Rural School Plight - Part 4

Add up all the reasons why rural school funding is in peril and it's not difficult to see that the options to stem the tide of losing dollars is a difficult proposition. So what can be done? How do these small communities keep that one vital and vibrant element flourishing.

One possibility for local communities is to have their respective school districts look to bonds or levies to earn extra funds. But in communities of poverty or growing blight where the budgets of residents are already stretched this simply, and often, leads to rancor and divisiveness. In short this is a poor option.

One of the other options, from my vantage point, is one involving group action. Citizens of rural communities will have to put pressure on state legislators to change funding formulas. This is no short term or easy solution. Governing is often slow and sluggish and results seem to take forever to occur. But this is an imperative.

One case in point. In March of this year (2017), as the NEA Today reports, 'the Kansas Supreme Court also found that the state was failing to meet these constitutional requirements [on funding] and ordered lawmakers to devise a new funding formula to increase government spending on the state's public education system.'

It may be difficult to achieve but rural school residents, and public schools alike, will have to engage in such activism.

Dick