Within a partnership of 9 rural school districts

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In my reporting on rural education, I’ve heard often about the importance of school districts working together to help more kids succeed after high school. So when my colleague Neal Morton had the chance to visit a rural alliance formed by nine school districts in southwestern Colorado for a recent story, I wanted to learn more. Here are some of my questions for Neal and his answers:

What surprised you most when telling this story?

How many times have I heard from rural Colorado teachers how difficult it is to compete with larger districts for money and other resources. A guidance counselor at a small high school—if there is one—may not know how or have the time to apply for state grants that larger districts have full-time positions to fill.

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

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

One downside? Getting everyone on the same page. This collaboration has put a lot of effort into getting principals and superintendents from each school district to work together. Woodworking teachers who meet twice a month complained briefly about the time it takes to build the community of colleagues they now rely on. It also costs money to pay for so many meetings. There’s also the risk of meetings for the sake of meetings, and I think the nonprofit leading the work of the collaboration is trying to focus those conversations on what’s happening to improve classrooms for kids.

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One of the career paths revolved around careers in climate. Did school districts have trouble getting buy-in or pushback for offering climate change courses?

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

In southwestern Colorado, schools faced pushback when they partnered with local colleges to offer ecology and environmental science courses in high school; teachers who tried to recruit for a summer program—a so-called environmental climate institute—also faced some resistance. The same thing happened near Yampa Valley: A shared calendar invitation with a mention of climate in the event’s name led one attendee to worry about peer scrutiny.

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

Will these types of models spread?

Probably. Javeria, you’ve already written 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 hear how this model is catching on in three Indianapolis-area school districts.

In Colorado, lawmakers will have to consider the upcoming findings of a school finance task force next year. Fans of the rural alliance model hope that legislation to overhaul the state’s K-12 funding formulas will give rural schools flexibility to share costs, revenue and students. (In the meantime, rules around transportation and busing students between districts proved too burdensome for the southwestern Colorado alliance, and its ambitious growth plan has since been scaled back.)

Is there anything you wanted to highlight that didn’t make it into the story?

I learned that a stand of aspen trees—they’re all over the San Juan Mountains—is actually a single organism, connected by an extensive network of roots. (The aspen is believed to be the largest organism ever found on Earth!)

Quick takes:

Students attending 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 levels — including policies that require school staff to inform parents if a student uses other pronouns — will further impact 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 access to support groups like a gay-straight alliance. Last year, I wrote about the deterrent effect of anti-LGBTQ+ policies on gay-heterosexual alliances in Kentucky.

The Department of Homeland Security has published a report toolbox last week to help school districts educate teachers, parents and children about dangerous online and social media behavior. According to the federal agency, one in five children receives unwanted sexual solicitations online each year, and experts fear the problem will worsen as the presence of AI 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 intended to help parents know what not to post about their children online during the back-to-school season, and to help teachers learn how to recognize when a child is being abused online.

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

This story about partnerships in the countryside was produced by The Hechinger Reporta non-profit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger Newsletter.