What's for lunch? This year's school lunches include restrictions that challenge cafeterias and budgets

'Woodles' are a versatile school lunch favorite.

Estimates on how many rural children rely on school lunches for at least one nutritionally balanced meal to fill their bellies each weekday hover around five million. Nationwide, school cafeterias in America "serve 45 million meals a day," reports Kim Severson of The New York Times. "If they were a restaurant chain, it would be the largest in the country."

Besides the sheer number of meals that need to be served, school cafeteria planners and workers are managing "tighter nutritional standards, and limits on food purchased from other countries, like bananas, to 10% of what’s served," Severson explains. "School nutrition directors are bracing for the impact of federal budget cuts and updated federal dietary guidelines."

Some schools have already implemented some of the new guidelines, which include less sugar, fewer food dyes and more scratch-made entrees. But upgrading lunches while reducing costs will be tough on school cafeteria budgets. Severson adds, "And then there is the biggest challenge of all: How to satisfy the fast-changing tastes of a generation of food-savvy children."

Severson outlines what's new on the menu for 2025-26 school meals; a few are shared below.

• Sugar reduction and "cultural-club" food: Lunch favorites such as yogurt, milk and cereal are limited by grams of sugar. "A cup of chocolate milk, for example, can have only 10 grams or less of added sugar," Severson writes. Schools can opt to use "more culturally inclusive [ingredients], or swap out meat with legumes, tofu and other alternative protein sources."
• Make it from scratch, like they did before the 1980s, which saves money and is generally healthier. "Cooking from scratch is one way to make school food healthier," Severson reports. "More districts are trying to bring it back after economic pressures and looser federal standards in the 1980s resulted in an era of heat-and-eat meals."
• Bring on the noodles and 'Woodles': "Woodles are the most exciting new thing to hit the cafeteria this year," Severson explains. "The dried ramen noodles, made by a South Carolina company, were created specifically for school food service, with enough whole wheat to satisfy federal nutrition requirements."

Eye-popping college costs vs. what students actually pay; research report looks at higher education comparisons

Brookings graph, from Department of Education data

Younger generations may be bypassing college due to its eye-popping costs, but research shows that few students pay the "listed" price. "Public discussions regarding rising college costs typically focus on the listed cost of attendance (COA), or 'sticker price.' High and rising college sticker prices are the subject of considerable attention, reports Phillip Levine for Brookings. But the sticker price isn't what families pay. "The average amount students actually pay (the 'net price') has recently stabilized and even fallen in the last few years."

Levine's research concluded that "sticker price is an increasingly poor indicator of college prices for all students, regardless of family income. . . . The growing use of merit-based aid at both public and private institutions accounts for this. At public institutions, the vast majority (79%) of those higher-income students paid the full sticker price in 1995-1996. That share dropped to 47% in 2019-2020."

While the net price for a student attending a public institution has risen, "This upward drift in net prices at public 4-year institutions indicates that they are becoming increasingly more expensive over time for students at all levels of the income distribution. The increase for higher-income families was larger in dollar terms but roughly similar in percentage terms," Levine writes. "That maximum net price is often lower than the sticker price because of the extensive use of merit awards." Net price at private institutions is "consistently higher than at public institutions."

While net prices have increased for all students across all income levels, those increases are smaller than the stated hikes in sticker prices. Levine reports, "Adjusted for inflation, net prices paid by students today at public institutions across the income distribution are similar to those they would have paid at private institutions in the mid-1990s."

Levine adds, "This analysis yields several implications for policy discussions regarding college pricing. First, the nearly universal focus on the sticker price in public discourse is detrimental to our understanding of college costs. It is the easiest measure to track, but it is a misleading statistic that a small and declining number of students pay. Even many higher-income families do not pay the full sticker price."

Opinion: Appointed county school board grants itself 'sole authority' over library content; some residents push back

A sign on a road in Hanover County, where a battle is underway over a
push for an elected school board. (Photo by Greg Sargent, Washington Post)

America is no stranger to censorship, with the first U.S. book ban dating back to 1637. Some counties, such as Hanover County, Virginia, have a long history of the practice, writes Greg Sargent in his opinion for The Washington Post. In 1966, its school board removed To Kill a Mockingbird from shelves, and this year, it "removed at least 20 books after granting itself sole authority over library content. Last spring, it renamed a school christened after a Black historical figure," but some residents are resisting the bans in what is shaping up to be "A nasty fight in a rural Virginia school district."

In response, the "Hanover Citizens for an Elected School Board" is campaigning to "take away county officials' power to appoint school board members, who are otherwise insulated from public accountability. Unelected boards are rooted in the state's Jim Crow past, as they were sometimes used to keep Black residents out," Sargent writes. "The case for an elected board in Hanover County, which stretches from Richmond's suburbs into outlying rural areas and backed Donald Trump in 2020 by 26 points, is strong. . . . It is one of only a dozen school boards in the state that are still appointed — and it's the largest among those."

"More residents started joining the push for elected boards last spring. First, the board voted to give itself sole authority over book-banning decisions for school libraries — and then promptly started nixing books from circulation, including several with LGBTQ+ themes," Sargent adds. "Liberal-leaning Kelly Merrill, a University of Richmond professor with a transgender teenager, said she was angered when the school board voted against accommodations for trans students."

"This saga goes back a century. At the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902, delegates shut down a proposal for elected school boards after opponents made clear they believed that would give too much 'negro' control over the schools. . . . In the 1950s, the General Assembly retaliated against Arlington County's board (the only one at the time that was permitted to elect members) by revoking that status in favor of appointments. This ratified the idea of appointed boards as a bulwark defending segregation," Sargent writes. 

Historian Peyton McCrary told Sargent, "Appointed boards were part and parcel of how the Jim Crow system operated in Virginia." Sargent adds, "In Hanover, liberals and even some conservatives are mindful of that dark past. This fall, if residents vote to give themselves the power to hold school board members accountable moving forward, it will be another step toward repudiating it."

Misbehaving teachers move from district to district and state to state with relatively little scrutiny

Teachers who have committed sexual misconduct are able to move from district to district and state to state without close checking by school administrators and state governments, and the issue appears to have been widely ignored.

In Kentucky, the Lexington Herald-Leader "found that over a five-year period, the top reason the majority of teachers voluntarily gave up their licenses or had them revoked or suspended was due to sexual misconduct," report the paper's Beth Musgrave and Valarie Honeycutt Spears. Despite some teachers eventually leaving the profession, many are allowed to move to multiple teaching posts without consequences for prior abuse even when the abuse resulted in suspensions.

Take the case of Kentucky teacher Jason Earlywine who was "a physical education and health teacher, was disciplined for sending a student more than 1,700 voice or text messages in 2011 and 2012 and for other inappropriate conduct while a teacher at Paris Independent School District," Musgrave and Spears write. "He eventually left the district and got a job at West Jessamine High School in 2019. Students said in the first several months on the job that Earlywine made inappropriate comments to female students. . . . according to Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board documents."

Kentucky does not have enough prevention policies or training that would help keep possible abusers out of the school system and prevent those that do gain access from traveling from school to school. "Kentucky teachers receive training on sexual harassment but has no requirement that they undergo training on sexual abuse or appropriate boundaries between teachers and students," Musgrave and Spears report. "33 states and the District of Columbia mandate that training."

Kentucky is not alone. Many states that struggle to prevent the hiring or discipline of teachers who act inappropriately with students. In Cabell County, W.Va., a gym teacher faced charges for sexually abusing multiple students. "The alleged incidents happened from August 2019 through January of 2022, according to the criminal complaint," says Eric Fossell for WSAZ-TV. "It also states that an administrator with Cabell County Schools told investigators that Miles had been reprimanded before for similar allegations. That administrator asked Miles in a letter to refrain from 'jovial touching of students' or the matter would be referred to the superintendent."

A Montana school district was sued in 2020, "over its hiring of a teacher and coach who was accused of sending sexual messages to the student," reports The Associated Press. The suit said the teacher "had a pattern of inappropriate behavior toward underaged girls and that the school district was negligent in hiring him. . . . Botsford had been fired from a different high school in 1999 after two girls reported him for inappropriate contact. . . . Centerville Supt. Jan Cahill investigated the reports and found Botsford had 'unethical and immoral relationships' with at least three students, the lawsuit said."

While laws can be passed, it's up to school boards and administrators to set policies and stop abuse. For instance, the Montana legislature passed the "Creating a student safety accountability act" in May of 2019, but it did it keep the teacher from continuing his pattern of abuse.

Stories for S.C. accountability journalism project uncover corruption, misspending in local governments

Two rural South Carolina dailies have exposed questionable local tax expenditures; the stories are the latest products of an investigative reporting partnership with The Post and Courier in Charleston and 16 rural newsrooms across the state. 

The first story digs into questionable spending by the Wagener fire department that has prompted investigations by county and state officials as well as federal scrutiny. As part of a larger investigation into the town's mismanagement of taxpayer money, the Aiken Standard "has uncovered hundreds of pages of records that shed fresh light on money issues that have roiled Wagener’s fire department and divided the town," Dede Biles reports for the Standard, which is owned by The Post and Courier. "The fire department dispute is just the latest in a string of controversies arising from the town’s finances in recent years. Among other things, the town has found itself on the defensive for failing to properly insure town hall, neglecting to pay Wagener’s federal taxes on time and improperly using state money intended for crime victims to shore up other budget holes."

The second story details how local officials charged with renovating a rural school "flouted South Carolina procurement law while awarding hundreds of thousands of dollars in work, keeping the public, potential contractors and even state regulators in the dark," Matthew Hensley reports for the Index-Journal in Greenwood.

The Post and Courier launched the "Uncovered" project in February, noting that expanding rural news deserts and weak ethics laws have allowed local-government corruption to go undetected.

States can improve rural broadband disparity by fixing FCC maps like Georgia did, says report from governors' group

"States can begin to address inequitable access to broadband by improving coverage maps that detail where connections aren't available or are too slow, similar to a pilot program implemented in Georgia, the National Governors Association said in a white paper released this month," Route Fifty reports.

Rural areas have had little access to reliable, affordable broadband for years, but the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted that disparity as people were forced to work and learn from home during shutdowns. 

The Federal Communications Commission bases broadband funding on self-reported data from telecommunications companies. That data often overestimates how many rural areas have broadband access. Another problem is that major telecoms often nab rural broadband grants and loans, but cut corners by installing slower DSL broadband instead of fiber-optic cable lines.

Even the FCC maps estimate that more than 18 million Americans lacked access to broadband in 2018. "The vast majority—14 million—of those unconnected people live in rural areas, with an additional 1 million residing on tribal lands," Kate Queram reports for Route Fifty. "Multiple studies have found that federal data undercounts those populations, the report adds, so the number of people affected by lack of reliable connectivity may be as high as 42 million."

Biden can reduce rural-urban political polarization by modernizing federal rural policy, researchers write

One reason rural Americans have become more conservative is that they feel left behind by federal economic policy, according to a recent think-piece. Revitalizing rural federal policy could help reduce rural-urban political polarization, Anthony Pipa and Natalie Geismar write for the Brookings Institution. Pipa is a senior fellow in global economy and development at Brookings, and Geismar is a global economy and development project coordinator and research assistant at the Center for Sustainable Development.

Though most of the American economy boomed over the past decade, employment in many rural areas still hadn't recovered from the Great Recession when the pandemic hit. "According to analysis from the Center on Rural Innovation, the four industries at highest risk of being impacted by covid-19 account for 56 percent of jobs in rural areas, compared to 43 percent in metro areas," Pipa and Geismar write.

The pandemic has exacerbated other inequalities rural Americans face: they're more likely to die from covid-19, they have less access to health care, and lousy broadband makes it harder to navigate work, schooling and more while social distancing, Pipa and Geismar write. 

Rural America needs more support, but the current federal programs and tools meant to encourage rural community and economic development are "outdated, fragmented, and constrained, and the resulting incoherence and complexity is not producing deep enough results fast enough," Pipa and Geismar write. 

They say research found that, not only is the bureaucracy governing such programs "bewildering," but that programs are far more likely to administer loans than grants, which increases rural debt load. They also found that "rural communities lack access to flexible grant funding and are often disadvantaged by eligibility requirements, per capita spending formulas, and allocation formulas that privilege densely populated urban areas."

They suggest three broad actions:

• Launch a domestic development corporation that would award large, flexible block grants for local improvement, empower and support local leadership, provide technical support, and rigorously measure and analyze results to make sure it's working.
• Create a national rural strategy, and reform current policy to improve its coherence, regional integration, and transparency.
• Appoint a bipartisan congressional commission to analyze the effectiveness of rural policy and build bipartisan "momentum" for rural policy reform.

New report has detailed stats on how pandemic has affected rural households' finances, jobs, schooling and health care

"Even before the pandemic, the health-care systems that serve rural Americans were in decline; rural hospitals were closing their doors, and the medical workforce was shrinking. This year, as the coronavirus outbreak has made its way from major cities to rural America, threats to the rural health-care infrastructure have only increased," Will Stone reports for NPR. During the pandemic, "One in every four rural U.S households have been unable to get medical care for serious problems. Among those households that had trouble getting care, more than half reported that a family member experienced negative health consequences as a result."

That's according to a new nationwide poll conducted by NPR, Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It gathered data through interviews with more than 3,400 adults across the nation (543 of them were rural) and produced reports on how the pandemic affected U.S. households overall, households in major cities, households by race and ethnicity, households with children, and rural households. Here are some of the top findings from the report on rural households:

On financial and job issues:

• 42% report facing serious financial problems during the pandemic.
• 31% say they've used up all or most of their savings.
• 21% report serious problems paying credit cards, loans or other debt.
• 10% report not having any household savings prior to the pandemic.
• 43% say that at least one adult in the household has lost their job, lost their business, been furloughed, or had their wages or hours reduced.
• Among rural households with job or wage losses during the pandemic, 66% report facing serious financial problems.
• 85% of Black or Latino rural households report facing serious financial problems during the pandemic, compared to 36% of white rural households.

On health care:

• 24% said someone in their household had been unable to get medical care for a serious problem when they needed it during the pandemic, and 56% of respondents who were unable to get care report negative health consequences as a result.
• When asked potential reasons they could not access medical care, 46% said they couldn't get an appointment during the hours they needed, 40% said they couldn't find a doctor who would see them, 39% said they could not afford health care, 25% said the health care provider was too far or difficult to get to, and 12% said they couldn't find a doctor who would take their health insurance.
• 53% report someone in their household has a chronic illness.
• 42% report someone in their household is at a high risk of developing a serious illness from covid-19 because of their age or underlying medical conditions. Of those households, 33% report that someone in their household has been unable to get medical care for a serious problem when they needed it during the pandemic. 61% of that subset reported negative health consequences as a result of being unable to access care. The numbers for inability to access needed health care and resulting negative consequences are nearly the same for households with a chronically ill person.
• 46% of rural households report using telehealth since the beginning of the pandemic.

On broadband and education:

• 34% of rural households report having either no high-speed internet connection at home or problems with their connection that interfere with their ability to do jobs or schoolwork.
• 40% of rural households with children say they have no high-speed internet connection at home or serious problems with their internet connection that interfere with doing schoolwork or jobs.

Rural schools struggle with lack of broadband

Rural school districts are more likely to hold in-person classes during the pandemic, but many that choose distance learning are having a rough time because of poor or absent broadband connectivity. The lag has led many rural districts to worry that their students will fall behind urban and suburban students.

"This pandemic has shone a glaring light on a lot of inequalities," Kirk Siegler reports for NPR. "The federal government estimates that more than a third of rural America has little or no internet. In numerous recent interviews, educators have told NPR they’re concerned the rural-urban divide will only worsen if kids can’t get online to learn."

Many rural districts have had to get creative, from providing kids with tablets or Chromebooks and sending out buses outfitted with wifi hot spots to delivering paper copies of schoolwork to students who don't have internet or cell phone service at home. "Still, it’s widely held that hot spots aren’t a long-term solution for rural learning, especially since cell service can be spotty, if sometimes non-existent in more rugged areas of the West in particular," Siegler reports.

Some rural leaders have lobbied Congress for a public-works project to build out broadband to rural areas, much like the government paid to bring electricity to rural areas during the 1930s, Siegler reports.

ProPublica and Chicago Tribune data analysis illustrates the 'homework gap' in rural Illinois

With schools nationwide shut down during the pandemic, many students struggle with distance learning because of lack of broadband at home or sufficient wireless data. Some of them are in low-income urban areas, but many are rural. A Chicago Tribune-ProPublica Illinois data analysis shows what that digital homework gap looks like in Illinois. Read more here.

New study links poor internet connections with lower grades and SAT scores for students in rural Michigan

A slow internet connection or limited access from home can put rural students behind academically, according to a newly published study from Michigan State University.

Researchers found that students in rural Michigan with no home internet access and those who depend on a cell phone for their only access had grade-point averages about half a point lower, on average, than those with fast access. Such students were also less likely to say they were planning to attend college. Students with greater home internet access tended to have better overall technology skills, and that was correlated with a higher SAT score.

The gaps existed even after the researchers controlled for income, race, ethnicity, and parental education. Though the sample size was limited to nearly 3,300 teens in 15 school districts, the results are likely applicable elsewhere in the U.S.

Study: Rural college enrollment and graduation still lags

The gap in college enrollment and degree completion has narrowed between rural and non-rural students since the 1990s, but a new study found that the gap persists, Elin Johnson reports for Inside Higher Ed.

The University of Massachusetts study, published in the American Journal of Education, shows not just how the gap has changed since the 1990s, but notes the context in which it changed. It notes that "in the late '90s to early 2000s rural areas were facing complicated and contradictory economic and demographic factors, such as the recession," Johnson reports. "Researchers said that not all rural youth have leaving for college on their minds or in their plans, and that rural job markets have shifted over time to become more service-oriented."

At the same time, rural economic growth has brought more jobs to rural areas that require a college degree, which has encouraged more rural students to go to college, Johnson reports. Because rural students tend to have stronger ties to their communities, they could be more likely to come back to their home town to work after college than someone from a city or suburb.

Rural school principals have some of the hardest jobs, and some of the highest turnover rates, in education

"Rural school leaders have some of the most complex, multifaceted jobs in education. They also have some of the highest turnover. Half of all new principals quit their jobs within three years, according to a 2014 study," Caroline Preston reports for The Hechinger Report, an education journal. "A national survey released in July found that principals in rural school districts are even less likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to stay at their school the following year and more likely to leave the profession altogether. The schools they preside over, meanwhile, often struggle with persistent poverty, low college-going rates and extreme racial disparities in student outcomes."

It can be difficult to lure a new principal to a rural area unless they grew up in the area (or any rural area). And even when a new principal agrees to come on board, chronic shortages in other areas of education make the job even harder, Preston reports.

Cheraw, Colorado, is located in
Otero County (Wikipedia map)

For example, Matthew Snyder is the new principal of the elementary, middle and high schools in Cheraw, Colorado (pop. 252). He's also the district superintendent, the maintenance director, a substitute teacher, and soon will be a fill-in bus driver. He grew up in a farming town in northern Colorado and told Preston that, although he was daunted at the prospect of filling so many roles in Cheraw, his brother encouraged him to try it. The job turned out to be very hard, but Snyder said he hopes that's just because he's new. "The light at the end of the tunnel for me is I’m hoping this is just adjusting," he told Preston.

A nationwide initiative aims to help multitasking principals like Snyder. Mark Shellinger, a former dual superintendent-principal in rural Alaska, runs a group called the National SAM Innovation Project. It operates in Colorado and 22 other states "to help principals better plan their days and train colleagues to assume more of their schools’ management tasks," Preston reports.

Rural schools are less likely to participate in program that gives free lunch to all children in poverty-area schools

U.S. Department of Agriculture chart

Though rural families are more likely to be poor, rural schools are less likely to participate in district-wide free lunch and breakfast programs according to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service.

The USDA Community Eligibility Program allows schools in high-poverty areas to provide free meals for every child rather than doing so only for those in need. That means schools don't have to process individual applications, and the reduced paperwork saves them money. More than 10 million students in more than 20,000 high-poverty schools participated in the program in the 2016-17 school year, but rural schools did so at a lower rate than their urban counterparts. The study "found that only a third of eligible rural schools participated in the program, while 46 percent of eligible schools in urban areas did. The study also found that the Southeast had the highest percentage of eligible schools participating in the program," Bryce Oates reports for The Daily Yonder.

Why would schools decide not to participate in CEP if the program feeds kids and saves money? The study's authors speculate that, in some cases, "Switching to CEP might increase demand for school meals in ways that put a strain on the district or a specific cafeteria. Also, districts might not be able to overcome the initial administrative hurdle of qualifying for CEP, even though it would save staff time in the long run," Oates reports. "CEP is a relative new approach to school nutrition programs that followed the update of school meal standards in 2012. Once the new standard was implemented, according to ERS, 'Schools in rural areas were more likely than other schools to report increases in student complaints, decreases in meal participation, and higher costs due to lower meal volume.'"

Rural schools also faced larger increases in the paid meal price when the Obama administration implemented the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. That meant fewer students wanted to buy lunch, and the cost of giving students free lunch increased further. Also, USDA's formula for reimbursing CEP schools may mean that CEP is not cost-effective for some rural schools.

Canned and frozen food industries try to unseat fresh produce in school lunch program for the poor

The federal government spends more than $16 billion each year on school meals, and lobbyists for competing food industries want a piece of that pie. Or a piece of that fruit. At the center of contention is the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, a successful $177 million initiative that makes sure kids in even the poorest schools get fresh produce every day. In 2008, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa got Congress to say that the produce must be fresh -- a move that displeased lobbyists for makers of processed food. "This fall, with Congress likely to take up legislation to reauthorize child nutrition programs, the canned and frozen lobbies believe it’s their moment to change the rules—and the retired Harkin won’t be there to stop them this time," Helena Bottemiller Evich reports for Politico.

The lobbyists insist that fruits and vegetables in all forms are healthy choices, which is mostly true, but supporters of the initiative say that kids are much more likely to make a habit of eating fruits and vegetables in any form if they're first introduced to the fresh version. "Harkin argues that the goal of the program is to introduce kids to fresh fruits and vegetables, period. Some kids, particularly in high-poverty areas, had never seen a fresh pear or carrots with the stems on, or even fresh grapes, before getting the snack program at their school," Evich reports. Federal expenditures on fresh produce are vanishingly small, accounting for less than 2 percent of the $670 million the Department of Agriculture spent on fruit and vegetable commodities in 2014.

The outcome of the jostling is uncertain, though the lobbyists have some supporters. "Reps. Bruce Poliquin (R-Maine) and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) this week introduced a bill that would expand the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program to include frozen, canned, dried and pureed fruits and vegetables," Evich reports. "The effort already has the support of a number of key Republicans and Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), an influential member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which is working on a broader bill to reauthorize child nutrition programs."

Teachers share experiences teaching about climate

Teaching about climate change can be difficult in rural areas where the topic is highly politicized. Amy Harmon of The New York Times published a follow-up Wednesday to her original piece, which ran earlier this month. Both pieces get at the interaction between teachers, students and parents, and provide ideas for how the story can be told in other places. The follow-up, though, includes perspective from actual teachers who wrote to Harmon after reading her original piece.

"Climate change, of course, is a politically fraught topic in the United States, where Republican politicians and representatives of the fossil fuel industry have sought to cast doubt on the established science of human-caused global warming," Harmon writes in Wednesday's piece. "Even most states that have adopted the scientific consensus as part of their education standards — and many have not — so far do not require assessments of whether students understand it. And one recent survey suggests that some science teachers simply skim over the topic. But many of the teachers I heard from, including those in conservative strongholds, described efforts to impart the reality of climate change whether or not it was an official part of the curriculum."

Here's what teachers told Harmon about their experiences teaching climate change:

Jenny Pye, a home-school teacher in Greenville, N.C., writes, "There's strong evidence to support the theory that humans are contributing to climate change, so I teach that, and I also teach the controversy surrounding it to my kids. We live in a rural, conservative area, and especially as home-schoolers, we have lots of friends who have reached different conclusions. It's important to teach the difference between good and bad science."

Miller and his students in Prince William Sound

(Credit: Josh Miller)

As a marine technology teacher in Valdez, Alaska, Josh Miller has a unique opportunity to not only teach about climate change, but demonstrate it. "We’re an oil town that voted two-to-one for Trump, but when the sea level rises and you live on the coast, you need to be aware that the world is changing and consider what you can do about it," Miller writes. "My students learn about climate change by taking a boat ride up a fjord, which until very recently was a glacier. The massive Columbia Glacier has retreated (melted) 12 miles since my first boat trip in 1983. Where recently was land, today is ocean. The day of our 2015 class trip, the last of the ice washed out of West Arm, and our vessel was the first boat in our planet’s history to navigate this new sea. Not all teachers are so lucky to have such dramatic evidence of climate change to prove the case."

Elizabeth McClearly, a teacher in Lawrence, Mass., uses humor to teach about how agriculture impacts climate change. "My eighth grade students are most surprised to see how agricultural farming plays a role — they enjoy hearing how 'cow farts' are a leading contributor to an increase in greenhouse gases. Ha! Like I said: eighth graders."

Southwest Va. is the latest rural region to hear talk of secession from its state; 'a thought experiment'

The collapse of Central Appalachia's coal industry, and the state of Virginia's response to resulting problems with school funding, sparked an editorial in The Roanoke Times that began: "Here’s an idea: Should Southwest Virginia secede and form its own state? We don’t mean that seriously, of course. However, let’s explore it as a thought experiment."

The newspaper noted that groups of people in remote and/or rural regions of several other states have suggested secession, and that the school-funding crisis didn't push the state legislature to swing into action. "The only legislator from Southwest Virginia who serves on the House Appropriations Committee . . . came up with a new funding formula. Even then, the handful of legislators who worked out the final version of the budget changed things around so that two of the counties in far Southwest Virginia wound up with exactly zero dollars. Could that be because not a single legislator from Southwest Virginia was in the room when that happened? (Cue the 'Hamilton' musical and song in which Aaron Burr longs to be in 'The Room Where It Happened.') What if we just said 'Sorry, we’re tired of being your afterthought; we’re outta here'?"

The editorial acknowledged that secession would be a bad idea for Southwest Virginia, since the region "is subsidized by the rest of the state. Yes, yes, we think we’re ignored by Richmond and in a lot of ways we are. Still, the fiscal reality is that Northern Virginia really subsidizes the rest of Virginia. If there’s any part of the state that should secede for bottom-line reasons, it’s Northern Virginia. Let’s not encourage that."

Election results lead colleges to put more focus on reaching 'hard-to-get-to' rural students

John Dunn of Rose Hill, N.C., is the first in his family to
finish high school. He is a freshman at North Carolina
State University. (New York Times photo: Jeremy Lange)

The strong rural showing during the November election has not been lost on colleges and universities, Laura Pappano reports for The New York Times. "Given election results that turned up the volume on the concerns of rural Americans, who voted their discontent over lost jobs and economic disparities, higher-education leaders are now talking about how to reach the hard-to-get-to." Rural public schools educate about 18 percent of the nation's student population.

"While students in rural high schools graduate at rates second only to suburban students (80 percent, compared with 81 percent), and perform at or above other students on the National Assessment for Educational Progress, they enroll in four-year degree programs and pursue advanced degrees at lower rates," Pappano reports. "Just 29 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in rural areas are enrolled in college, compared with 47 percent of their urban peers. Research also shows that they 'under-match,' attending less competitive colleges than their school performance suggests, often favoring community colleges."

Pappano writes, "To college administrators, rural students, many of them the first in their families to attend college, have become the new underrepresented minority. In their aim to shape leaders and provide access to the disadvantaged, higher-education experts have been recognizing that these students bring valuable experiences and viewpoints to campuses that don’t typically attract agriculture majors."

Rural students often face greater challenges than urban students, Pappano reports. That includes limited access to Advanced Placement courses, transportation issues such as long distances from home to school or school to after-school activities, higher poverty rates, a lack of internet access and fewer opportunities for school visits from college recruiters. A Kentucky working group on rural access to higher education tackled some of those challenges by "extending the internet to isolated areas and offering Advanced Placement and college courses in high schools so that students realize they are capable of doing college work," Pappano writes.

Robert L. King, president of the state's Council on Postsecondary Education, told Pappano: “People who have grown up in our state, if they have grown up on a farm or a family connected to the coal mining industry, many of them believe erroneously that college may not be all that important . . . The natural concern that you may not be able to be competitive with kids who have grown up in suburban or larger communities.”

Pappano writes, "The belief that college is for other people, not country folk, is hard to break, said Sahar Mohammadzadeh, a high school junior and a leader of the Student Voice Team of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, a Kentucky education-advocacy group. Team members recently interviewed high school students around the state, including rural students who, she said, are 'being pushed down career pathways' even when they express academic interests."

Rather than enrolling them in college-prep math classes, Mohammadzadeh said, “They are putting kids who want to be accountants into welding classes. It is really powerful and heartbreaking to go around this state and see all this potential being thrown away.” Pappano has a sidebar with six stories of rural college students.

Low salaries for beginning educators exacerbate rural teacher shortages in states like Montana

Teacher shortages in some rural areas can be directly attributed to low salaries. Montana, one of the nation's largest states in area, but among the smallest in population, pays beginning teachers less than any other state, Matt Hoffman reports for the Billings Gazette. In contrast, neighboring Wyoming pays beginning teachers over $10,000 more per year than Montana. Starting salaries also are considerably higher in nearby Idaho and the Dakotas, though those states pay below the national average. (Gazette graphic: Starting salaries for teachers in Montana and adjoining states with two years or less experience. Dashed line is national average.)

In addition to low salaries, another problem in Montana is that "In rural areas, which often cycle through young teachers for open positions, a sparse housing market can drive up costs of living," Hoffman writes.

"Some schools that received extra oil and gas money during the Bakken [oil] boom offered bonuses for teachers," Hoffman writes. "Some districts have purchased housing for teachers. Others have paid teachers at a bumped-up experience level on their salary schedules, essentially paying teachers for experience they don’t have. At least one school has agreed to pay for a teacher’s degree, under the condition the teacher stick around for a while. But programs are patchworked across the state and many districts take no special measures."

High transportation costs lead very rural Nevada school district to adopt four-day week

Three rural schools in rural Elko County, Nevada are the latest to switch to four-day weeks "to allow students in those areas more time at home and to cut down on travel," Hasani Grayson reports for the Elko Daily Free Press. The school board, which unanimously approved the decision, said school days will be nine hours, instead of seven and a half. (Wikipedia map: Elko County, Nevada)

"The four-day school week will help ease the burden on parents who have to travel long distances to drop their children off at school and for families who need the extra help from their children at home but it is also creating a new challenge for the teachers," Grayson writes.