The State of Alaska is creating a position for director of rural schools within its education department.
Educators there praised the new post as a measure that could improve
rural schools, save tiny ones, focus on the education of Native
American students, and devise good alternatives for communities whose
schools must close.
Matt Nevala, of Tundra Drums,
writes that with very low enrollments, several rural Alaska schools
risk closure now. “Joe Banghart of the Iditarod School District says
Shageluk, Takotna and Anvik project 12 to 14 students but could drop
below that.”
Alaska’s state legislature passed a bill last year to cushion tiny
schools somewhat. Rather than withdrawing funding abruptly when schools
shrink below 10 students, the state reduces funding gradually over four
years, so that communities and school boards have time to work out
education plans for the remaining students.
At a gathering of rural-school experts in Washington, the right issues were raised (mostly), but where were the electricity, the characters, and the relish sandwiches?
The other day I received a fund-raising letter from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. I'm still on the school's mailing list even though I never graduated from the place. Anyway, the letter came from a student at the school, Gabby Salazar, class of '09. Her job was to raise money and she had a story — which was that Brown saved her from a life in a "small town" and going to a school in North Carolina. Her pitch essentially was that Brown saved her from a life in the rural South.
"I grew up in a small town in North Carolina, and, for the most of middle school and high school, I confined my dreams to colleges in my home state," wrote Gabby Salazar. She met a representative from Brown (who braved the journey to the hinterlands) and "suddenly, Brown became a possibility." The rest is then all good — learning, friendship, success. All of that is true — and she was saved from backwaters like UNC, Duke and Appalachian State.
What isn't true is the "small town" part. Gabby hailed from Greensboro, a metro area of 1.5 million people. (See skyline above.) Gabby went from a city with 259,000 to Providence, which has 172,000 (and a metro area the same size as Greensboro). Poor-mouthing rural is a great way to raise money, I guess. But couldn't Brown have found a student who came from a real small town — maybe some tiny, secluded, out of the way metro area with fewer than a million people?
Opponents of Washington State University's plan to close the school's Department of Community and Rural Sociology have taken their cause online with social networking tools.
The university announced early this month that it will close the rural sociology department as part of a $54 million budget cut that will eliminate 371 jobs system-wide.
An online petition created by a research committee of the International Sociological Association says the department is important for survey methodology, community development projects, and the study of food and agriculture. The petition has 282 signatures, primarily from faculty and students around the United States.
On the Facebook front, a small group has posted links to news coverage and a page to comment on the proposal to university's budget committee.
Washington State President Elson S. Floyd said the cuts were painful but necessary to meet budget cuts. Washington is a land grant school, meaning part of its mission is to serve rural areas. The budget also calls for closing regional distance learning centers and shutting the IMPACT Center, which studies the economic impact of Washington's agriculture and food systems.
Arts and Culture | Education | Politics and Government
Only 20 of the nearly 300 native languages originally spoken in America are spoken today by Native youth. According to Ryan Wilson, Oglala Lakota, President of the National Alliance to Save Native Languages, indigenous languages are sacred and vital to the cultural survival of Native peoples.
Leaders in then Native language revitalization movement are convening in Washington D. C. this week at the National Museum of the American Indian. Participants also plan to meet for a briefing session on Capital Hill at the Senate Indian Affairs Committee Hearing Room. The session will be followed by visits to their congressional delegations to share information about supporting Native language systems through the Ester Martinez Native Languages Preservation Act.
In a statement to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Wilson reported that Indian students who attend language immersion schools routinely out perform their counterparts attending English-only schools. Students also display lower drop out rates, disciplinary problems, substance abuse and lower rates of truancy. These problems are epidemic for Native youth, especially those living on reservations.
President Obama used the rural school district in Dillon, South
Carolina, as an example of a place that could benefit from federal
stimulus. He's right, but under current guidelines, rural school
districts like Dillon are at a disadvantage.