Rural New Hampshire school district considers hiring collection agency for student lunch debt - Lessons in NH school funding

A couple of weeks ago, Claremont, New Hampshire's school district announced that they were considering a plan to hire collection agency to collect nearly $32,000 in delinquent lunch fees.  This move, said by school leaders to be needed due to fiscal concerns, is interesting because it brings to mind the funding issues that Claremont has faced over the years and their attempts to get the State of New Hampshire to remedy them. New Hampshire school funding is a tricky issue. They are the only state to lack both an income and sales tax, which creates an incredible reliance on property tax as a means of financing state and local functions. Within this framework, Claremont finds itself in a precarious situation. It is property poor, meaning that its taxable property is not worth very much. It also has a poverty rate that is almost double that of the State of New Hampshire more broadly. What this means is that Claremont has a relatively small local tax base, so it does not have much money to draw upon to fund its local schools, and an economically vulnerable population, who also live on the margins and for whom bringing in a collection agency may create more problems than it solves. Understanding why this story is significant and why Claremont may opt to attempt to recoup the money requires an understanding of the myriad of challenges that Claremont (and communities like it) have faced in attempting to achieve access to equitable school funding.

Here's some background: In 1989, Claremont's school district found itself in dire straits. Its funding issues had created a cascading waterfall that had a detrimental impact on its ability to provide a quality education for its students. They had been forced to make severe education cutbacks, its school buildings were in a state of disrepair, and their high school had even come close to losing accreditation. Facing these circumstances and with the hopes of compelling them to provide more funding to the district, the school board and its chairman decided to explore a litigation strategy against the State of New Hampshire. In June 1991, the Claremont School District (and various co-petitioners from around the state) filed their lawsuit.

In their initial decision, commonly known as Claremont I, the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that "[The New Hampshire Constitution] imposes a duty on the State to provide a constitutionally adequate education to every educable child in the public schools in New Hampshire and to guarantee adequate funding" and in remanding the case to the lower court placed the onus on the Governor and State Legislature to come up with a means of guaranteeing this.

When the case was reheard by the NH Supreme Court in 1997, it was held that New Hampshire's scheme of school funding violated the state's constitution, in particular the duty outlined in Claremont I. In their holding, the court clarified that the state's duty to provide a "constitutionally adequate education" extended beyond core subjects and had to be mobile to the changing demands of society. In particular, they said:

"[It] is not the needs of the few but the critical requirements of the many that it must address. Mere competence in the basics — reading, writing, and arithmetic — is insufficient in the waning days of the twentieth century to insure that this State’s public school students are fully integrated into the world around them. A broad exposure to the social, economic, scientific, technological, and political realities of today’s society is essential for our students to compete, contribute, and flourish in the twenty-first century." 

The Court also held that the state had to have a role in funding an "adequate" education and could not simply delegate this to towns. Since the Claremont decisions, New Hampshire has toyed with various schemes of supplementing funding local funding for schools with none of them being particularly successful at fully bridging the achievement gap between high income and low income school districts.

To further complicate things, there is also evidence that New Hampshire's school funding scheme is starting to resemble what it was before the Claremont decisions. In the immediate aftermath of Claremont II, state revenues made up the majority of the local school funding. In 2000-2001, for example, local taxes made up only 40.4% of school revenue. However, local tax revenues now make up the majority of local funding for schools in New Hampshire and this is an increasing trend. In 2013-2014, local taxes made up 57.7% of education funding and by 2016-2017, this had increased to 67.5%. This increasing percentage is the result of a series of policy decisions by the New Hampshire legislature. In order to attempt to bridge this gap, property poor districts are having to increase their tax rates in order to attempt to raise sufficient revenue to fund their schools. For example, Lebanon, a more affluent district 20 miles north, has a property tax rate that is 60% that of Claremont's. The people who can least afford to pay higher taxes are being asked to do so.

Given the history of Claremont's issues with school funding, it is perhaps easy to understand why they may feel that they have to take drastic steps recoup thousands of dollars in lost revenue. After all, when you are operating on the margins, every little bit counts. However, Claremont is in its situation because its residents are low-income and largely economically vulnerable, conditions that hiring a collection agency may only serve to exacerbate. After all, having an account in collections may adversely impact their ability to secure a loan to buy a car, a necessity in rural New Hampshire, or result in them paying a substantially higher interest rate than they may otherwise have, which could cost them thousands of dollars. The practical effects of this are obvious. If a person can't get a car, they won't be able to work and if a person has to pay a higher interest rate, they lose money that they could have used to feed their family or provide other essentials. This line of logic also applies if a person needs to access an emergency line of credit for pay for an unexpected repair or any other unforeseen circumstance. This is not an easy situation for anyone involved but getting a collection agency involved seems as though it would create societal problems whose value exceeds the money that the city would recoup.

The wheels on the bus may no longer go round and round in rural California

Riding a yellow bus to school is a rite of passage for many young American students, and it is a necessity for rural students who live on farms, isolated mountain roads, and distant desert properties. In California, approximately 1 million students use bus transportation to travel to school. With upcoming budget cuts, that mode of transportation to schools may soon be limited or nonexistent in California.

According to the Fresno Bee, Governor Jerry Brown announced last week that funding for home-to-school transportation will be cut in half starting in January 2012, a reduction of $248 million. Governor Brown said the reason for the reduction is insufficient state revenues. Funding for bus services has declined dramatically over the years. Around 20 years ago, the state funded 80% of bus services. Now the state funds 35% and soon it will only fund 17%. According to an Associated Press article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the transportation funding reductions are a part of a package of trigger cuts for a variety of state programs. Schools will also see funding reductions in their revenue limit and child development and preschool programs.

The cuts will negatively affect rural areas more than urban metropolises. While a lack of school buses compromises the safety of urban students, there may still be public transportation available to shuttle children to school. Many rural communities do not have public transportation. If school districts can no longer afford to pay for school buses, parents will have to drive their children to school, or the children will have to remain at home.

Donna Linton, a single parent from Santa Ysabel, California, a small, unincorporated community in San Diego County, is one of many rural parents who may suffer if the funding reductions eliminate school buses. According to a San Diego Union-Tribune article, to take her three children to school, she will have to drive 30 minutes one way to Julian, California, population 1,502. Carpooling is not an option as she and her neighbors do not have large enough cars to carry more than their own children. The cost of gas for these trips will also be difficult to bear. Children whose families do not have cars or flexible work schedules will have to rely on neighbors for transportation to school, or they will have to continue their studies at home. Homeschooling may be impossible if the children's parents work and others are unable to care for them.

The amount of funding per student each school district will lose also shows the disproportionate affect the funding cuts will have on rural schools. For example, officials claim that larger school districts in metropolitan areas, like Burbank Unified School District in Burbank, California (population 103,340), will only lose $10 per student with the cuts, while Sierra Unified School District in rural Auberry, California (population 2,369) will lose $355 per student. The areas that will be hardest hit, regarding funding per student, are the ones that need the money most: isolated regions where unemployment is high.

Another issue, which the San Diego Union-Tribune discussed, is that California public schools receive state funding based on attendance. Ramona Unified School District in Ramona, California (population 20,292) buses 1,500 students to school. If only a quarter of those students are no longer able to attend school because of decreased bus transportation, the monetary consequences could be devastating for the small school district.

Rural school districts will have to find other ways to pay for home-to-school transportation. Some may argue it is better to cut transportation funds rather than classroom funds. However, if rural districts have to use their general fund money for transportation, less funding will be going into the classroom. While schools can make cuts in other areas of transportation, according to an article in the Merced Sun-Star, it is difficult to do before this round of cuts because school districts usually hire transportation employees for year-long periods. To continue their transportation services, schools also will likely have to dip into reserve funds, which are supposed to be backup funds for other programs. Once the extra funds are gone, the buses may disappear.

The funding reductions also disproportionately affect low-income and special needs students. Some students take the bus 40 minutes from Ramona, California into the Mission Valley area of San Diego if they are not able to receive proper services in Ramona. Without bus services, these students will not be able to receive the specialized instruction they need. In addition, while public transportation is more accessible in urban areas, families will need to pay for transportation if schools can longer afford bus services. Some may not be able to afford that cost.

The state's largest school district, Los Angeles Unified School District, is trying to use the legal system to prevent the funding reductions. Upon news of the reduced funding, the school board decided to file an immediate restraining order to block the transportation cuts. The California School Boards Association and the Association of California School Administrators are considering joining the lawsuit because of the negative impact the cuts will have on low-income and special needs students. According to an article in the Huffington Post, Governor Brown believes the cuts are legal and that a United States Supreme Court case will give the state greater authority to reduce funding to various programs. It is unclear to which case the Governor was referring. One can hope that Los Angeles Unified is successful and that the government will shift the cuts to another program that does not negatively affect education.

When education funding reductions disproportionately affect rural, low-income, and special needs students, Californians need to rethink how the government should use its resources. This funding reduction seems to be another example of the government forgetting about rural people and places. Over the past four years, the state has reduced education funding by approximately $18 billion. Without a well-educated population, California will be ill equipped to deal with the next economic crisis. To ensure children in California receive an education, we first need to make sure they can get to the classroom.

Law and Order in the Ozarks (Part CXVII): Dismissed principal wins lawsuit

The July 17, 2013 issue of the Newton County Times reports on several significant bits of school news.  First, the former Oark High School principal, Anita Cooper, has won the first round of her lawsuit against the Jasper Board of Education, which dismissed her in the fall of 2011.  At the time, she was under a one-year contract with the school board for the 2011-2012 school year, at a salary of $74,000.  She filed a grievance in late August of that year saying she had been denied the right to create the master schedule for the Oark campus and was "written up" by then assistant superintendent Wanda Mann.  A few weeks later, Superintendent Kerry Saylors removed Cooper from her duties as principal and assigned her to another campus, Kingston, to be principal of "in school suspension."  At that time, Cooper was notified that she was being suspended with pay and that she was being recommended for termination of her contract.  

At that point, the news story goes into Superintendent Saylors report to the board about the litigation.

Sometimes school boards and superintendents are placed in situations where they must make difficult elisions.  It's even more unfortunate when these incidents continue to drag on.  The case filed by Ms. Cooper against the district, myself, and Ms. Mann was heard in Johnson County Circuit Court last spring.  It idd not go very well from the start.   

Sanctions were filed by the judge against our attorney and the evidence that was attained from the (Arkansas Board of Education) ethics case against Ms. Cooper was ruled non-admissible.  The judge issued his ruling about a month after the case was heard, and he found in favor of Ms. Cooper and awarded Ms. Cooper around $43,000 plus her lawyer fees of around $32,000. 

Ms. Cooper's attorney then filed a request to the judge for those amounts to be increased, Saylors said, and the judge came back and awarded Ms. Cooper an additional $21,000 which brought the amount she would receive to about $64,000.

Our district does have insurance that covers this claim. It also covers our legal defense.
I visited with board members last month and recommended to them we not appeal the judge's ruling and request the insurance company to settle this matter so it would not distract from what our true goal is--to educate children.  

The story goes on to report that Saylors passed that recommendation on to the insurance company, ACE, "based in Chicago, Illinois."  Saylor continues:

ACE recently replied to me that our request has been denied and they have directed our attorney to appeal the judge's ruling to the sate Supreme Court.  I then contacted different individuals at ACE to voice my displeasure with this decision. 

I looked into the matter some more and and found that we do not have a say in this decision.  Our legal counsel has informed me that in his opinion we will be lucky if this is resolved within one year.  The insurance company has informed that their policy does cover the judge's previous ruling and it will cover any additional expenses that may come up.  

Saylor also informed the school board that if the case is appealed, "no school district employee should be called to testify.  The trial would be based on records from the previous trial."

The trial court's ruling also reinstated Ms. Cooper to her position at Principal of Oark Schools through June 30, 2012, for purposes of her retirement benefits.

Related to the matter, apparently, are "Board of Education's Filings" which are also reported in this news story.  It shows that on July 8, 2013, the Arkansas State Board of Education accepted the recommendation of the Professional Licensure Standards Board Ethics Subcommittee for disciplinary action against the teaching license of Ms. Anita Cooper.  The findings included

that Cooper was issued a standard-five teaching license on Jan. 1, 2012 valid until Dec. 31, 2016; the  ethics subcommittee received an allegation  that Cooper violated three standards: 

• Maintains a professional relationship with each student, both in and outside the classroom; 
• Maintains competence regarding skills, knowledge and dispositions relating to his/her organizational position, subject matter and/or pedagogical practice and  
• Honestly fulfills reporting obligations associated with professional practices.  

After considering the investigator's report and evidence on May 10, 2013, the subcommittee unanimously found that reasonable belief existed to substantiate the violations and recommended that the state board place Cooper's license on suspension for a year and assess a fine of $100.  

Gee, I wish the reporter on this story had done a bit more to stitch the different bits together.   It seems to be suggesting, based on the "Board of Education's Filings," that Ms. Cooper has done something untoward.  But did she do this during the time relevant to her dismissal by the Jasper School District?  Are these "filings" the reason that the insurance company is so confident in its appeal?  And if so, why is the superintendent so keen to stop the appeal and have the lawsuit go away?  

In other rural school news, the Jasper district is fighting--with the assistance of some state legislators and Arkansas Department of Education officials--the impending end of isolated school funding.  (Read more about that funding here and here).  With campuses at both Oark and Kingston, the Jasper district is the most far-flung in the state, spread over parts of three counties.  Indeed, a headline in the paper calls it "isolated schools 'poster child.'" Currently, the school receives $665,000 a year in isolated school funding.  Between now and 2025, when isolated funding is set to be phased out entirely in Arkansas, the district will receive a total of nearly $5 million in isolated funding.  That is less than it would have received had the formula for calculating the aid not been changed by a new law passed this spring.  However, the original version of that law would have eliminated all isolated school funding in just two years, so the slower reduction over a decade is certainly more palatable to rural schools than that.  The story explains that a state representative for the district that includes the Oark school, Betty Overbey, and Tony Wood, a Deputy Commissioner of the Arkansas Department of Education, "were instrumental" in getting amended that proposed law to entirely eliminate state funding.  The story reports that the Jasper Board of Education continues "to build a coalition of legislative and state education leaders supporting the retention of isolated school funding for Jasper and other districts."  

"Isolated" school funding to follow students in forced consolidations

I've written a bit about the public schools in Arkansas recently, here, here and here, with particular attention to those in Newton County, which are facing the prospect of further consolidation. One concern several folks in Newton County mentioned recently is the prospect that--if further consolidation occurs (specifically, if the Deer-Mt. Judea school district is consolidated into the Jasper district)--the school district will lose its status as an "isolated" school district because it will have more than 1000 students. This "isolated" status is apparently a creation of the state of Arkansas, and it represents additional funding to schools so designated.

Now, the May 4, 2011 issue of the Newton County Times reports some good news on this topic. Without explaining exactly what benefits or funding supplements and opportunities "isolated" schools receive, the story reports that the Arkansas legislature recently passed Act 996 as part of its 2011 legislative session and that this Act "ensures that isolated school funding follows the student after a consolidation or annexation of school districts." This Act "struck a rule" which would have caused loss of "isolated" school funding if a district's enrollment exceeded 1000 students.

In addition, the legislature put about $500,000 in a "one-time pot" of money from which schools with "tremendous" transportation costs can apply for some type of reimbursement. The Jasper School superintendent is quoted as saying this "money will buy lawmakers time to further study school districts' transportation costs and come up with a more equitable funding bill." He said that "the state is giving all schools around $300 per child to pay for funding expenses," while the Jasper School District spends more than $900 per child for transportation to and from school. The Jasper School had supported a bill with a "special transportation line item," but that bill did not pass.

Pictured above: A bus pulling away from the Jasper School in 2009.

Pulling out all the stops to save a rural school (Part VI): The value of the "isolated" school designation

I wrote in recent posts, here and here, of the efforts of the Deer-Mt. Judea School District in the Arkansas Ozarks to attract Oark school patrons away from the Jasper District, their current home. The Jasper Board of Education passed a resolution at its December 15 meeting "resolving not to cede territory to other school districts," according to the December 21, 2011 issue of the Newton County Times. An excerpt from the Jasper District resolution follows:

Whereas in the eight years since the merger, the resulting school district sand its school administration team have made substantial improvements and repairs to the physical plant at Oark Campus, substantially increased the salaries of the former Oark School District employees, and has spent countless hours forging a healthy and productive relationship with the students, parents and community members in Oark;

The resolution also referenced a December 17, 2009 public meeting with Oark school patrons at which none of the 100 or so in attendance expressed a desire to leave the Jasper School District to join the Deer-Mt. Judea district. This suggests, of course, that the issue of Oark joining Deer-Mt. Judea was on the table as recently as two years ago.

Also at the December Jasper Board of Education meeting, the members of the board and the superintendent explained that the petition recently submitted by those purporting to be Oark School patrons did not feature the requisite 75 "verifiable signatures"--meaning registered voters in the school district. The Board therefore decided not to meet with the petitioners because it was not required to do so under Arkansas law. The District's lawyer advised that doing so might set a bad precedent by which future disgruntled patrons, though few in number, might expect an audience with the Board of Education regarding grievances.

One thing the Jasper Board of Education resolution did not mention is the state funding it receives because Oark is an isolated school. I wrote an earlier post about funding for isolated schools, but I have recently learned more about what qualifies as an isolated school and a bit more about how much state funding is associated with the status. First, to qualify as an isolated school, the school must meet four of these five criteria:

• There is a distance of twelve (12) miles or more by hard-surfaced highway from the high school of the district to the nearest adjacent high school in an adjoining district;
• The density ratio of transported students is less than three (3) students per square mile of area;
• The total area of the district is ninety-five square miles (95 sq. mi.) or greater;
• Less than fifty percent (50%) of the bus route miles is on hard-surfaced roads;
• There are geographic barriers such as lakes, rivers, and mountain ranges that would impede travel to schools that otherwise would be appropriate for consolidation, cooperative programs, and shared services.

The law that provides this definition (Arkansas Code Annotated Section 6-20-601) goes on to state that an isolated school is eligible to receive isolated funding if three criteria are met:

• the school district's budget is prepared by the school district with Department of Education approval;
• the school district has a prior-year three quarter average daily membership of less than three hundred fifty (350); and
• the school district and each school within the school district meets the minimum standards for accreditation of public schools prescribed by law and regulation.

So, just how valuable is this "isolated" designation? According to this 2005 news story, up to $4.8 million dollars is available each year to be divided among the state's 27 isolated schools. An excerpt from that 2005 story follows, providing background on the "isolated" designation and what lawmakers saw as at stake. The excerpt begins with a quote from the law's sponsor, Representative Roy Ragland of Marshall, in Searcy County:

"This is probably the most important bill for me and my district," [Ragland] told colleagues. The bill would deliver about $4.8 million to the state's remotest schools in an effort to help them meet new education requirements, such as an increase in the state's minimum teacher salaries.

If the schools can't meet state standards, the state could close them, forcing even longer bus rides for students in those districts.

SB 191 passed 70-11 and now goes to the governor.

Ragland told House members there is not a companion appropriation bill. Rather, the $4.8 million would come out of the regular general fund, but only if available.

To illustrate the need for additional funding, Ragland used the consolidated Huntsville and St. Paul School District, located in his North Arkansas district.

The new district is paying about $200,000 annually to keep the tiny St. Paul schools open. If those schools close, students there would have to be bused more than 60 miles to schools in Huntsville.

Also, the rugged back roads would make the bus trip very dangerous, he said, adding that there are 27 isolated schools in the state, with about 7,000 students, which would split the $4.8 million.

"This is to subsidize those schools," Ragland said.

More recent data indicate the following amounts associated with the isolated school funding at Deer, Mt. Judea, Oark, and Kingston. I also note, for the sake of comparison, how much the Huntsville district gets for the St. Paul isolated schools (referring to all grades, K-12, not literally to multiple schools), to which Ragland referred in his 2005 comments. Note that it is substantially less than the Jasper District and the Deer-Mt. Judea districts receive.

Deer-Mt. Judea District (for those two campuses): $210,968

Jasper District (for Oark and Kingston): $296,874

Huntsville District (for St. Paul): $24,233

These payments, in February 2011 (click on "Isolated" in right hand column), represent one of two "isolated" payments to each district for FY 2011. However, the second of the two payments for FY 2011, in June 2011, are much smaller, e.g., for Jasper just $98,958 and for Huntsville, just over $8000.

Looking at the payments to all of the Arkansas school districts, the Jasper District (for Oark) receives more than any other district, following somewhat closely by the Ozark Mountain District (which covers parts of Newton County and Searcy County), which receives $232,347, and the Cossatot River District, which receives $245,538 for tiny schools at Umpire, all in Polk and Howard Counties.

In a future post, I will discuss the Ozark Mountain District's recent decision to annex an additional school, the one at Lead Hill.

Electric school buses on their way to rural America

I've been contemplating this post for several months and was finally prompted to start writing it when I saw a tweet linking to this press release today from Senator Jon Tester's office.   The headline is "Tester Secures Nearly $4 million for New School Buses for Montana School Districts."  The subhead is "Funding will come from Senator's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act."  The text--though not the headlines--make clear that these are zero-emission, electric busses: 

Tester today announced that he secured $3,950,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean School Bus Program for Montana School Districts. This funding, which came from Tester’s bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), will go toward supplying brand new zero-emissions electric school buses for the Bigfork, Clinton, and Fairfield County School Districts.

Tester worked across the aisle for months to negotiate his bipartisan package with a group of five Republicans, four Democrats, and the White House, and he was the only member of Montana’s congressional delegation to vote for it.

“Students and families in smaller communities like the one I call home need access to reliable transportation options,” Tester said. “I am proud to have worked with Republicans and Democrats to invest in Montana’s public education infrastructure. This will benefit working Montana families while also strengthening our American manufacturing sector.”

A breakdown of the funding can be found below:

Bigfork: Bigfork Elementary School – $2,765,000 (7 buses) 

Clinton: Clinton Elementary School – $790,000 (2 buses)

Fairfield: Fairfield Elementary School – $395,000 (1 bus)

After that, the press release includes characteristic boilerplate about what Tester is doing for Montana--especially its schools, and especially the rural ones. All three of these schools are in rural areas, two in quite small towns and the third, Big Fork, a town of about 4000 in Flathead County.  

That Tester tweet reminded me of a headline I saw a few months ago in my hometown newspaper, the Newton County Times, about federal funding flowing in to help a small school district purchase an electric school bus.  That headline, from August of this year, was "Japer applies for electric school bus grant," with Jeff Dezort reporting.  Below is an excerpt with a surprising amount of detail, including a long quote from the transportation manager for the Jasper School district, Brent Edgmon.  Edgmon happens to be the younger brother of one of my good friends from my twelve years at Jasper School in the 1970s and into the 1980s.  Their mom, Dorothy Joe Edgmon, was paid by the school to drive kids (including her own) in her station wagon up and down Cave Mountain Road, where the school bus did not go.  In other words, she was part of the school's transportation infrastructure decades ago.  

Here's part of the Newton County Times story:

Don't be shocked if you see electric school buses in the Jasper School District in the not too distant future.

The school district has applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for a $1.5 million grant to purchase four electric school buses costing up to $375,000 each.

Transportation manager Brent Edgmon told the board of eduction at its regular meeting Monday night, Aug. 15, that he submitted the application on behalf of the school district at the deadline that fell prior to the meeting. He said if the grant is awarded the district can refuse to accept it. But he encouraged the board to consider the idea of acquiring electric buses sooner rather than later and doing so with little cost to the district. He pointed out that other school districts will probably go to electric buses and when they arrive at Jasper's campuses for sporting events or other academic activities, they will need to connect to a charging station.

Edgmon told the board EPA is giving out $500 million for electric school buses nationally.

There aren't many options. They come in three sizes. Along with a small van, there is the commonly used 54-passenger bus and a 72-passenger bus.

Concerning the mechanics of the vehicles Edgmon said they don't have a diesel engine nor a transmission. They have an electric motor under the hood and a driveshaft to the rear end. It will have air brakes and a liquid used to cool and heat the battery. There aren't any other fluids, like oil or fuel, no air cleaner ... which is a big savings. You will still have to replace tires and grease them. They weigh 3,000 pounds more than the weight of a diesel engine.

Edgmon said his main concern was that across the whole district every bus, including spares, are equipped with exhaust breaks (Jake brake) to assist braking down steep hills. He didn't want to give up the exhaust breaks. He said he since learned that the electric buses have a three stage motor. When you come over the mountain you turn on the charge mode one, two, or three, and it acts like an exhaust brake. It holds the vehicle back.

It's supposed to run 300 miles on a charge. Edgmon doubted that, but he was told the vehicle is charging as much as it is being driven. It's the perfect situation for an electric vehicle. Starting and stopping and going over hills is what keeps the battery charged.

These motors put out 342 horse power. Diesel engines now put out 250 horse power and they perform very well. Edgmon said he has been told electricity compared to fuel would cost less than $1 a gallon.

Charging stations are another thing, he said. They cost between $30,000 and $40,000 for a quick charger.

Here are more quotes from Edgmon: 

We would be ahead of the game if we could get this money. We're going to see schools coming here and needing to charge their bus. It wouldn't hurt to have a charging station just outside the gym or other convenient place

If we don't get selected in the first round the application stays in the hat or if another school declines Jasper advances on the list.

This is by far the most positive thing I've read about electric vehicles in rural places.  I suppose it helps that they're coming free of charge--even from the big, bad federal government.  It'll be interesting to see how many rural school districts like Jasper--and the Montana schools--seek these grants and how many receive them.  

Meanwhile, I'm guessing that Jasper School District did not get one of the buses because this Oct. 29 story in the Newton County Times lists other schools in Arkansas that did get them, at least in the first round.  The headline is "EPA announces $4,000,000 in Clean School Bus funding for school districts in Arkansas," and it appears to merely quote a government press release.  Here's the lede: 

The Biden-Harris Administration announced the Fiscal Year 2022 recipients of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program rebate competition, awarding $4,255,000 from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to Arkansas school districts. The grants will help the school districts of Wonderview, Blytheville, The Alpena and Danville purchase 11 clean school buses that will accelerate the transition to zero emissions vehicles and produce cleaner air in and around schools and communities.

Should rural school districts cut athletic programs?

Oregon's North Bend School District experienced a financial feast and famine of different sorts in 2009. In the spring, the district eliminated 16 employee positions due to a state funding shortfall. That fall, contractors installed a video screen, scoreboard and sound system in the high school's football stadium, home to the Bulldogs. An anonymous alumnus picked up the $200,000 price tag.

While these capital upgrades didn't affect the school's bottom line, some residents started questioning the need to fund sports teams. During the next year's budget talks, the district's school board cut some coaching stipends and limited travel costs, but it left the athletic program largely intact.

North Bend is not alone. The past few years, budget-strapped school districts across the country have eyed sports fields for savings. Mansfield, Massachusetts, population 23,184, voted to eliminate its athletic department in spring 2010, only to have private boosters spare the program. Oregon schools in Hillsboro, North Clackamas and Forest Grove have stopped funding tennis and golf, forcing those teams to seek financial support elsewhere.


Supporters of high school sports justify the expense by pointing to heart-warming stories like the Tikigaq Harpooners. The high school is located in Point Hope, which sits on a spit jutting into the Chukchi Sea. The school has fewer than 60 students and no road access to the rest of the state. Despite these challenges, the school's boys basketball team has won the 2A Alaska State Basketball Championship three years running.

But those trophies have come at a price. The team travels to away games by plane; sometimes flying 12 hours to face an opponent. The school builds (and maintains) sports facilities. And with No Child Left Behind sanctions looming for any school that doesn't show significant progress in core academic subjects, it must be tempting to jettison a sports program to pay for another math teacher or two.

This question is particularly troublesome for rural Oregon schools. School funding comes from the state, which distributes money based on school enrollment. As rural economies falter, families leave the area, taking with them their children and the education funding that follows them.

While scuttling a sports team to protect classroom budgets may appear attractive at first blush, rural school districts have been wise to keep their athletic programs. For one thing, federal studies have found that rural children are more obese than their urban counterparts, suggesting more athletic opportunities are needed, not less. And unlike urban areas, where private club teams are common, rural schools often provide the only athletic opportunities.

High school sports also help define rural communities. Unlike metropolitan areas, which can have college or professional teams, rural townsfolk often rally behind their alma maters. When Coos Bay's high school football team reached the state playoffs in 2008, it played a team in Portland. Despite the four-hour drive from Coos Bay, the stands had more fans clad in Pirate purple and gold than in the home team's colors. A running gag in Coos County is that the best time to commit a crime in Powers, population 689, is when the Challengers football team has a road game, because the entire town goes to watch.

High school sports can also bond students to the community. North Bend's anonymous donor probably played football himself. Assistant coaching positions offer Bulldog graduates an incentive to stay at home, instead of fleeing to the Willamette Valley like many of their peers. And those who stay also have the opportunity to follow their former teams on a constant basis. With urban areas offering many attractions, rural communities would be loath to remove a source of pride and identification.

Truancy laws: Bad for rural students and their schools

Coleville, CA (Mono County)

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

All states have passed compulsory attendance laws requiring that students in a certain age range attend school. Exceptions vary by state. Sadly, in spite of these laws, nearly one in four students are chronically absent.

Students and their parents can face penalties for truancy. Some states take a punitive approach to truancy, allowing referrals to juvenile court for truant students and imposition of criminal charges on parents. The latter can result in hefty fines and even jail time. 

For example, a 2024 Kentucky law required that a school refer a student to the County Attorney for "formal court action" if a student accumulates 15 or more unexcused absences. Until Governor Newsom repealed the policy in October of 2025, California's truancy laws allowed parents to be fined up to $2,000 or sentenced to up to a year in jail if their child was chronically truant (missed 10% of the school year). In 2017, ten Merced County parents were charged with a misdemeanor for their children's absences. 

Despite a recent shift away from punitive truancy policies, 20 states still require schools to alert courts if a student is truant.

Greenville, CA (Plumas County)

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2012

Rural communities are especially susceptible to truancy. The National Rural Education Association found that "[n]early one in seven rural students experiences poverty, one in 15 lacks health insurance, and one in 10 has changed residence in the previous 12 months." Students in schools with greater populations of students in poverty are three times as likely to be chronically absent. Additionally, the spatial isolation of rural areas means that rural students typically travel farther to get to school and may have a more difficult time accessing transportation. The transportation issue, along with limited funding, also means that rural schools have less access to extracurriculars.  leading to students being less engaged in their school community. The lack of opportunities is not a new problem; this blog post from 2014 discusses the struggles related to student involvement in rural schools.

Truancy laws are ineffective

Truancy laws are ineffective at decreasing school absence because they do not address the underlying reasons why students are absent in the first place. 

For example, in a New York Times Magazine story on homelessness in rural areas, author Samantha Shapiro explained a crucial paradox: 

Students who do not have a stable place to live are unable to attend school regularly, and failing to graduate from high school is the single greatest risk factor for future homelessness.

This is just one example of how truancy laws fail to address the problem and instead act punitively. As expressed by California Assembly Member Patrick Ahrens, the sponsor of California's bill repealing criminal fines and jail times, "[f]ining or imprisoning parents did nothing to get kids the education and support they need."

The truancy problem is compounded by rural school funding issues in states where school funding is directly tied to attendance. Six states use average daily attendance (ADA) to determine a student count for funding allocations; they are California, Texas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Missouri. Linking ADA to funding means districts with higher rates of chronic absences are hurt financially. This makes it even more difficult for those schools to address truancy issues. 

Better solutions to chronic absences

While punitive policies are ineffective, other interventions have proved helpful. One study found that truancy decreased by 5% when schools sent simple, periodic, personalized messages to parents about their child's attendance. These messages used templates that automatically pulled information about a student, including their name, details of absences, and goals for decreasing absences. These notices are  easily sent to parents to keep them better informed. 

Data systems, such as Iowa's (uses a system that provides near real-time absence data to schools), that catch absentee patterns early and allow schools to intervene earlier are more effective. Prevention –not punishment– should be the focus of school policies to decrease truancy.

Spatial Inequality as Constitutional Infirmity?

My latest article in the publication pipeline is called, "Spatial Inequality as Constitutional Infirmity: Equal Protection, Child Poverty and Place." I wrote it for a "rural law" symposium issue of the Montana Law Review (see the related post here). The article represents a continuation of my engagement with rural sociology and geography, but in it my focus shifts to rural child poverty, which outpaces even rates among the general population. The abstract follows, and the full paper can be downloaded here:

This is the first in a series of articles that maps legal conceptions of (in)equality onto the socio-geographical concept of spatial inequality, with a view to generating legal remedies for those living in places marked by socioeconomic disadvantage. Written for a symposium on “rural law,” this article considers in particular whether the funding and delivery of government services at the county level in the state of Montana violate the state’s constitution because of the grossly disparate abilities among Montana counties to finance and provide such services. Pruitt’s analysis focuses on children as a particularly vulnerable and immobile population, many of whom are deprived of government services based on place of residence. Further, the article scrutinizes the provision of health and human services as a category of services to which Montana children experience great variations in access.

County governments in Montana are financed principally by local property tax revenue. Uneven development across the state, from one county to the next, consequently confers on individual counties vastly different capacities to provide services. Because of the lack of centralized funding for services such as public health and other human services, those who live in sparsely populated, relatively undeveloped and property-poor counties are least served by local government. At the same time, wealthy counties—which tend also to be more populous—have economies that are more diversified, property tax bases that are more substantial, and a correspondingly greater capacity to deliver services. More densely populated counties also face lower per capita costs for delivering services because they are better able to achieve economics of scale.

To illustrate these disparities, Pruitt discusses in detail the economic and demographic profiles of five Montana counties. These include Yellowstone County, home to Billings, the state’s largest city; fast-growing Gallatin County, which exemplifies rural gentrification and the rural resort phenomenon; Stillwater County, a sparsely populated nonmetropolitan county with significant mineral wealth; Big Horn County, a persistent poverty county with a majority American Indian population; and Wheatland County, a tiny county with a dwindling population and an agriculture-based economy.

The legal critique of this spatially and economically uneven landscape relies primarily on the 1972 Montana Constitution, which is among the most progressive state constitutions in the nation. In particular, Pruitt argues that the constitution’s equal protection and dignity clauses are violated by the county government funding scheme and its consequences. The Montana equal protection clause forbids discrimination based on “race, color, sex, culture, social origin or condition, or political or religious ideas.” Pruitt maintains that significant disparities in service provision, which occur arbitrarily across county lines, violate this equality guarantee. Pruitt’s second argument is for state provision of a minimal degree of services to children. 

Relying on the constitution’s dignity clause and the doctrine of parens patriae, Pruitt argues that children cannot live with dignity unless their fundamental needs are met. She asserts that the typical emphasis on autonomy with respect to the dignity right is misplaced with regard to children. For the child population, Pruitt maintains that a right to dignity should be grounded instead in their inherent dependency and vulnerability, thus imposing a duty on the state to provide children’s first-order needs when their parents cannot or do not do so. In addition to this analysis under the Montana Constitution, the article also challenges the orthodoxy of U.S. constitutional jurisprudence regarding poor people, public benefits, and equal protection.

Finally, Pruitt argues that Montana’s school funding scheme, which has been the subject of recent litigation, now represents a better model—albeit a still-imperfect one—for financing public services. This is because the school funding formula seeks to level the funding playing field by providing more state monies, along with federal funds that are somewhat similarly allocated, to school districts based on the presence of at-risk students. School districts with the highest percentages of at-risk students tend also to be the school districts with poorer property tax bases. By contrast, the scheme for financing county government results in a situation in which more affluent counties are better able to provide services to residents, while those living in the most rural and property-poor counties have access only to very limited health and human services. Financing so linked to the local scale thus aggravates and further entrenches spatial inequalities, an outcome that is in contrast to the school funding formula, which aims to achieve greater substantive equality by channeling money to the schools with the greatest need.

While this article analyzes spatial inequality in the context of a specific state and with respect to a particular type of government service, the capacity and significance of spatial inequality as a critique of legal equality guarantees is not so limited. The services that governments provide implicate a wide range of rights, and these rights may be violated if the services are not provided in an equitable manner. Pruitt thus calls for all branches and scales of government to be more attentive to the difference place makes to service delivery, in order to ensure more even and fair access.

More legal wrangling aimed at saving two tiny schools

Recent issues of the Newton County Times discuss the latest efforts by two small schools in the Arkansas Ozarks to prevent their consolidation. I wrote about the schools' legal and fiscal actions this spring, here and here. A related story about how Arkansas funds schools is here.

The August 17, 2011 issue of the newspaper reports that the lawyer for the Deer-Mt. Judea School District has asked the Arkansas Supreme Court to reconsider a circuit court ruling that dismissed the District's suit that protest the state's school funding method. The District is arguing that its concerns arose after a 2007 Arkansas Supreme Court decision in a case called Lake View, which found the state's school funding formula constitutional. The Deer-Mt. Judea District is asserting that inadequate transportation funding by the state forces small school districts that cover a lot of territory to divert funding from other programs to cover transportation costs. The District has asked the state to establish a maximum one-way bus ride of 45 minutes for public school students, and to bar the state education board from closing small, remote schools.

Under Act 57 of 2003, the educational-funding structure law, funding targets districts of 500 students using factors such as transportation and personnel. Per-student funding is based on this calculation. The state deems districts with fewer than 350 students too small to guarantee an adequate education.

The September 14, 2011 issue of the paper reports that the Arkansas Supreme Court has given the state a three-week extension to respond to the Deer-Mt. Judea District filing. It also reports on a meeting of the Deer-Mt. Judea School Board at which district patrons asked the Board what its plan is in the event the lawsuit fails. One patron seemed to suggest that the District should be making overtures to the Jasper District, with whom it may have to consolidate. The Superintendent responded, "Our official stand is to wait until the lawsuit is over."

Other issues of the paper indicate that other area schools are closely monitoring whether they will be able to keep their schools, as indicated in reports of each school district's enrollment. The A front-page story in the August 24, 2011 issue is headlined "Ozark Mountain reports 663." This means that the Ozark Mountain District's three schools have that total enrollment, and the story indicates it is broken down 244 students in Bruno-Pyatt (Pyatt has a population of 373), 238 in Western Grove (population 518), and 181 in St. Joe (population 109). Bear in mind that, prior to consolidation in 2004, each of these schools was its own district, with its own superintendent. Districts like Ozark Mountain that were formed out of the 2004 consolidation have already achieved some economies of scale.

Texas Monthly takes a deep dive into the consequences of vouchers and school choice for rural schools

Forrest Wilder reports for Texas Monthly out of Fort Davis, Texas, on the way Texas' school choice legislation is hurting rural schools.  Fort Davis is the county seat of Jeff Davis County, population 1,996, on the southwest edge of the state.  The story features a "conservative, gun-toting superintendent" named Graydon Hicks III, who says that, recently, he "has never felt farther from the state's political center of gravity."  

For years Hicks ... has been watching helplessly as a slow-motion disaster has unfolded, the result of a deeply flawed and resource-starved public school–finance system. Over the past decade, funding for his little district, which serves just 184 students from pre-K through twelfth grade, has sagged even as costs, driven by inflation and ever-increasing state mandates, have soared. The math is stark. His austere budget has hovered at around $3.1 million per year for the past six years. But the notoriously complex way the state finances schools allows him to bring in only about $2.5 million per year through property taxes.

Hicks has hacked away at all but the most essential elements of his budget. More than three quarters of Fort Davis’s costs come in the form of payroll, and the starting salary for teachers is the state minimum, just $33,660 a year. There are no signing bonuses or stipends for additional teacher certifications. Fort Davis has no art teacher. No cafeteria. No librarian. No bus routes. The track team doesn’t have a track.

But Hicks can’t cut his way out of this financial crisis. This school year, Fort Davis ISD has a projected $621,500 funding gap. To make up the difference, Hicks is tapping into savings. Doug Karr, a Lubbock school-finance consultant who reviewed the district’s finances, said Fort Davis ISD was “wore down to the nub, and the nub’s all gone. And that pretty much describes small school districts.”

“I am squeezing every nickel and dime out of every budget item,” Hicks said. “I don’t have excess of anything.” When I joked that it sounded like he was holding things together with duct tape and baling wire, he didn’t laugh. He said, “I literally have baling wire holding some fences up, holding some doors up.”

The district’s crisis comes at a time when the state is flush with an unprecedented $32.7 billion budget surplus. Hicks is a self-described conservative, but he thinks the far right is trying to destroy public education. For years, the state has starved public schools of funding: Texas ranks forty-second in per-pupil spending, according to Raise Your Hand Texas, a pro–public education nonprofit founded by H-E-B chairman Charles Butt. And yet Governor Greg Abbott is spending enormous political capital on promoting a school-voucher plan, which would divert taxpayer funds to private schools. Public education, Abbott has repeatedly said, will remain “fully funded,” though public-education spending is projected to be lower this year than when he took office, in 2015, and the Legislature recently passed a $321.3 billion budget with no pay raise for teachers and very little new funding for schools. Unable to get his voucher plan through the regular legislative session, Abbott is threatening to call lawmakers back to Austin until he gets his way.

* * * 

With each passing month, his rural district inches closer to financial ruin. If nothing changes by fall of next year, Fort Davis will have depleted its savings. He doesn’t know the exact day that his schools will go broke, but he can see it coming.

Wilder, by the way, does an admirable job breaking down and describing Texas' complex school funding system.  One of the challenges of that funding formula for places like Fort Davis is that local property values are going up, which leads to a diminution in funds received from the state but not necessarily any commensurate rise in local funds to support the schools.  

Near the end of the story comes this, highlighting the tension between the state's rural reaches and decision makers in Austin: 

As we were sitting outside his office in his red pickup with the engine idling, Hicks told me that he’d given up on lobbying the Legislature. He mentioned again that [Lt. Gov] Patrick and other GOP lawmakers are trying to destroy public education by using vouchers to privatize schools, and he said that most other politicians “don’t give a s— about West Texas.” But for the time being he was still fighting: writing op-eds, firing off plaintive missives, asking concerned citizens to contact their legislators.

Toward the end of our visit, I asked Hicks what’s going to happen to his schools. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not patient enough to spend time with assholes in Austin, and I’m not rich enough to buy any votes.” TEA has suggested that Fort Davis consolidate with another district—most likely Valentine, which is 35 miles away—but Hicks said both districts would suffer for it.

And the very end of the story gives us the news that Superintendent Hicks has announced his retirement. 

An earlier New York Times story about the school funding situation in Texas--as it relates to vouchers--was more positive about the survival of rural schools-- in part because residents will fight for them.  And in places like New Home, which is economically embedded with Lubbock, those fighting for rural schools are more numerous and will perhaps have enough political clout to influence legislators in Austin.  

Secure Rural Schools Act expires, taking rural school budgets down with it

NPR reported a few days ago from Idaho on the consequences of the expiration of school funding through the Secure Rural Schools Act.  Here's an excerpt:

The Basin School District in rural south-central Idaho has something most districts in the state don't: preschool. But now that's at risk because of federal funding cuts. 

It's not alone: Sparsely populated school districts and counties covered in federal forest lands will have less money this year — $250 million less — because Congress allowed the Secure Rural Schools Act to expire. 

* * *  

First approved by Congress in 2000, the Secure Rural Schools Act pays counties that have a lot of federal timber land. That land isn't taxable, you can't develop it, and resource and recreation opportunities are restricted. 

Now, federal-land-heavy counties across the country will get just a fraction of what they'd planned on because Congress allowed the funding to expire last September. 

Nearly every state in the country is losing money. Idaho got $28 million last year, but this year it gets $2 million.

According to the report,  Oregon's net loss—at $63 million--is the greatest of any state.  Montana and Washington are losing $19 million each.

Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) has introduced a bipartisan bill that would come to the rescue of these states and school districts.  That law would reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools Act and fully fund a separate support system for these rural counties called payment in lieu of taxes, or PILT.  Crapo explains:

This is not a spending program like most federal programs.  This is a responsibility the federal government has to the states, and frankly to the counties, for the impact on the counties that is being caused by the federal government.

Idaho has more federal land than almost any other state; 63 percent of Idaho is public, federally owned land. Basin School District's county is nearly 75 percent federal.  

At about the same time that this story ran on NPR, I saw a story in my hometown newspaper, the Newton County Times announcing that Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has signed into effect a law, Act 27, which will make a school district eligible for special funding as an isolated district if its student density is 1.5 students or less per square mile.  The prior threshold was 1.4 students per square mile, and the change was necessary if the Jasper district was to continue to receive the special funding as an isolated school.  The law was passed by the Arkansas House of Representatives by a vote of 95-0; the State Senate also passed it unanimously.  Representative David Branscum, R-Marshall, in neighboring Searcy County, authored the bill.