CTA | California Educator

To an urbanite, a rural school may evoke an idyllic image free from the problems of the city, such as poverty and drugs. CTA members who teach in rural areas know better.

Because the media constantly publicizes the plight of inner-city schools while ignoring rural schools, public perception greatly differs from reality.

The reality, say teachers, is that rural schools suffer from extreme poverty, funding inequity, isolation and lack of resources. Rural schools share many of the same problems as urban schools, but receive a fraction of the attention from the media and from lawmakers.

Teacher John Kassel in Oroville says rural schools suffer from extreme poverty, funding inequity, isolation and lack of resources. Behind him is the Eslinger farm on the outskirts of Oroville where he helps special education students cultivate life skills.

"People think of kids riding horses and going to a school like in Little House on the Prairie," says John Kassel, president of the Butte County Teachers Association (BCTA) and a special education teacher in Oroville. "But it's not like that at all."

Rural schoolhouses, like the wilderness areas they inhabit, are an endangered species. Nationwide, about 100 rural public schools are closed each year, and small rural districts are closing at a rate of 80 per year.

"We have areas almost like Appalachia," says BCTA member Bonnie McWilliams. "We have families living in motor homes with no water and no electricity. At the school where I teach, 93 percent of the kids get free lunches. We have low-performing schools and are trying to raise test scores. But it's difficult for kids to learn when they come to school hungry.

"The general public has no conception of the level of poverty, drug abuse and alcohol abuse in rural areas," continues McWilliams, a speech therapist in Oroville. "'Crank' is a big drug in rural areas, and it's made in labs out in the woods. You can smell it cooking; it smells like dirty rags."

A recent study by Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found that adolescents in rural America are much more likely than their peers in urban centers to have used drugs. Eighth-graders in rural America are 104 percent more likely than those in big cities to have used amphetamines, including methamphetamines, and 50 percent more likely to have used cocaine.

"Rural schools are under attack, the same as urban schools," asserts Michael R. Green, a member of CTA's Board of Directors and chair of CTA's Rural-Suburban Caucus. "People may not realize it, but 30 percent of California's students live in rural areas. Rural areas have large minority populations and latchkey kids. They are invisible. People just aren't aware of the problems."

The public may not realize how much poverty there is in rural areas because the poverty is so well hidden, say teachers. The California Legislature recently reduced welfare payments by $50 per month for rural residents, in the belief that it's more expensive to live in urban areas.

"We have 100 percent participation in the free lunch program at my school," says Kings Canyon Education Association member Arnold Chakerian, a fifth-grade teacher who works approximately 30 miles south of Fresno in Orange Cove. "When the freeze hit last winter and wiped out the crops, 80 percent or more of the people were out of work."

Chakerian gets emotional when describing the lifestyles of students in his classroom, most of whom are the children of Hispanic migrants who live in a depressed, low-income area. "One student came to me and said, 'My family bought me a birthday cake and threw me a birthday party.'" Later, Chakerian learned that, to afford the party, the family went without food for several days.

When his class has a party, it is not uncommon for students to bring a 99-cent bag of Cheetos and pass out just one chip per classmate. The students don't eat their food at the party; they "stockpile" their goodies and take them home to share with their family.

"In Mendocino County, there are no jobs, no subsidized day care and no public transportation," says Val Muchowski of the Anderson Valley Teachers Association. "People think of Mendocino County as the home of wine and artists, but there are many working poor who don't make enough to rank above the poverty line."

"Not only do you have poverty in rural schools, but you may have conservative school boards that believe parents should be totally responsible for their children," says Larry Carlin, a member of the Live Oak Teachers Association who serves on the CTA Board. "You may have a difficult time convincing people that the school should provide a free lunch or free breakfast program. The only hot meal for a lot of these kids is the one they receive at school. Everyone looks at the inner-city urban areas and says, 'What a shame.' It's just as bad, if not worse, here."

"In their small, isolated community, students see that their parents never need to learn English," says Chakerian. "They do their grocery shopping and buy gas in Spanish. The incentive to learn English really isn't there."

Because students may be many miles away from the nearest urban center, it's hard to comprehend what the "outside world" really is. "Some kids in Orange Cove have never been out of their community," explains Chakerian. "They are basically landlocked. They have no money to go anywhere and no transportation. If I take them on a field trip to Fresno or Visalia, it's like you or I going to New York City."

"Rural kids are so isolated, they have little access to libraries, museums, etc," says Green. "The only thing they have is the Internet. But, because many families are poor, they may be able to access the Internet only at school."

"Our big problem is that Visalia lacks 'culture,' so it's up to the teacher to provide opportunities for children," says Visalia Unified Teachers Association member Margaret Moss. "Our kids don't get exposed to plays or museums. They may see very little relevance in a lot of what we do. For example, the state standards ask students to 'compare and contrast,' but rural students may have nothing to compare or contrast with. How do you know how big an elephant is if you've never been to the zoo?"

Moss was dismayed when her district cut back on field trips for economic reasons recently. "Sometimes kids need hands-on experiences they can't get out of a book."

Isolation affects choice as well. "You may have one teacher instructing all the high school English classes, and another teacher doing all the math classes," says Muchowski. "Students have the same teacher year after year. There may not be enough students to have advanced classes like third-year Spanish or trigonometry. You may have teachers doing advanced placement classes at 7 in the morning, before the other kids get there."

"Getting there" in itself can be difficult for students and teachers. "In some mountain communities in Northern California, kids have a three-hour bus ride just to get to school," says Green. "In one part of Shasta County, 10 kids ride the bus four hours to get to high school in Redding."

Mother Nature also makes transportation challenging. "When it floods every so often in Live Oak, we may have to get students to the bus by boat," says Carlin.

Transportation can eat up a big chunk of the budget, especially when it comes to special ed, says McWilliams. "For example, in a big city, you can have lots of deaf kids grouped together. But, in a rural area, you may have one 5-year-old deaf child taking a bus ride an hour or more a day to see a specialist."

While much is made of toxics in urban schools, environmental hazards also exist at rural schools. "Farmers are not supposed to spray crops during school hours in Madera," says Catherine Carrington of the Madera Unified Teachers Association. "But farmers have sprayed during school hours across the street from my school. One time we had to take a busload of people from my school to the hospital. It was scary for the kids."

Across the nation - and especially in California - there are growing concerns about the use of pesticides near rural schools.

Despite poverty, lack of resources, isolation and environmental hazards, many rural teachers say that they would rather remain in the countryside than relocate to the city.

"There are wonderful things about teaching in a rural school," says Joan Mayes, a member of the Trinity County Teachers Association. "In rural areas, the school serves as a community center. When we have an assembly, the whole community comes."

"When I go to the grocery store or post office, I see my students and their parents," she says. "Teachers tend to live in the areas where they teach instead of commuting, so they experience a real sense of community. And the community is really very loving about its children."

"There are no secrets," adds Carlin. "You can leave the door unlocked most of the time. You know who the kids are and who they're with. And students can receive an education that's as good, if not better, than an education in urban or suburban areas, even if there aren't as many AP classes."

Rural teachers report higher levels of job satisfaction, according to the Special Committee on Rural Education (SCRE), established in 1997 upon the recommendation of NEA's Professional Standards and Practice Committee. Many teachers point to feelings of greater personal safety, active support from community members, fewer student discipline problems, and more freedom to teach subjects.

Due to the smaller populations, rural communities usually have smaller schools and smaller class sizes. Also, rural teachers are more likely to say they exercise a great deal of influence in establishing curriculum.

Rural schools have pioneered many education reform tools popular today. Peer assistance, multi-grade classrooms, block scheduling, site-based management, cooperative learning and other innovations originated in country schools as a result of isolation and limited financial resources.

Recent national tests have revealed that rural student performance has risen on selected national assessments; it now approximates the national mean. Performance is below that of suburban students, but higher than that of urban students.

An outdated system of funding has resulted in a great inequity between rural and urban schools. Because a few rural areas have no tax base, the amount of money allocated to schools in these areas is based on a complicated formula tied to the harvest of lumber on federal land. When the logging industry collapsed in rural areas, the amount of money allocated to rural schools decreased. The cutbacks have affected staffing and facilities.

Mariposa County's 13 schools once reaped more than $800,000 annually in timber receipts. Now, decreased logging has reduced school funding to about $100,000. Placer County received nearly $768,000 in 1996, but only $478,000 last year.

Alpine County has suffered tremendously, says Anna Maria Coletti, president of the Alpine County Teachers Association. "Ninety-six percent of the land is owned by the government, so there's not much of a tax base to generate anything. We have relied on money from federal land, based on a percentage of the money from tree cutting. But fewer trees are being cut. In 1990, we received $500,000. Then it dropped to $400,000 and $200,000. This year we received $168,000. We have 150 kids in five K-12 schools, covering a large geographic area."

The district has combined grades and cut out art, music and athletics. "Our nurse is only here once a week. The Bear Valley lunch program was cut, because there was nobody here to serve it. We've managed to survive on grants, but they are beginning to dry up. We're in the red. We've done all of the cutting we can. The next thing will be our jobs."

Congress is working on bills to correct the funding inequity. SB 1608 and HR 2389, supported by NEA and CTA, would give counties 80 percent of the average of the highest three years of payment since 1985. If timber revenues weren't enough to cover the payments, then Congress would be asked to provide the difference.

"If legislation changes the funding formula, it will give us stability," says Coletti. However, part of the problem with passing legislation to benefit rural schools is that bigger school districts have better representation in government, based on a larger population.

Many of Coletti's students have written to legislators to describe their school's plight. A letter from the Diamond Valley School Student Council in Markleeville reads: "These bills (SB 1608 and HR 2389) will bring money back into our schools. We currently have no sports programs nor money for field trips and other vital programs for kids. There is an immediate need for this bill to be passed this year. Please support our rural schools!"

Nationwide, rural teachers earn lower average annual salaries and are less likely to receive health insurance, dental insurance, group life insurance and pension contributions. As a result, it is more difficult to attract teachers to rural areas.

To help attract teachers, CTA recently helped win the enactment of AB 31, a measure that expands a program forgiving student loans to include teachers who work in low-performing, rural schools.

Unfortunately, the enactment of AB 1117, an incentive program to boost the minimum salary for fully qualified teachers to $32,000, does not help many rural districts. Because funding for this legislation is based on ADA, rural districts with small numbers of students won't benefit.

But in some impoverished areas where teachers earn lower salaries than their urban colleagues, teachers are considered rich by local standards. "I live in a very, very rural area, where jobs earning wages of $7 an hour are considered good," says Mayes. "In rural areas, where a huge percentage of the population is on welfare, we are the top money-makers."

Academic success can present a dilemma for rural students: choosing between continuing to live in their communities or moving elsewhere to attain occupational success. The decision places tremendous stress on rural youth, according to an Iowa study, The Effects of Rural Schools and Communities on Adult Adjustment.

Another study finds students in non-metropolitan areas have fewer opportunities to continue their education, and fewer graduates aspire to go on to higher education. Those who do, however, perform as well as those from urban communities.

"Quite often, rural communities experience brain drain," says Muchowski. "When the best and brightest go off to college, they often don't come back because there's no employment at home for them."

Agricultural education is thriving at many rural high schools and community colleges, as students consider a future in rural communities. "The need for agriculture education is increasing, along with the diversity of agriculture," says Dave Wemp, a member of the Chico Teachers Association and an agriculture teacher at Chico High School for 26 years. "In California, 20 percent of the workforce is involved in some form of agriculture. At Chico, we interest students in the floral business, greenhouse business, landscaping, agriculture finances and welding for agriculture machinery."

As the logging industry has dwindled in rural areas, another industry has sprung up as a major employer: prisons. Urban areas don't want prisons in their back yards but impoverished rural areas welcome them, even the facilities that house the state's toughest criminals. Prisons offer residents employment opportunities with excellent salaries and benefits. Some rural high schools, usually in cooperation with community colleges, are beginning to offer "administration of justice" classes, to prepare students for careers at correctional facilities near their communities.

"The first thing we have to do is recognize the problems, concerns and frustrations facing rural schools," says Green. "Urban districts have done a very good job of bringing their issues forward and offering a united voice. Rural communities haven't brought their issues forward and don't always speak with a united voice. Sometimes they are very close-mouthed about what goes on. Part of it is isolation; it's harder to be united when there's a big distance between school sites. Other times, rural districts may take a myopic view and say, 'I'm so small, nothing I can do can make a difference.'"

"The CTA Board of Directors is very much aware of the difficulties facing rural chapters," says Board member Dean Vogel of Vacaville. "There has been a lot of substantive discussion on how the association can better meet the needs of its rural chapters."

In addition to lobbying to eliminate inequities in funding, CTA is planning to hold a Rural/Suburban Issues Conference, similar to the annual Urban Issues Conference.

CTA has become more involved with the farm community via the California Farm Bureau. Recently CTA and the bureau formed an alliance to work together on issues of common interest in the state Legislature.

"For democracy to flourish, people must be fed, housed and educated," says CTA President Wayne Johnson. "Farmers and teachers are assigned a key role in that future."

CTA is sponsoring member attendance at meetings and conferences with the Future Farmers of America; the Rural and Small Schools Consortium; Rural Counties and Schools Coalition; and Agriculture in the Classroom, sponsored by Women in Agriculture.

SCRE is recommending that the state create recruitment incentives and early training opportunities for rural teacher candidates. In addition, it sees the need for developing better mechanisms to alert rural schools to the availability of existing federal funds and providing technical assistance to help rural schools secure federal funds and grant money.

For rural teachers, the new focus on their concerns has renewed hope for the future. For urban teachers, hearing about the problems facing their "country cousins" has been surprising.

"It was an eye-opening experience for this 'city kid' to hear about the difficulties our colleagues labor under," commented CTA Board member Bob Nichols of San Jose, after he represented CTA at the California Rural Education Summit. "Since my constituency includes a substantial number of rural districts, I feel confident that I can represent them better after having participated in this process."