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Current Staff Rural Report February 2001 October 2000
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Selected articles from Rural School and Community Organizing: a new challenge and a new opportunity In February 2000, the Rural School and Community Trust (RSCT), a program of Annenberg Rural Challenge, approached Rural Action and requested that we conduct a feasibility study and plan a multi-year community-based organizing campaign to seek policy changes in Ohio's school funding and school facility financing. Rural Action had never before become deeply involved in school issues, though schools and school funding are central for so many of us, and are often highly emotional issues for our communities. Schools, and even the buildings themselves, connect the whole community. They are often at the heart of our memories of home, and represent our identity as a community in a way nothing else does. Abandoned, crumbling school buildings impart a note of hopelessness within the community. The RSCT envisions a good school at the center of public life. Its mission is to help restructure public school policy to meet the rural community's needs for good schools. Can citizens who are willing to get involved envision an excellent community school and take their ideas back to the decision makers and elected officials? Can they accomplish this effectively enough to change inequitable funding policies, recast and rescale the standard cookie cutter school into an image that reflects their own faces, and recharge its curriculum with a sense of community history and local stewardship? Rural Action's new Rural School and Community Organizing (RSCO) team is hearing responses from the community. Two focus groups with middle and high school children were held in Vinton County. They were given questions to help the visioning process, calling on memories of an elementary school building, a junior high, and a high school building. What was good about the spaces? Given the opportunity to construct any kind of facility, what would it look like? The school plan shown above was drawn by a pair of middle school children in a latchkey program. The project The RSCO project initiative includes plans to develop a program that will engage rural Ohioans in a long-term effort to (1) improve schools, (2) develop public policies that encourage school improvement, and (3) engage the school in community improvement. The multi-year plan addresses the equitable funding of schools, the planning of school facilities, and other school improvements; is rural-based, led, and governed, and includes rural youth, the poor, minorities, the undereducated and underemployed, groups traditionally not included in policy-making. The Project Team Two coordinators have been hired to manage the Rural School and Community Organizing Project. Dr. Mary Anne Flournoy is the Rural School and Community Organizing Research and Policy Coordinator. Dr. Flournoy, formerly Assistant Director for International Studies at Ohio University, also taught in Alexander School District and several other local schools. Debbie Phillips, RSCO Project Outreach and Training Coordinator, was previously Co-Coordinator of the Appalachian Peace and Justice Network. She facilitated work on school funding, and worked within several local school districts on issues of conflict resolution. Other team members are Mary Steinmaus, Director of Community Development; Candi Withem, Community Development Outreach and Training Coordinator, will be responsible for field organizing; Carol Kuhre, Executive Director; Lois Whealey Public Policy Volunteer; Steve McDaniel, Arts & Cultural Heritage Coordinator; and Michelle Ajamian, Service Learning Coordinator. The initiative is funded by The Rural School and Community Trust, a program of the Annenberg Rural Challenge. Editorial: Rural school issues demand attention Rural Action held a series of focus groups and meetings during the past several months with students, parents, educators, and taxpayers participating. The same concerns--school funding, school facilities, and academic issues--came up over and over again. Based on these meetings, Rural Action has developed a Rural School and Community Organizing Project to get community members and students involved in making decisions about our schools. Effective schools and quality education are vital to healthy, sustainable communities. Unfortunately, many Appalachian Ohio schools face tight budgets and crumbling facilities and infrastructure. Though doing "more with less" is something we are quite good at in this region, it seems that we are shortchanging our children's education. Because Ohio's school funding system relies on local property taxes, the high poverty rates and lack of industry in Appalachian Ohio have been devastating to our schools. Low-wealth districts must pass a higher number of mills to achieve the same amount of funding that higher-wealth districts get with much lower mills. Property owners in low-wealth districts cannot afford high property taxes, so school funding levies frequently fail. Ohio's poorest school district, Western Local in Pike County, has a per-pupil tax valuation of only $14,187, while the wealthiest, Kelley's Island Local, has a tax valuation of $1,217,368 per pupil. Of the 611 districts, 93 are mostly rural, with per-pupil valuations of less than $50,000. The ten poorest school districts are all located in Appalachian Ohio. In 1990, the Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding was formed to challenge Ohio's system. In 1997 the Ohio Supreme Court found the local property tax-reliant school funding process to be unconstitutional. The Ohio Legislature was ordered to undertake "a complete systematic overhaul." However, the Legislature tinkered with the existing funding formula and proposed a sales tax, which was rejected by the voters. The Ohio Supreme Court recently ruled that the system remains unconstitutional. In 1996, a US General Accounting Office (GAO) report rated Ohio public school facilities worst in the country. In spite of efforts to improve, a March 2000 report shows that Ohio spent only $274 per pupil on facilities between fiscal years 1990 and 1997, compared with a national average of $473. Most of those Ohio dollars came from local sources. Governor Robert Taft is proposing to allocate half a billion dollars per year toward improving school facilities, using some general revenue and some tobacco settlement money. As an Athens Messenger editorial (April 23, 2000) pointed out, the proposed level of funding is not a good solution, because the cost of needed improvements is rising faster than improvements are being funded. Even if we spend $1 billion per year, we will never catch up. An additional issue with the facilities funding process is the "cookie cutter" approach required by the Ohio School Facility Commission (OSFC), which makes school facilities funding decisions, based on need and a district's ability to raise matching money School districts asking for facilities funding are asked to choose one of three building designs, leaving little room for designs that meet specific local community needs. All new schools funded by the OSFC must have a projected enrollment of at least 350 students, with one classroom for every 25 students. These requirements will force many rural districts to increase school size by further consolidation, or be denied facilities funding. The OFSC's requirement for larger schools and larger class sizes is exactly the opposite of what researchers recommend for improving academic performance in high-poverty rural areas. In these areas, smaller districts, smaller schools, and smaller class sizes are important factors in academic performance, as measured by proficiency tests. New research for the Rural School and Community Trust has been carried
out by Craig Howley of Ohio University and Appalachia Educational Laboratory
and Robert Bickel of Marshall University. It demonstrates that "both smaller
schools and smaller districts produce higher achievement in poorer communities,"
and "this interaction between school size and poverty affects achievement
most clearly in rural and small-town schools." Visit the Rural School and Community Trust website at: Rural Action and Frontier Coop partner on research center The National Center for the Preservation of Medicinal Herbs, established in 1997 by the Frontier Natural Products Cooperative, is a 68-acre research and educational facility and botanical preserve located near Rutland in Meigs County, Ohio. The Center's mission is to ensure the survival in the wild of our native medicinal herbs by developing methods of organic cultivation for plants that are currently wild harvested. Increasing demand for medicinal herbs, and lack of information about their cultivation, has put tremendous pressure on their wild populations. The National Center uses the term "critical to cultivate" to describe medicinal herbs that have the potential to be endangered by over-harvesting. Herbs valued for their roots are especially vulnerable, because the entire plant is harvested. The National Center currently considers 15 herbs critical to cultivate, including American ginseng, goldenseal, black cohosh, blue cohosh, false unicorn, and bloodroot, all native to our region. If cultivation methods can be developed, there is the potential to meet demand while developing a new income source for rural landowners. Rural Action has been an active partner of the National Center from the beginning, recruiting volunteers for research plantings, educating herb growers about the work, and providing opportunities for Center staff to meet with potential growers. In June 2000, Rural Action's annual Landowner's Conference was hosted by the Center. Since then, our relationship has entered a new and very exciting phase. On July 1,2000, Rural Action entered into an agreement with Frontier Natural Products Cooperative to transfer management and ownership of the National Center for the Preservation of Medicinal Herbs to Rural Action. The transition will take place gradually, in the following phases: Phase I: July 1,2000 - December 31, 2000. Frontier maintains ownership and management of the National Center while training Rural Action staff. Phase II: January 1, 2001 - December 31, 2001. Rural Action takes over day-to-day management of the Center. Frontier continues to provide some financial support and to monitor research projects. Phase III: January 1,2002 -June 30,2002. Frontier transfers ownership of the Center to Rural Action. Rural Action is responsible for the operating budget of the Center, while Frontier provides some support for research projects. The Center land will be protected in perpetuity by a conservation easement. Currently the National Center has three capable and committed staff members: Diane Don Carlos, Center Director; Paul Neidhart, Farm Manager; and Chip Carroll, Farm Assistant. They will become employees of Rural Action on January 1,2001. The botanical sanctuary of the United Plant Savers is adjacent to the Center. UPS is an active partner and collaborator of the Center, a relationship that will continue. A joint conference is already being planned for June 2001, to be sponsored by Rural Action, the National Center, and United Plant Savers. As the transfer of ownership and management progresses, financial contributions
to the Center will become increasingly important. For information or to
make donations, contact the Center staff at 740-742-4401; or visit the
Center's website. |
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