Our public schools are closing, and these closures hurt rural children and rural communities.
As a rural education researcher, I study school closures—the permanent kind—and, right now, I am flooded with requests for help.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of children are displaced when their schools are permanently shuttered. After a brief slowing during the pandemic, closure numbers are again on the rise. Right now, school boards across the country—from cities as large as Atlanta to towns as small as Autaugaville, Alabama—are debating closing schools. A number of state governments, including Vermont and Indiana, are also considering or adopting policies that could force widespread closures…