What will it take for rural districts to compete with larger, better-resourced schools?

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I’ve heard often in my reporting on rural education about the importance of school districts collaborating with one another to help more kids succeed after high school. So when my colleague Neal Morton had a chance to visit a rural alliance started by nine school districts in southwest Colorado for a recent story , I was eager to learn more. Here are some of my questions for Neal and his responses:

What surprised you most while reporting this story?

Just how often I heard from rural educators in Colorado about how hard it is to compete with larger districts for money and other resources. An academic counselor in a tiny high school – if it has one – might not know how, or have the time, to apply for state grants that larger districts have full-time positions dedicated to securing.

What are the pros and cons of rural school districts working so closely together?

The biggest pro seemed to be everyone pulling together for a common goal. This southwest Colorado collaborative raised millions of dollars to put new college classes in high school and expand CTE courses for students. Even the largest school district, Durango, could have collected only a fraction of that money on its own.

A con? Getting everyone on the same page. This collaborative spent a lot of energy just getting superintendents and principals from every school district to work together. Woodworking teachers who meet twice a month complained, briefly, about all the time it takes to build a community of peers that they now rely on. It also took money to pay for many, many meetings. There’s also the risk of meeting just to meet, and I think the nonprofit steering the collaborative’s work tries to focus those conversations on what’s happening to improve classrooms for kids.

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One of the career pathways centered around climate-related careers. Did the school districts have difficulty getting buy-in or face any backlash for offering courses on climate change?

Yes. They’re trying these rural alliances in four different Colorado communities. In at least two, the very suggestion of introducing “climate change” into schools and planning for the “green economy” sparked some controversy.

In southwest Colorado, schools faced opposition when they started partnering with local colleges to teach ecology and environmental science courses in high school; teachers trying to recruit for a summer program – called an environmental climate institute – also got some pushback. Same thing near Yampa Valley: A shared calendar invite with mention of climate in the event name made one attendee worry about scrutiny from colleagues.

The alliance there decided instead to use words like “stewardship” and “sustainability,” which sounded familiar to rural residents working in agriculture.

Will models like this one spread?

Most likely. Javeria, you already wrote about a regional collaboration growing in South Texas (where I got my start as an education reporter!) And we both attended a SXSW EDU panel in February to learn about this model taking off in three school districts near Indianapolis.

In Colorado, lawmakers next year must contend with the upcoming findings of a school finance task force. Fans of the rural alliance model hope legislation to reform the state’s K-12 funding formulas will add flexibility for rural schools to share costs, revenues and students. (Right now, rules around transportation and busing students between districts proved too thorny for the southwest Colorado collaborative, and it has since scaled back its ambitious growth plan.)

Did anything not make it into the story that you wanted to highlight?

I learned that a stand or cluster of aspen trees – they’re all over the San Juan mountains – is actually one single organism connected by an extensive network of roots. (An aspen tree is believed to be the largest organism ever found on Earth!)

Quick takes:

Students who attend a school with at least one anti-LGBTQ+ policy report higher rates of anxiety, bullying, depression, and increased thoughts of suicide, according to a new report from the nonprofit Trevor Project. The group warns that recent anti-LGBTQ+ legislation at both the state and local level – including policies that require school staff to inform parents if a student is using different pronouns – will further affect the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth. The report also found that students who attend a school with at least one anti-LGBTQ+ policy were less likely to have support groups such as a gay-straight alliance. Last year, I wrote about the chilling effect of anti-LGBTQ+ policies on gay-straight alliances in Kentucky.

The Department of Homeland Security released a toolkit last week to help school districts educate teachers, parents and kids about dangerous behavior on the internet and social media. One in 5 children receive unwanted sexual solicitation online every year, according to the federal agency, and experts fear the problem will worsen as AI’s presence in schools and students’ use of social media continues to grow. The materials — part of Know2Protect, a DHS initiative to prevent and combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse — are meant to help parents know what not to post online about their kids during back-to-school season, and help educators learn how to identify when a child is being abused online.

English language learners are less likely than their peers to have access to core subjects like English language arts, social studies, math and science in high school, but that gap may be shrinking as some states invest in multilingual teacher training and other practices, according to a new report . Researchers at the National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners studied the practice, known as “exclusionary tracking,” across Oregon and Michigan over several years. Among their key findings: Only 55 percent of English learners in Oregon were enrolled in the four core classes in a given year, compared with 67 percent of other students. In Michigan, 66 percent of EL students were placed in core subject classes compared to 71 percent of their peers who were not English learners.

This story about rural district partnerships was produced by The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter .

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