Rural schools hope to be valued by a rural-focused president
ALEX — The stillness of Main Street on a weekday afternoon is interrupted by a line of three concrete mixer trucks rumbling into this back-roads town. Each truck passes the Feedlot Smokehouse restaurant before making a left at Alex Arms, a boardedup firearms training business with events from seven months ago still advertised on the building’s marquee.
The trucks’ destination is one block past the small downtown’s faded storefronts, an empty field next to the Alex Public Schools campus, where a new school building and gymnasium are under construction. The first mixer truck backs into the lot and lowers its chute to release a slurry of concrete for the new gym’s foundation.
“The schools here are the heart of the community,” said Jason James, the third-year superintendent of the Alex school system, home to 327 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade. “That’s the way it is in most small towns.”
Nearly 80 percent of voters in Alex approved a $15.7 million bond measure for a new school and athletic facility to replace the school’s current buildings, some nearly 100 years old.
Towns like Alex fit the description of the type of community President-elect Donald Trump heavily courted during his campaign, speaking regularly of a desire to reignite rural towns and regions where tough economic times have been hard to shake.
Trump’s campaign endeared him to many rural residents, including in Alex, where 84 percent of voters supported the Republican candidate, an increase of nearly 10 percentage points from Republican Mitt Romney in 2012.
Like Alex, many small towns feature a public school at their center, often the area’s largest employer. But while Trump spoke of his desire to reinvest in rural America, most of his education policy has had an urban focus.
His selection of Betsy DeVos as education secretary demonstrated support for charter schools and vouchers, efforts that traditionally target urban school systems.
“This community sees the Trump administration as good for business, especially for many of my local patrons who work in the oil field,” James said. “But it’s hard to tell what the direct impact from Trump on schools will be, especially rural schools like mine.”
Career training
The work of Valerie McCauley’s students covers the walls of Alex High School. The science and technology teacher’s classroom is a small-scale manufacturing shop where students work with 3-D printers, laser engravers and industrial printers to create school T-shirts, laptop covers and vinyl letters used to spell out inspirational messages throughout the school’s hallways.
“We want to give the kids a chance to work on these different machines and see if they might find an interest in a career,” McCauley said. “It’s hard to grasp all the different career options in science, technology and engineering without seeing it up close, especially in a rural community like this.”
If Trump views job creation as a path to prosperity for small towns like Alex, McCauley said her school’s investment in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) training is an example of how small-town schools can expand career options, especially for students who don’t have access to a traditional college program.
Trump’s limited talk on higher education has included some discussion of focusing on career training and supporting degree programs that lead to a job in a growing field, rather than a traditional four-year degree in liberal arts.
That’s a focus McCauley sees value in.
“A lot of kids in the rural area want to work,” McCauley said. “They would rather graduate and get to work, get their hands dirty rather than study for six hours a day.”
Rural students are less likely to attend college than their urban peers, according to a 2014 study by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which is one reason McCauley believes a career training focusin high school and bridge programs to a local technical institute are good options for schools like Alex.
While many of Trump’s education efforts are yet to be determined, the majority of funding dispersed directly to public schools, and for programs like Alex’s career technical training program, comes from the state.
“Just about 13 cents on thedollar we get comes from the federal government,” James said. “So a lot of our focus when it comes to funding is on what state lawmakers do.”
Federal funding in education typically targets specific demographics, such as impoverished students. There are also opportunities for the federal government to expand high-speed internet, something James said would help many rural school systems hoping to increasetheir technology offerings.
School choice
Beyond funding, Trump’s main focus on education often has centered on a desire to expand school choice, which might have a minimal impact on rural schools.
“Choice, save for the virtual kind, is harder to make work in spread-out suburbs, small towns, and rural areas, where one seldom has workable access to multiple schools,” Chester Finn, a former U.S. Department of Education assistant secretary for President Ronald Reagan, wrote in a column for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “I strongly suspect that most Trump voters with kids — to the extent that education is on their minds — are chiefly interested in having their current schools work better, ensure a decent and prosperous future for their students, including readiness for real jobs.”
James, the school district superintendent, doesn’t see a push for vouchers giving his students more options, but he does worry it could shrink his funding.
“Anyone who uses a voucher takes money from all the other students in Oklahoma,” said James, speaking about any current private or homeschool student who is added to the funding pool, if they were to become eligible for a voucher.
James said vouchers or education savings accounts, which allow students to take a portion of their state aid to be used for other educational options, have been a tough sell for rural legislators because it’s often used as a tool to improve urban education.
“You just end up hurting your rural schools to help Oklahoma City and Tulsa,” James said.
Charter schools are also a mostly urban issue, but Oklahoma lawmakers recently opened the door for rural charters and efforts are underway in some rural communities, such as Seminole.
“One of the things that we battle more than anything is poverty,” said Nathan Bauman, a second-year fifth- and sixthgrade teacher in Alex.
The poverty of students often is highlighted at the urban level, especially as inner-city schools are pitted against wealthy suburban school systems.
But in many of Oklahoma’s rural schools, the poverty rate mirrors that of the urban districts in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
Alex’s 78 percent student poverty rate is near the level of Oklahoma City and higher than Putnam City schools.
“We’ve got kids in systemic poverty, and the school is often the place that addresses those needs,” said James, adding it has been increasingly difficult for schools to provide supportive services to students dealing with hunger, trauma and other social challenges.
“You’ve got kids with parents who have three jobs, or Mom and Dad both work multiple jobs and are living paycheck to paycheck.”
Many in rural America felt Trump gave voice to their communities. Bauman said if he could talk with the presidentelect he would urge him to give a voice to teachers.
“As a teacher I would hope he would appoint leadership that values public educators and public education,” Bauman said.
“I think that’s a concern that a lot of us have. A lot of the people who have been appointed aren’t so pro-education.
“The thing that we battle more than anything is the public perception.”