Small Rural Schools Are Big on Solutions

Matt Alderton, Contributor

Ten years ago, Bunker Hill Community Unit School District No. 8, in Bunker Hill, Illinois, did a seemingly unthinkable thing: It dissolved its high school football team.

In rural communities, high school football on Fridays is as holy as church on Sundays. But, the district did what it had to do in the face of declining student enrollment and lackluster participation, Superintendent Todd Dugan insists. "It was a risk in a rural community to get rid of football," he admits. "But, we're not going to draft players and mandate that kids play football if they don't want to play football."

Fortunately, the end wasn't the end at all. Rather, it was a new beginning. Today, students at Bunker Hill High School can still play football, along with basketball, baseball, soccer, tennis, golf, esports and even volleyball.

"We're a small district, but we have all the opportunities you'd find at a major metropolitan high school," boasts Dugan, whose district is able to offer expansive extracurricular activities -- including football -- by partnering with neighboring Staunton Community Unit School District No. 6, with which it has a cooperative sports agreement allowing students at Bunker Hill and Staunton high schools to join one another's teams.

It's a divide-and-conquer approach that maximizes student opportunities even with the constraints that are typical of rural districts. "Those with less find a way to innovate more," Dugan says.

Like Bunker Hill CUSD No. 8 and its troubled football program, schools in rural communities nationwide find themselves at impossible crossroads every day. Instead of buckling under the pressure, however, rural educators are rising to the occasion, meeting systemic challenges with innovative solutions that buoy not just individual students but entire communities.

CLASSROOMS AND COMMUNITY

Rural education "needs to be treasured and protected," declares Melissa Sadorf, executive director of the National Rural Education Association (NREA), which says nearly 10 million public school students -- more than there are in America's largest 100 school districts combined -- attend rural schools in the United States.

Rural schools need protection not only for students but also for communities, adds Taylor McCabe-Juhnke, executive director of the Rural Schools Collaborative. "Rural public schools, rural economic development and rural community vitality are inextricable from one another," says McCabe-Juhnke, who notes that public schools are among the largest employers in many rural communities, where farm consolidation, hospital closures and factory shutdowns have routinely led to devastating job losses.

Indeed, rural schools are more than schools. "There are not as many places to gather or as many things to do in rural communities, so schools often become hubs of social capital and services," McCabe-Juhnke continues, pointing out that rural schools were vital sites for drive-through vaccine clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic and often host birthday parties and funerals, because they're the only local venues large enough to accommodate them.

"Schools are a community's infrastructure," Dugan echoes. "People sometimes think that if you lose the school, it's the death knell for the town -- and it often is."

Good schools can resuscitate and revitalize, adds Nickie Ebert, principal at Bassett Grade School, in Bassett, Nebraska, where she also oversees teachers and curriculum at Rock County High School. "We have a lot of pride in our school," says Ebert, a Rock County High School graduate who grew up on a ranch 45 minutes from Bassett before attending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "My husband and I lived in Lincoln but decided we wanted to raise our children here. That's the primary reason I moved back -- for the school -- and I think a lot of people feel the same way."

EYES ON ENROLLMENT

Rural schools are fuel for communities. But, many are running on fumes because of the challenges they face, not the least of which is money.

Public-education funding typically comes from local property taxes and state and federal appropriations. When it comes to the former, urban and suburban districts usually enjoy an advantage because they're dense with high-value homes and commercial properties that generate more tax revenue. With regard to the latter, government funding for schools generally is apportioned according to complex formulas based largely on enrollment, with urban and suburban schools often receiving more money because they have more students.

"Virginia is a really good example of this," says Amy Price Azano, professor of rural education at Virginia Tech, where she's also founding director of the school's Center for Rural Education. "A lot of the school districts in rural Virginia might have expenditures of $10,000 per pupil. In northern Virginia, which includes all the urban centers around Washington, D.C., it's often in the range of $20,000 per pupil."

NREA's 2025 "Why Rural Matters" report shows that the average rural instructional expenditure across the United States is $8,417 per student, approximately $600 less per student than the average in nonrural districts. In 10 states, spending is less than $7,000 per rural student.

Sadorf attributes declining rural enrollment to outbound migration, housing shortages and job scarcity, as well as increased competition from alternative institutions, including private schools, charter schools, online schools and homeschooling. In fact, a July 2025 report from the nonprofit EdChoice estimates that approximately 6% of American K through 12 students are now homeschooled, which is double the roughly 3% who were homeschooled before the pandemic.

Whatever the causes, the impacts are significant. "When enrollment declines, you have less money, which means you're cutting people or programs," explains Sadorf, who says teachers often end up on the chopping block alongside support staff, athletics, tutoring and clubs.

Enrollment at his school of 300-some students is down by 14 pupils this year, reports Jeff Granrud, a math teacher at Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted High School, in Howard Lake, Minnesota. "That may not sound like a lot, but that amounts to just over $100,000," says Granrud, NREA's 2025 National Rural Teacher of the Year. "Imagine what opportunities we could fund with $100,000."

HIRING HURDLES

Schools have as much trouble attracting educators as students, says Sadorf, who cites teacher recruitment and retention as one of rural districts' most vexing challenges.

In 2020-21, the most recent year for which there is data, rural schools had a harder time than urban and suburban schools filling teaching vacancies in almost every subject, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). In some subjects, the difficulty was especially pronounced. For example, 57% of rural schools either could not fill or had a "very difficult" time filling foreign language teaching positions compared to 36 and 37% of urban and suburban schools, respectively.

Salaries are one major cause of rural staffing shortages. "If you're trying to make the argument to stay and teach in [a rural community], you might be looking at making $20,000 or $30,000 less to do the same job," Azano explains.

Also contributing are scarcities of housing, jobs for educators' spouses and social opportunities. "Rural communities tend to be isolated and isolating," Sadorf says. "If you're new to a community, and the people there don't embrace you, it's easy to feel like an outsider."

Districts that have a hard time hiring teachers also have a hard time hiring substitutes, specialists, administrators and support staff, including school nurses, bus drivers, counselors and psychologists, she notes.

Teachers and students alike suffer. "Everyone in rural schools is wearing multiple hats," McCabe-Juhnke says. "A teacher might be teaching multiple subjects and multiple grades, for example, and the superintendent might be driving the bus. That can put a strain on everyone."

Melissa Oberg can relate. A special education teacher at Cook County High School, in Grand Marais, Minnesota, she recently had to take on additional students in the wake of a colleague's resignation. "When you're losing teachers, you're burning out the small staff you still have and burdening them with all kinds of extra tasks," says Oberg, NREA's 2024 National Rural Teacher of the Year. "When that happens, the kids miss out big-time because you're less engaged."

To avoid that, districts sometimes make hard choices. In Ebert's district, for example, Rock County High School nearly canceled its 2025 football and volleyball seasons when it had trouble securing head coaches. "Fifteen or 20 years ago, it would not have been out of the question to assign a teacher to those coaching positions, but we have to take care of the educators we have," Ebert says. "We had conversations and decided it was not worth losing teachers by pushing them into coaching positions."

PUBLIC POLICY PERILS

Although it's capable of alleviating rural schools' challenges, public policy has often exacerbated them, says Sadorf, who cites federal legislation like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Signed by President Donald Trump in 2025, it proposed eliminating or consolidating most targeted federal education programs in 2026, including the Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP), which gives rural schools financial support for things like technology upgrades, after-school programs, teacher training and recruitment, and curriculum development.

Just the threat of cuts can cause schools to eliminate staff or services. "I can't stand up programs if I might not get the money I use to support them," Sadorf says. "I have to hedge my bets."

There are other ways OBBBA could hurt rural schools, suggests AASA, The School Superintendents Association. In an August 2025 white paper, it notes that OBBBA reduces federal support for food assistance and health care through cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, respectively. To compensate, states might have to reallocate budgets and reduce spending on public education, AASA warns.

Yet another concern is the U.S. Department of Education, which has reduced staff overseeing special education and canceled or cut competitive grants supporting special education teachers and students.

On the bright side, a recent win for rural schools was the Secure Rural Schools Reauthorization Act of 2025. Signed by President Trump in December, it restores federal money provided to rural communities for education through the Secure Rural Schools (SRS) program, funding for which had lapsed at the end of fiscal year 2023. However, the law only reauthorizes SRS through fiscal year 2026, which means continued uncertainty for schools that rely on it.

"We need funding that's stable, predictable and protected," Sadorf says. "We cannot operate with cliffhangers."

INNOVATING UNDER CONSTRAINT

Despite significant headwinds, innovation and resilience are rampant in rural schools. To improve teacher recruitment and retention, for example, Sadorf says districts are embracing four-day weeks, converting vacant buildings into teacher housing and expanding "grow your own" programs that turn community members into certified teachers.

The latter have been especially helpful in her district, notes Ebert, who says the Nebraska Department of Education has made it easier for certified teachers to add new endorsements and, in 2024, launched a Teacher Apprenticeship Program through which paraprofessionals can become certified teachers at little or no cost.

Rural ingenuity also is evident in finances. To stretch small budgets, Sadorf says districts are shortening days; combining grade levels and classrooms; and pooling resources in areas like psychology, transportation and cafeteria management. "Regional collaboration through shared-service models has been a real bright spot because it expands possibility without having to lose local identity," she notes.

Illinois' Bunker Hill CUSD No. 8 credits shared services not only with saving its football program but also with reversing negative enrollment trends alongside other strategic investments -- including facility upgrades and a unique program furnishing every high schooler with 15 hours of college credit at the local community college, equivalent to a free semester of post-secondary education.

"Eight years ago, we were losing 10% of our families a year," Dugan says. "They were going to private schools for more access to sports, advanced courses and things that Bunker Hill High School could not offer. We've now had three consecutive years of enrollment growth, and it's because we have a culture where we embrace taking risks."

The fruits of rural ingenuity are apparent in student achievement, too. According to NREA's "Why Rural Matters" report, rural students graduate from high school at higher rates than nonrural students -- 89.4% compared to 87.6% -- and outscored nonrural students at the Grade 8 level in both reading and math on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

"Challenges can also be opportunities," says McCabe-Juhnke, citing as one example rural schools' lack of bureaucracy. "You only need one or two people in rural school buildings to say yes to something for it to happen. There's not a million layers of red tape or a million stakeholders who need to get involved. That, to me, is an unsung story of possibility."

So is rural schools' aptitude for place-based learning. McCabe-Juhnke recalls a rural teacher in Kansas, for example, who noticed that students were struggling with words like "taxi" and "apartment" in her school's off-the-shelf reading curriculum. When she began supplementing that curriculum with lessons themed in agriculture, students' reading scores saw a "significant uptick."

That resonates with Granrud, who talks about range finders and hunting when he's teaching trigonometry; with Oberg, whose school built a culinary arts classroom to train future cooks in support of the local tourism economy; and with Jenny Maras, a business teacher known for her community-based approach at Morris Area High School, in Morris, Minnesota.

"Getting the kids out and the community in is my secret sauce. I don't know everything about wills and estate planning, for example, but I can take my personal finance class on a field trip to visit a lawyer in our town," says Maras, NREA's 2023 National Rural Teacher of the Year. "That's where rural vitality lives. Bringing community members in to share their passions and livelihoods creates awareness of all the opportunities that exist in our small towns ... so kids don't feel like they have to leave to make something of themselves."

The bottom line is relationships, Sadorf explains. Although challenges like funding, enrollment and recruitment will likely persist, she says rural schools' intimate connections with students and communities will sustain them.

"A typical rural school is going to have close-knit relationships in the classroom. They're going to see kids struggling sooner, and they're going to be able to address those issues in real time as they're happening," Sadorf says. "When your teachers are also your neighbors, there's a sense of shared ownership in student success ... That's why students are doing better at rural schools, and that's what makes rural education a real bright spot in our country."

[PF_0426]

(c) Copyright 2026 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.