evoll sees firsthand the challenges of simply getting students to school from her home in the Yuba County foothills community of Dobbins. Students and family members gather early in the morning to wait for the bus to take them down the hill to the Marysville Joint Unified School District. The personal connection and appreciation for rural communities are extra incentive for Devoll in guiding the Rural Ed Network. The organization, managed by the Butte County Office of Education, launched last fall with a goal of joining together rural areas from across the state to share resources and expertise, and draw more attention to the needs and realities facing rural schools and districts.

“We need something. We need our voice heard,” Devoll said, echoing the concerns of rural educators, district and county board members, and superintendents and principals hailing from Imperial County in the south to Modoc County in the north. The network website offers a resource bank dedicated to seven top concerns for rural schools and districts, as identified through surveys:

• Teacher recruitment
• Staff recruitment
• Resources/staff for students with diverse needs
• Parent engagement in the education system
• Drug/alcohol abuse
• Distance to mental health care
• Adverse childhood experiences/trauma

While the network’s foundation provides a promising start, school administrators and board members said much more work needs to be done to inform legislators and policymakers on the realities of rural education in California.

Funding the basics

Transportation is perhaps the biggest and costliest issue facing rural school districts — and one of the most visible. Although attendance is of the utmost importance for optimal student learning, officials said transportation challenges are continually taken for granted or overlooked.

Jared Critchfield, Amador County Public Schools assistant superintendent for business services, knows the long bus routes serving the county as well as anyone. Located in the Sierra foothills southeast of Sacramento, the district sees about 2,400 of its 4,000 students take the bus to school each day. “We are so spread out, so our transportation costs are very high,” Critchfield said, noting that the joint district and county office of education services between 450 and 500 square miles.

The state has not recognized or responded to increased transportation costs, Critchfield said. The high percentage of funds needed for transportation strips away money from staffing and student learning efforts. In an effort to redirect transportation funds to fill other needs, Amador County Public Schools experimented with charging students to ride the bus several years ago. The now-repealed strategy was ineffective and ended up hurting many lower-income families who could not afford the fare.

Rural districts in California struggle to meet student needs and suffer from disproportionately high incidences of suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, and suspension rates. With issues ranging from school climate to home life to transportation inequities, Amador County Public Schools Board President Susan Ross said the state needs to realize the burden facing rural districts and do a better job of ensuring all students have equitable access and opportunities. “You can’t just have one cookie for everybody; everybody’s different,” she said. Ross was among the more than 250 board members from across the state who attended CSBA’s Legislative Action Day in March, where she spoke with legislators about the specific needs of rural districts.

One of the ways in which rural districts have traditionally received money to help fill some of the funding gap for high transportation costs has been through the federal Secure Rural Schools Act. The act provides funds for the 39 counties in the state that have federal forest land, areas which leave a void in the tax base because of their protection from development.

The act has restored programs for students in rural schools and prevented the closure of numerous isolated schools over the years, according to CSBA Legislative Advocate Erika Hoffman. “It is the basics of making sure kids can get to school,” she said of the impact of the act on transportation budgets.

But the act’s funding is often retroactive or in peril altogether, as evidenced when no funds were provided in Fiscal Year 2016. CSBA has fought year in and year out for reauthorization of Secure Rural Schools funds to provide a boost to in-need rural districts. Hoffman this year traveled to Washington, D.C., in late February for an advocacy trip with the National Forest Counties and Schools Coalition to voice CSBA’s support for the Forest Management for Rural Stability Act, which would establish a permanent fund as a long-term replacement for the Secure Rural Schools Program. The conversation seems to be gaining momentum, Hoffman said, as an outgrowth of the new focus on forest conservation and management. Such discussions have arisen in response to devastating wildfires throughout the state.

The staffing problem

Misha Grothe won election to the Middletown Unified School District board of trustees in fall 2016, a year after the Valley Fire burned 76,067 acres and destroyed 1,955 structures in Lake County. Losing only a one-room portable building, Grothe said Middletown’s district and community were spared the devastation that the Paradise, Santa Rosa and Redding areas experienced in subsequent years’ firestorms.

Still, Grothe said, the community’s resilience through the difficult times has emboldened her passion for speaking out and representing the interests of not only the 1,500-student Middletown USD, but all rural districts. Middletown USD has trouble attracting teachers, counselors and psychiatrists due to its inability to pay staff at the same level as neighboring districts. The district also doesn’t have the funds to pay for a grant writer, which can lead to missing out on opportunities to expand student learning.

Mirroring state trends, Assistant Superintendent for Educational Services Sean Snider said Amador County Public Schools struggles the most to find staff in the areas of special education, science and math, mainly at the secondary level. “It is compounded more in rural areas than the rest of the state experiences,” he said.

“Sometimes just getting a body into the classroom can be really hard,” Rural Ed Network’s Devoll agreed. “When the pool is smaller, you kind of have to take what you can get.” Many rural California students also lack access to high-level and AP courses due to the lack of qualified teachers.

“By virtue of our geography, our kids don’t have the same opportunity as kids in metropolitan areas,” Grothe of Middletown USD said. The district has a high graduation rate but doesn’t offer as many rigorous courses as it would like. And field trips and other enrichment activities are extremely difficult to pay for, organize and execute, she added.

Technology has helped offer more opportunities for digital coursework and resources, but even with advancements, rural students face obstacles with access and opportunity — both in and out of school.

According to a recent California Public Utilities Commission report, only an estimated 47 percent of households in rural areas have broadband access at speeds considered by government regulators to be adequate. Devoll said American Indian reservations, in particular, lag far behind with broadband connectivity.

Virtual meetings and trainings also continue to gain traction in professional development circles but often can’t replace the networking and environment offered at in-person gatherings. Additionally, finding substitute teachers to cover for trainings can prove difficult, if not impossible — rendering many options for staff development open to a select few teachers or administrators at a time.

“It’s sad that not all of our teachers can go and participate and learn the same,” Grothe said, noting that only 10 of 73 district teachers were able to attend the last major training event.

Fighting for facilities funds and community support

Small, rural districts also compete with large, urban ones for facilities funding through a number of grants and statewide bond measures, the most significant in recent years being Proposition 51. While Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration was slow to release the funds through bond sales, Prop 51 authorized the state to sell $7 billion in bonds for K-12 new construction and modernization projects.

The School Facilities Program funds require a local match, which can be quite difficult for some rural districts that may struggle to pass bonds, Devoll said. Factors such as community income and political ideals, district campaign expertise and election turnout can have major impacts on bond campaigns.

And when a district does have support, rural areas and small towns often have much lower bond capacity because their property taxes are also usually lower, meaning not all projects can be addressed.

A data analysis by CALmatters in fall 2018 found that schools with a lower percentage of students on free or reduced-lunch programs are likely to receive higher bond amounts per pupil. The result is a system that delivers more local bond money to wealthier communities, which researchers and advocates say leads to even greater facilities and programs imbalances across the state.

Amador County Public School’s $78 million bond measure was defeated by 48 percent of voters in fall 2018. A facilities needs assessment put the district at well over $100 million in projects, so the bond’s passage still would not have been enough to do all of the work, Critchfield said. “(The state is) getting away with not recognizing facilities needs because so much of the state is passing bonds left and right,” he said.

Ross said the inequities in school facilities between urban/suburban and rural districts is yet another example of how the state needs to implement different requirements and protocols depending on district size, need and location.

In Lake County, Grothe said Middletown USD was fortunate to have the community pass a $28 million bond in November’s general election. Similar to Amador, Grothe said the district has a lengthy list of projects that it wants to tackle, from old portable buildings to leaky gym roofs. “The bond is really only going to cover the critical and mandatory items,” she said.

Without professional staff or political consultants to assist with a bond campaign, Grothe added, the pitch to the community can be a very difficult one. Because the district can’t officially campaign for the measure once it’s on the ballot, it is essentially asking the community to raise money for a campaign and then asking for more money if the bond passes.

“It’s really easy to say ‘woe is rural California’”

Despite these many challenges, rural schools and districts do have their advantages compared to larger and more urban districts, officials and educators said.

Amador’s Ross cited staff efficiency and a strong sense of community as important attributes in her district and county office. “I don’t think it’s about the size of the system, but the people in it,” added Butte County’s Devoll, pointing to strong relationships among school leaders.

In addition to advocating for equitable funding and resources, Devoll said rural educators and leaders need to amplify their messaging on what is working and share it with others. “It’s really easy to say ‘woe is rural California,’” she said, but the fact is there are smaller districts doing great things.

When rural districts do find highly qualified teachers, for example, they tend to stay longer because of the sense of community and the lifestyle, Ross said. There can also be a greater sense of buy-in and belonging in the local area.

But even with these benefits, there is still a large disconnect between state leaders, policymakers and others about the challenges rural districts face, the resources they need and the quality of education they can deliver.

The bottom line, as Grothe put it, is that there needs to be a rural voice at the table.

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Andrew Cummins is a staff writer for California Schools.