The Rural Education Center at Edvantia (RECE) invites rural students, parents, community members, and educators to participate in the 2008 National Rural Education Needs Assessment by completing a short online survey. The purpose of this effort is to gather information about the strengths of rural schools, districts, and communities, and about the challenges they face. Findings about key rural education issues will be shared with policymakers, educators, and researchers, and used to improve RECE services. Such information is increasingly important as the rural student population continues to rise. To participate in the needs assessment, visit the RECE website or go directly to the 2008 National Rural Education Needs Assessment survey.

The massive financial "rescue" that President Bush signed into law Friday passed a reluctant Congress in part because the U.S. Senate added funding for rural schools.

After the bailout bill failed in the House on Monday, the Senate scrambled to make the legislation more palatable, especially to rural members from the West. They added to the bill a provision that extends the "Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act" for four more years -- legislation that pays rural communities for revenues lost as timbering was restricted on federal lands.

"Oregon communities can finally breathe a sigh of relief," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) once $3.3 billion in rural school funding was slapped into the Senate's version of the finance bill. The House passed this revised legislation on Friday.

"Payments go to 700 counties in 39 states"; the five biggest beneficiaries will be Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho, and Montana.

The wide open spaces of rural Texas are presenting major problems in school transportation. The Temple Daily Telegram reports on Rogers ISD: 144 square miles, 10 buses, and only three schools. Since the 1980s, the State of Texas has allocated school transportation funds based on enrollment. So now, with fuel prices soaring, that leaves tiny Rogers without enough money to run its 10 school buses.

Rogers ISD has a transportation budget of $347,811 for this school year. The superintendent says that based on enrollment, the state will pay only about $100,000 for transportation, less than a third. To make ends meet, the school district is making changes, including "clustered pickups and drop-offs."

In Eastern Kentucky, the Jenkins school district has taken a more radical step. To save money, Jenkins ISD has trimmed the school week down to four days. CBN reports that at least 100 districts nationwide have gone to the shorter school week.

In Wilkes County, North Carolina, land of vanished mills and furniture factories, many young people are baffled about life after high school. Military recruiters, by law, have access to public school students; in Wilkes County, they've been able to sit down with teens in the lunch room and discuss the benefits of service in the armed forces. Until recently, the Wilkes district also permitted "counter-recruiter" Sally Ferrell on its high school campuses, too.

Ferrell, a Quaker, gave students pamphlets about AmeriCorps and talked with them about alternatives to enlisting. "All we want to do is make students aware that there are other ways to find college money and serve your country without joining the military," she said. "We want to save lives."

Three Wilkes Countians have died already in the Iraq War.

Now Superintendent Stephen Laws has told Ferrell she can no longer come on campus. "We allow recruiters into the schools to recruit for post-high school opportunities," said Laws, "But she wasn't offering that." Laws' decision has the backing of the local school board.

The American Civil Liberties Union's North Carolina Chapter is now involved and plans to take up Ferrell's case as a First Amendment issue.

(See the Yonder's report on how rural communities are disproportionately bearing the burden of the Iraq War.)