How one Washington town battles rural 'brain drain'

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Rural towns all over the country struggle not just to get students to go to college, but to get them to come back afterward. A small town in southwestern Washington is bucking the odds.

Onalaska, an unincorporated former lumber town about halfway between Portland and Seattle, made the news in 2017 when all 43 of its high school seniors were accepted to college. That’s remarkable in a community where fewer than 16 percent of the people have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Not only that, but more and more college graduates are coming back to town to raise families, Kaitlin Gillespie reports for The Hechinger Report.

“And at the heart of that growth, former students and community leaders say, is the high school,” Gillespie reports. “This is a town of Friday night football games, of stargazing on the school’s soccer field, of fishing in the pond connected to the school. In its efforts to prevent students from leaving forever, to provide a public space for all residents to use and improve access to nearby natural resources, the school has built a sense of community.”

That’s consistent with a 2015 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that found that close-knit communities and good schools play a big role in attracting and keeping residents in small towns, Gillespie reports. Many small towns have a hard time attracting residents because there aren’t many jobs, but most people in Onalaska commute to a larger town nearby to work.

The school doesn’t just bring together the community; it encourages students to go to college with a mandatory class called “Senior Success” that teaches them adult skills like filing taxes and filling out college financial aid forms. The strategy is paying off: the number of residents in their 20s and 30s has doubled in the past five years, and school enrollment rose 14 percent, with elementary enrollment rising the most, Gillespie reports.

“Now families are saying this is a great little community to raise your family,” Cathy Murphy, chair of the anti-poverty organization Onalaska Alliance, told Gillespie.