New York is considering creating a Center for Rural Schools as a way to strengthen rural communities in upstate New York, the Star-Gazette of Elmira, N.Y, reports.
"If we're serious about remaking and strengthening upstate New York, we need to aggressively recognize that a rural school district can be a driving force for revitalization," said Sen. George Winner, R-Elmira, sponsor of legislation to create the center. The New York Center for Rural Schools would be placed at Cornell University in Ithaca (above). The state Senate's current version of the state budget has $500,000 appropriated for the endeavor.
"It's an investment that we believe can produce significant returns for upstate communities and the upstate economy," Winner said. "The Center for Rural Schools can play a key role in any overall upstate revitalization strategy."
A survey of school superintendents in Minnesota found that rural districts expect their schools to deteriorate because of inadequate funding. Minnesota 2020, a nonpartisan public policy group, sent a questionnaire to state superintendents, and mostly rural school leaders responded. The results were reported in the Litchfield Independent Review.
The rural superintendents said underfunding by the state was forcing them to call for local property tax hikes — and to lay off teachers. On average, school districts in Minnesota are laying off four teachers this year. Nine out of ten rural superintendents said if funding for schools doesn't change, education will "get worse."
"Our rural district does a very good job educating at-risk students who do not succeed in larger districts," wrote one superintendent. "If the funding system doesn't change, this district is doomed and that is very unfortunate."
Andi Murphy, a Navajo and a student at New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas, writes for Reznet about the problems of retaining Native Americans in college. There's not much to do for Indian students in Las Vegas, Murphy writes. "They want to live where the entertainment is," said Teresa Billy, Native American access and retention coordinator at NMHU. (Above, sophomore Vivian Joe.)
In the fall of 2007, there were 106 Native students at NMHU. Beginning in the spring term, there were only 92.
"They transfer because they want to be around where there's a lot more things to do," Billy told Murphy. Another reason: academics. "A lot of students will go to class and not necessarily perform well and they have to transfer home because of resources" such as scholarships and transportation, she said.
It turns out that rural residents are more likely to homeschool their children than those living in the city — and homeschooling is growing at a faster rate in rural areas. And Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm has proposed spending $300 million to break up large high schools into smaller ones consisting of no more than 400 students.
We learned this and more in the March edition of one of the Yonder's favorite publications, Rural Policy Matters. The Rural School and Community Trust publishes the newsletter and every month they keep us up to date on school funding, school consolidation and other issues of interest to rural communities.
For example, people in Maine are working to overturn a 2007 law that mandates consolidation of small school districts. And a case that would require Idaho to alter how it funds school facilities is now before a federal district judge. All in this month's issue.
Georgia has been cutting funds to its public schools. Since 2003, according to Rural Policy Matters, the state's K-12 schools have lost $1.4 billion in state funds. Schools responded by raising property taxes (and cutting programs) and so the local share of education costs has more than doubled since the mid-'80s.
Shifting funding to local property taxes has "put a particular squeeze on many rural districts, especially those with high poverty levels and those with little ability to generate local revenue because of low property wealth," according to RPM. In 2004, 48 rural districts filed suit against the state, claiming the funding system violated state law. That case is set to go to trial in the fall.
There is a sales-tax-for-property-tax swap being proposed, according to RPM. And the Georgia governor keeps cutting. The RPM article has plenty of links where you can learn more about the Georgia school funding crisis.
A national alliance of businesses, non-profits, and local governments names the U.S. communities that are best serving youth; fifteen of them are rural.
Local college tuition may be the new barometer of social and economic promise. The Des Moines Register reports that University of Nebraska/Omaha is lowering the cost of college by half for students across the state line in three nearby Iowa counties. The move makes going to UNO cost about the same for residents of Pottawattamie, Mills and Harrison counties as attending college in Iowa.
Concerned about decreasing numbers of local young people, more and more colleges in the Midwest are cutting rates for out of state students or offering reciprocal deals with universities in other states (Thus far, Iowa's universities have mainted healthy numbers of out of state applicatants without such deals). Meanwhile, the regents of University of Texas/Austin are asking for two more tuition increases, 2008-2010. Ralph Haurwitz of the Austin American-Statesman reports that if approved "the plan would amount to a 90 percent increase" in tuition since 2003. Austin is already attracting more college-educated young adults that most cities in the U.S.