is now stiffer than ever for drivers, who need a commercial license (CDL) and must pass myriad tests and background checks. In Sheridan, drivers also have to pay for their own Arkansas State Police, FBI and Department of Human Services child maltreatment background checks, which cost $49.75.

CDL drivers can make more money working for private companies than the public education system. But Mayberry said the district isn’t competing with those types of jobs.

“The position of school bus driver is intended to be part-time, typically working three to four hours per day during the school year, so we’re not really competing with businesses that employ full-time drivers,” Mayberry told the Arkansas Advocate in an email.

“Traditionally, most school bus drivers live in the district or close by. We will continue to market the position internally to both classified and certified staff as well as target audiences including those who may seek a retirement income or want to supplement income from another job. There are a number of other benefits that we’ll continue to promote, including retirement savings and health insurance that a potential bus driver might not have otherwise. We’ll continue to try creative means of marketing the position through social media, videos, etc.”

Some school districts — like Pine Bluff, which is under state control with a limited-authority board — have upped the ante to lure bus drivers away from surrounding areas like Sheridan with a starting pay of $23,000 for five hours a day with benefits. The district considers the job full-time.

By comparison, Sheridan’s starting bus driver pay is $10,548 for three to 3 1/2 hours a day, including public school health insurance, according to a district Facebook post on Aug. 24, 2022.

“As part of an ongoing process to be competitive, the Sheridan School District monitors and reviews pay scales of surrounding and similar districts to our own,” Mayberry told the Advocate. “We plan to make necessary adjustments where needed to stay competitive within the fiscal means of our district.”

A new voice

Chris Connelly and his family moved from New York to Sheridan in 2019. He wanted escape from big-city chaos and a calming place with small-town values.

Soon after his move, however, he realized the Sheridan School District had problems, especially in his opinion with leadership. Connelly wanted to make a difference and decided to run for a school board position in 2022. He offered novel ideas for improving schools but lost to hometown favorite and former YellowJacket football player Stan Hancock 36.7% to 63.3%. Both men reside in East End.

Connelly has practical worries about the bus situation, but also an overall concern about the district as it attempts to address the bus crisis before the school year ends

“It’s clear there is mismanagement on behalf of the district and the school board,” Connelly said.

“Based on the fundamental priority of schools being publicly funded under the Department of Education and their primary function of securing education, logistical challenges should be at the forefront of their priorities.

“Instead, the public has only gotten excuses against the backdrop of the real priorities the board has set forth and they have no problem accomplishing – six-figure salaries for coaches, brand new football fields and the list goes on. They can figure that out but they can’t figure out a staffing shortage?”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Concerned, Pierce took down the classmate’s name and passed it on to the Kingdom East School District’s homeless liaison, Lori Robinson, who said the family “absolutely” qualified for services like transportation help and nutritional assistance. 

It’s a scenario Superintendent Jennifer Botzojorns has seen play out repeatedly. Her bus drivers, many of whom have been in their roles for over a decade, frequently function as the eyes and ears of the rural district, helping schools support students who may otherwise slip through the cracks.

“They really know their routes and they know the kids, so they can see if suddenly kids [are missing] a winter coat when they had one in the past … or there’s no car in the driveway,” Botzojorns said. “It’s this hidden relationship �ٳ󲹳�’s really important.”

As the only adults in the school system who actually see students’ homes each day, bus drivers have a unique vantage point on housing instabilities, advocates and practitioners say. 

For Pierce, who’s shared several tips with Robinson, helping students begins with getting to know them.

“Now you’re part of our family,” he tells students when they start riding his bus, part of a specialty transportation service the district contracts with to transport students experiencing homelessness. 

He and his wife purchase gifts for students on their birthdays. Before the holiday, they bought grocery cards and 12-pound hams for each family, he said. Over time, many of the young people have come to lean on him, which he attributes to being a caring adult who is less of an “authority figure” than their teachers.

The students Pierce drives are already dealing with homelessness, but they are also the ones who are most likely to know other students facing the same hardship.

“The students tell us a lot,” Pierce said. “If you want to know who’s homeless and who’s not, you need to talk to the students, you’ve got to get a good rapport with them.”

U.S. schools identified over a million students — 2.2% of all learners — as homeless in 2020-21, the most recent school year for which data are available, according to a . But even those figures undercount the issue as , a telltale sign they are failing to identify youth in need of help.

Students experiencing homelessness have lower overall attendance, standardized test scores and high school graduation rates than any other peer group. The limited data that exist suggest roughly the same share of youth in rural areas like Vermont experience homelessness as in urban areas, but with .

Vermont has the second-highest per capita rate of homelessness in the nation, lower only than California’s, according to a . At the same time, the Green Mountain state provides temporary shelter to a higher share of its residents without homes than any other state, with 98% safely indoors on a point-in-time count from last year.

“We’ve got a brutal [housing] affordability crisis in Vermont right now,” U.S. Sen. Peter Welch told The 74 in an email. The legislator said he is proud of his state’s efforts to shelter homeless families, but hopes school staff can also be part of longer-term solutions.

Once the Kingdom East school district knows a student is experiencing homelessness, its transportation staff continues to play a key role in supporting the child. If they’re living at a shelter or motel, the busing director alters the routes so that the student is the first pickup and last dropoff to avoid outing them as homeless to their peers. At the end of the day, district guidance counselors hand off backpacks full of clothes and food to bus drivers who discreetly give them to children in need when they step off.

“They’re backpacks and people don’t think anything of it,” transportation manager Darlene Jewell said.

Kara Lufkin, the homeless liaison for the St. Johnsbury school system, which neighbors Kingdom East, uses , a Michigan-based company that trains school staff on how to spot the signs of homelessness. The company provided training videos to her district’s transportation fleet.

“It’s really just an awareness of what are some things to look for … that could potentially mean a student was homeless,” she said.

Federal law requires all school staff who serve homeless youth to be trained in the possible signs of homelessness. The policy does not explicitly name bus drivers, or any other role, “but since bus drivers would serve students experiencing homelessness, we’d expect those drivers to be included in the professional development sessions,” said Jan Moore, director of technical assistance at the National Center for Homeless Education. 

However, oversight is lax and many transportation staff never receive the training — meaning their schools miss a key opportunity to support their most vulnerable students.

“There are disparities across the board in how, if or when training is occurring,” said Karen Roy, an advisor for MV Learning. “We want to make sure everybody is trained in recognizing what some of those red flags might be so that kids are identified. Because if we don’t identify them, we can’t begin to serve them.”

Roy said the drivers who do receive training come out of her sessions often connecting the dots retrospectively on past interactions they’ve had with students. One bus driver in a rural district in northern Michigan, for example, saw two children leave for school directly from a barn in the morning, she said.

“He didn’t really think about it until he had the training. And then he said, ‘Hey, these kids are likely homeless, they’re not living in a safe place.’ So he referred them to the liaison.”

Schools are required under the to make sure students experiencing homelessness have “equal access” to education — which often means providing them with food, clothing, transportation and more.

Lexi Higgins runs a program called that trains bus drivers on how to recognize and report human trafficking, an issue she said is “incredibly linked” to homelessness because most youth victims of trafficking are housing insecure when they’re recruited. Her company has trained drivers from over 2,000 districts.

“[Bus drivers] are sometimes forgotten when we’re talking about education professionals because they’re not on the school campus,” Higgins said. “But they really are playing an incredibly important role … and have some unique skills based on their job to be able to flag threats to the safety of the students that they’re seeing every day.”

Pierce, the East Kingdom driver, suspects such training sessions will prove to be a fruitful strategy.

“The drivers are the centerpoint for a lot of this,” he said. “I’ll bet we’ll find a lot more people who need help.”

Lufkin and Robinson, the homeless liaisons from the neighboring Vermont districts, recently tag-teamed to help a student after a bus driver sounded the alarm. Robinson had lost touch with a family on her caseload, but learned through transportation staff that the student was getting on and off the bus at different locations each day. When she got back in contact, she found out they were fleeing a domestic abuse situation. When the family found an apartment a town over, she connected them to Lufkin. 

The bus driver’s tip, Robinson said, “was the first hint that I had that anything was wrong.”

Sabrina Reeves is the (CHS) 2022-2023 teacher of the year.

She’s a co-chair for the prom committee and chair for the Miss Clinton High School pageant.

She serves on the School Improvement Team and as the advisor for the Fellowship of Christian Students.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

And since August 2022, Reeves has been remotely teaching Math IV classes to students at (JAHHS) in Edenton 150 miles away – while simultaneously teaching students in her classroom at CHS.

Finding ways to tackle the teacher shortage 

As the 2022-2023 school year drew close, Dr. Michael Sasscer knew he needed to find a qualified teacher to teach Math IV at JAHHS, rather than hiring a long-term substitute teacher to fill the vacancy. Sasscer, ‘ superintendent, said it became apparent he needed to look “across district lines.”

“If we can work with teachers synchronously, we’re no longer bound geographically,” Sasscer said. “And if we have somebody who’s excellent and willing to work with more kids and build a relationship from afar, then we could give access to high-quality teachers.”

After talking with Sasscer at a conference, Dr. Wesley Johnson, superintendent, was immediately ready to join. He realized Sasscer’s vision, that this instructional model could benefit students in both districts, and create a model that other districts could follow.

Determining which CHS math teacher would take on the task may have been the simplest part of implementing the model; Reeves is the only Math IV teacher at CHS. Johnson said Reeves stepped up and took “over the show” immediately.

“Sabrina will do anything you ask her to do. Of course, there was some nervous energy at the beginning,” Johnson said. “But, she has exceeded all of our expectations.”

Preparing for simultaneous remote and in-person learning

Reeves has been teaching math for over 20 years, but more than her years of experience, she said it was remote learning during COVID-19 that prepared her for this innovative instruction model.

“We actually got a new curriculum the year we were shut down for COVID when we were in remote learning,” Reeves said. “That’s where I learned a lot of what I’m actually doing and utilizing now for the hybrid class.”

When Johnson approached her with the idea shortly before the school year started, Reeves was willing but wanted to be prepared.

“I basically sent a list of about 15 or 20 questions and said, ‘Hey, these are questions I need answered,’” Reeves said.

Reeves wanted to know who her point of contact would be at JAHHS, how she would key in JAHHS student grades, and more. Largely though, Reeves was concerned about the logistics and technology needed.

Kerry Mebane, chief technology officer at Edenton-Chowan Public Schools, said configuring the technology at JAHHS was a simple task – and one that the district was already prepared for.

Edenton-Chowan Public Schools has high-speed internet, uses Google Classroom, and is a one-to-one school – meaning every student has a device. With these pieces of technology in place, Mebane said the technology was set.

“In any kind of instructional setting, you better yourself every semester, every year. But the technology pieces were quite simple,” Mebane said.

There have been a few tweaks since the first semester. In the fall, each student wore earbuds or headphones to tune into Reeves’ lecture on their devices. After a few hiccups with that system, the two school districts found a piece of technology that has been a game changer: the . This 360-degree camera follows Reeves around her classroom during instruction and allows students at JAHHS to ask questions in real time.

How does instruction look?

In some ways, instruction hasn’t changed for Reeves or her students. CHS students come into class as usual and settle in for the 90-minute class. About three hours away, JAHHS students come into the classroom and log into Google Meet to prepare for the same class.

“Use your chat and tell me what you think the answer is,” Reeves says after putting a problem on the board.

Each day, Reeves logs into Google Meet and begins instruction. Throughout the class, JAHHS students are able to verbally ask Reeves questions or drop a question in the chat box. JAHHS employs an online facilitator, Shirley Powell, who is in class with students every day. Reeves shares her solutions key with Powell, who is a retired math teacher. Powell can answer questions for JAHHS students during class.

Powell said students in the class work hard and feel comfortable asking questions. Nearly all students in Math IV this semester have an A or B in the class.

“This is successful,” Powell said.

Rinehart said having Powell in the class is essential to the success of the model. Instead of having no teacher in the classroom, she said students really end up with two.

“You do have a teacher. You actually have two,” Rinehart said.

Both districts use Google Classroom as their digital learning platform, so Reeves is able to copy all of her classwork, lessons, and instructional materials for students from both districts.

Reeves wants students at CHS to get to know students at JAHHS, so she incorporates group work. Students from each district log into Google Meet, are divided into breakout rooms, and collaborate on classwork together.

Being adaptable to create the best system

Shirley Rinehart, JAHHS’s principal, said she didn’t fully buy into the idea at first, but trusted Sasscer’s leadership.

“I wanted the ideal face-to-face teacher in that classroom,” Rinehart said. “I was just always reminded to have an open mind and try.”

Rinehart said the model is about being “proactive” instead of “reactive” – something that everyone had to remember early on.

In the fall, the districts spent time working out kinks in the model.

JAHHS offered two sections of Math IV in the fall semester, while Clinton only offered one. Instead of being able to teach the second class live, Reeves uploaded videos of herself teaching the lessons. But she noticed inconsistencies in student performance.

Because CHS’s school day ends about 30 minutes before JAHHS’s, Reeves began logging into Google Meet — a video communication platform — at the end of the day to offer live help to that class instead.

“That shows the passion,” Rinehart said. “For somebody to take it upon themselves to go above and beyond.”

When the spring semester started, the two districts realized that the Math IV sections didn’t line up. Rinehart changed the master schedule at JAHHS to ensure that the sections lined up and that students had live access to Reeves.

Reeves thought getting in-person interaction with students at JAHHS was important to help them build connections. She’s made a few visits to the high school already – once to prep for exams with her first-semester students, and another time to meet her second-semester students.

Sasscer said that creating relationships is what drives the success of this model.

“That’s a testament to her seeing the vision, running with the vision, and doing the best and making it beneficial for each student that she’s serving,” Sasscer said. “At the end of the day, what benefits this model is the relationship.”

Sustaining this model

Asking Reeves to teach additional courses was a big ask from both districts – and one she has been compensated for. Edenton-Chowan Public Schools used funds to provide Reeves with a $9,000 stipend per section she teaches.

But, how will they continue this model when these funds run out?

Sasscer said he’ll continue exploring alternative funding options to grow and sustain the model. He believes that allowing flexibility with position allotments could be a way to “creatively” fund advanced teaching roles.

“One of our desired outcomes is for the General Assembly to consider a reform of fiscal policy that would allow position allotments to be converted to dollars to pay for these stipends,” Sasscer said. “There’s the wonderful, feel-good of meeting the teacher shortage, and that’s all a part of this, but then there’s a bigger picture of what this could mean for innovation and sustainability if we do have shortages for a greater period of time.”

As the State Board of Education continues to consider , Sasser says this model could be considered an advanced teaching role.

According to the North Carolina Department of Instruction, from previous years. In the 2021-22 school year, there were on the 40th day of school.

Knowing this, Johnson said sustaining this model is imperative.

“We see it as a necessity. We’re going to be dealing with teacher shortages, if you believe the research, for years and years to come,” Johnson said. “If we could get some additional LEAs to buy into this innovative approach, I think we can go a long ways and help a lot of children.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The main office at Elizabethton High School in rural northeast Tennessee wasn’t always a place students enjoyed visiting. As a new ninth grader in the fall of 2019, Jayci Bowers recalled an imposing room with a long desk, a secretary and fluorescent lights that reminded her of a doctor’s office. Even though the two counselors for students had their own small offices within the space, Jayci said, “it just felt really closed off to students.” 

Today, that front office has been completely transformed into the Cyclone Student Center, named for the school’s mascot. Its old wooden door was replaced with a glass one students can see through. Inside, they’re greeted by warm lighting, a wall covered with college pennants and Cyclone memorabilia. There are small desks and high-top tables where they can work on college applications and a zen garden for relaxation.

 “I feel like I’m walking into a place where I can hang out and chill,” Bowers said. 

The school also doubled the number of counselors in the center — at the students’ request — by adding two who focus on college and career exploration and advising.

Staff and students say these changes illustrate how listening to students can take a high school in a new, more vibrant direction. Students have been playing a bigger role at in 2017. They encouraged the school to add two classes for community improvements and entrepreneurship. Elizabethton then expanded the number of classes with project-based learning, including one on teaching as a profession that was suggested by students. 

The high school of about 850 students is now a thriving community hub, with a , a coffee shop designed and run by students and a community partnership advisory group that meets monthly — so local businesses and higher education institutions stay connected to students exploring their future.

“Our community believes in progress,” assistant principal Sheri Nelson said. Elizabethton is a small city of about 14,000 people with just one public high school in a region that was . Nelson said people believe the students “need to bring the progress to the community. They don’t want our students to go somewhere else.”

Elizabethton and its educators are using to improve their high school and community at large. This is one of XQ’s research-based for rethinking the high school experience. The goal is to create more that looks beyond the school’s walls. By listening to students, Elizabethton’s educators learned they also wanted something else: connections with .

For fresh ideas on bringing more student voice to your school, sign up for The XQ Xtra — a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

Why Students Wanted More Counselors

Since becoming an XQ partner, Elizabethton High School has solicited feedback from students on a regular basis in different settings. Bowers recalled joining one of two groups that toured another XQ school, in early 2020. The difference was striking. “It was a lot of inviting spaces, lots of windows and natural lighting,” she said. The Memphis school is inside a renovated, multi-use development. By contrast, Elizabethton High School is a squat, brick 1970s building with no windows.

Bowers and her classmates asked for a more open, cheerful space like what they saw at Crosstown. Around that same time, Nelson was reviewing annual social-emotional surveys. 

“Students did not know their counselor,” she said. “I mean, obviously, when you have a 430-to-1 ratio, how can they know and serve those students effectively?”

That ratio was close to the national average, even though the recommends 250-to-1. It points to studies showing students with more access to college counselors and lower student-to-counselor ratios are more likely to graduate and less likely to have behavioral problems. But too many schools can’t afford to hire enough counselors.

Only 21.5% of Elizabethton’s adults have a bachelor’s degree, according to the U.S. Census. The high school had already created . But some students needed additional support and guidance, said Dusty Duncan, one of the school’s two college and career advisors. He previously worked in the admissions office at East Tennessee State University.

“In the upper East Tennessee area as a whole, generational poverty is a prevalent issue that affects so many students and families,” he explained, adding that the high school’s staff are committed to ensuring all students, regardless of background, get the resources they need to succeed.

Giving Students More Options

Elizabethton’s college and career advisors work with students across all grade levels, but the emphasis is on helping juniors and seniors prepare for life after high school. In September, about 150 students — mostly seniors — attended a college fair in the local area. Group visits were then scheduled to all different types of colleges, universities and technical schools. 

Throughout the fall and winter, seniors get regular updates about scholarship opportunities and are notified about special weeks when state school applications are free. The Cyclone Student Center sends out a monthly newsletter to families and coordinates daily in-school visits from college, military and career professionals.

Gracie Fields, a senior who plans to study Fishery and Wildlife Science, found the scholarship newsletter useful. 

“There are a couple that I’ve actually gotten that have been extremely helpful that I wouldn’t have known about if they hadn’t made those announcements,” she said, adding that she won a full ride to attend her first choice school, Tennessee Tech University. She said she and her older brother are the first members of their family to go to college. 

As the school’s Fields also encourages her peers to visit the student center, where counselors help them fill out college and financial aid applications. Bowers said she applied to more schools than planned after learning about scholarships.

“Families are so busy right now, that the need for dedicated professionals during the school day is more important than ever,” said Judy Fletcher, another of the college and career advisors. 

Even if they have their eyes set on four-year colleges, most Elizabethton students also apply to two-year colleges because the state’s allows them to attend tuition-free. A survey by XQ found more than 80% of Elizabethton’s 2022 graduates planned to enroll in college (there’s no state data yet on how many actually did); and 56 percent of those who said they were going to two-year colleges also planned to transfer to four-year schools. 

Among Elizabethton’s graduating seniors in 2022, more than half already earned dual enrollment credits at local colleges and universities. Dual enrollment programs have and Elizabethton now partners with six local post-secondary institutions, including East Tennessee State University.

By actively including all students in post-high school planning, Elizabethton offers a more holistic definition of school success, said XQ Head of Schools Mary Ryerse. 

“As a country, we have a shallow definition of a ‘successful high school’ based on Advanced Placement enrollment or graduation rates,” she explained. “But we don’t look often enough at whether schools are helping students advance their concrete post-secondary plans by taking dual enrollment courses, applying for scholarships and seeking additional sources of financial aid.”

Elizabethton’s counselors also encourage students to pursue industry training. Last year, 12% of its graduates got into the , an increase from five percent in 2018. Nelson said �ٳ󲹳�’s a plus because some of those students might not otherwise have had a post-graduation plan. Duncan, who also serves as the school’s community partnership director and coordinates various outreach events, said local businesses like a tool company and the chamber of commerce are stepping up to offer more workplace learning.

Deirdra Hawkes, director of programs and advocacy for the American School Counselor Association, said it’s important for high schools to recognize that college and career support is a specialized part of counseling. 

“It’s easy to go into a classroom and deliver classroom instruction on college planning,” she explained. “It’s another thing to follow up with individual students to find out what they need individual help with and support.” And high schoolers need help exploring their options long before their senior year.

It’s too soon to say what impact Elizabethton High School’s new student center is making on college-going, especially at a time when . But in 2022, Elizabethton High School’s leaders said 94% of its 185 seniors filled out applications with the state’s Tennessee Promise program. And 89% filled out their forms. The school’s 93% on-time graduation rate for 2022 exceeded the state’s and even rose despite the pandemic. 

Staff and students say they can tell more teens are using the student center to talk about their future. Sam Bowers, a senior (no relation to Jayci), said Duncan spent “days at a time” helping him complete the University of Tennessee application and others. Now, he’s bringing fellow students into the center as a student ambassador — a gig that used to mean showing ninth graders around the building and its with Elizabethton’s history and values. But Bowers now takes new students into the Cyclone Student Center, so they won’t think it’s only for juniors and seniors preparing for college. He wants them to see that a counselor isn’t “some scary adult that sits behind closed doors and doesn’t interact.” 

Nelson said listening to students is key to improving a school and its greater community. She hopes Elizabethton High School can keep its two college and career advisors after their funding runs out this year because getting a college degree helps students “take care of their own” — their families and their city. 

“No longer do we look at school as ending at the 12th grade,” Nelson said. “We think that we have to look at our students’ success beyond high school.”

Do you want to learn more about how to rethink high school? The XQ Xtra is a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of The 74.