Help Us Strengthen Rural Schools and Communities

Make your contribution online now!

A new year is the best time to look back at the accomplishments of last year and look ahead to our plans for the coming year. 2005 was exciting for the Rural Trust, and we hope you will consider making a tax-deductible contribution online to help us continue to help rural schools and communities get better together.

This year, we:

• Worked with 37 schools in ten states to develop projects that engage students and teachers in real-world learning through challenging academic work on community issues. 


• Helped rural citizen organizations in eight states develop and implement plans to maintain or improve their schools and school systems. 


• Published the third edition of Why Rural Matters 2005, our biennial state-by-state analysis of the condition of rural education. Other reports released this year include: Best Fiscal Management Practices for Rural Schools and Providing Rural Students with a High Quality Education: The Rural Perspective on the Concept of Educational Adequacy . 


• Assisted the Arkansas Department of Education in implementing the Rural Trust’s Education Renewal Zone (ERZ) legislation statewide, which partners higher education institutions with a network of underperforming high schools to focus on instructional improvement.


• Created www.ruraltorural.org, an online response to the hurricanes Rita and Katrina to encourage rural communities across America to help those rural communities hit hardest by the storms.

This year saw many successes, but we also became concerned about the low level of attention rural areas receive from the media and public officials, particularly as demonstrated through the national response to the hurricanes.

We need your help to go on the offensive with all rural people and the places we call home to educate the nation about the innovative and exciting possibilities in rural America. We need your help to continue to link rural schools and communities across the nation in a movement for greater educational opportunity, quality, and fairness.

This year your contribution will allow us to continue our outreach and support of schools and communities in the hurricane-hit region; deepen our collaborations with state partners in an effort to improve and save their small, rural schools; expand our civic engagement initiative to a growing number of sites that will encourage student contribution to their communities through youth-adult partnerships; sponsor, along with the National Writing Project, a rural “poetry of place” curriculum and event with U.S. poet laureate and rural Nebraskan Ted Kooser; and convene our annual Rural Education Working Group meeting of the best rural educators and active community members in the country to work on improving their schools and communities.

Please contribute today to help us keep this movement to improve schools and communities growing.  Click here to donate now. Your  donation will ensure that rural Americans receive the tools, information, and assistance they need to help them educate their children in good schools, close to home.

Sincerely,

Rachel B. Tompkins
President

A copy of summary of the latest Financial Report and Registration filed by this organization may be obtained by contacting the Rural School and Community Trust at (703) 243-1487 or www.ruraledu.org; records are also available through most state governments. 01/06