More rural schools close as coal declines - Entrepreneur Generations

"School closures and consolidations are a familiar story in cash-strapped, rural corners of the country — places where schools are integral to a sense of identity and belonging," Debbie Truong reports for The Washington Post. "In many cases, rural schools are burdened by afflictions that also strain urban education systems: declining enrollment, teacher shortages, decaying buildings."

More and more rural residents migrate to urban areas as the coal industry declines, fewer young people want to farm, and manufacturers downsize, according to Allen Pratt, executive director for the National Rural Education Association, an organization that advocates for rural schools. That means school districts collect less in property taxes and have fewer students; state funding is partly determined by enrollment.

The national trend plays out on the local level in southwestern Virginia, where coal and peripheral industries have provided fewer and fewer jobs and tax revenue over the past decade. The Tazewell County School Board had to cut spending more than $1 million this year, and in June abruptly closed two elementary schools, including Raven Elementary School. The school has functioned not just as a school, but as a community gathering place since it opened in the 1950s, Truong reports.

And in Pound, in Wise County on the western tip of the state, the school system has lost about 100 students each year for the past decade, according to the school superintendent. Pound High School had about 250 students by the time it shuttered in 2014. It and five other high schools were consolidated into three schools that year, Truong reports.


The schools' closure pays a heavy toll on their towns. "When you have these communities . . . where everything seems to be leaving, typically the school’s one of the last big things that remains," Greg Deskins, a high school science teacher and president of teacher union the Tazewell Education Association, told Truong. "It’s like once your school closes, that seems like the end of your community, in some ways."

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2ApaJh1 More rural schools close as coal declines - Entrepreneur Generations

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