Mitigating the Impact of Declining Enrollment in Rural Schools

Proposed Solutions | Benefits of Small Schools

As school enrollment trends disproportionately impact rural schools, states and districts can either magnify or mitigate the problem through policies on funding, facilities, consolidation, distance learning, and other “local strategies.” In a report from The Rural School and Community Trust, Lorna Jimerson addresses the growing problem of enrollment decline by recommending twenty state and district policies that can serve to mitigate the challenges faced by districts losing students, and help them reverse or adjust to the trend. In “Breaking the Fall: Cushioning the Impact of Rural Declining Enrollment,” Jimerson writes,

…states and local communities must act to sustain and improve small rural schools with declining enrollment. There are always students ‘left behind’ in these communities and they have the same rights to an equal educational opportunity as those who leave.

The Problem

As the nation’s demographic and economic patterns shift, so too do local school enrollment patterns. Even as the nation’s population of students is growing larger, student enrollment is declining in many localities across the country, most notably in certain urban and many rural communities. “Declining enrollment that is long-term and chronic,” Jimerson says, “can and does cause significant challenges for schools and districts.” The report notes that these challenges can be especially intense in rural areas where schools are already small, and are less able to absorb decreasing numbers.

The primary problem for schools experiencing a decline in enrollment, the report says, stems from the concomitant decrease in school funding. Since many states fund schools at per-pupil levels according to enrollment numbers, each student that leaves a school takes their funding with them. Since many costs, such as transportation, teachers’ salaries, and facilities upkeep, cannot be reduced at a per-pupil level, schools are left meeting many of the same costs with fewer dollars. This problem has been exacerbated by rising educational costs in recent years, as well as increased demands for academic improvement, which have put pressure on schools to spend more on professional development and other academic programs. Further, declining enrollment often reflects a declining local tax base, which lowers a school or district’s ability to replace lost state funding.

As Jimerson notes,

The combined impact from the decrease in revenue hits almost every aspect of operating schools. Not only do districts experience specific program and personnel losses, but… [p]ersistent revenue loss also affects staff morale, professional growth, and makes strategic planning extremely difficult.”

Proposed Solutions

The main purpose of this Rural Trust report is to recommend policies that will mitigate the impact that declining enrollment has on rural schools, districts, and communities. These are divided into: state funding systems, facility policies, induced consolidation, distance learning, inter-district collaboration and sharing, school choice programs, and local strategies.

State Funding Systems
State funding systems are the primary focus of the report, and garner seven of the twenty recommendations it puts forth. It argues that “they can directly address the problem by introducing measures that reduce or delay the effect of the decline on state aid allocated to the district.” Jimerson recommends a number of “mitigation measures” that can make state policy friendlier towards small rural schools. These include state policies that phase-in funding declines by averaging enrollment over several years or guaranteeing a particular percentage of the previous year’s funding.

The report also argues that every state should include additional funding for small schools in their funding formula, using their enrollment size or sparsity to determine relative amounts of aid. The report further specifies that this supplemental aid should be directed on the school level, since small schools can be hidden within large districts; should be allocated based upon a continuum of need, rather than arbitrary school-size classifications; must be sufficient to meaningfully offset the financial challenges faced by small schools; and should be awarded to every school that faces financial struggle because of low student enrollment. Finally, the report notes that many state policies handicap communities that want to support struggling local schools by raising taxes, and recommends that spending and levy caps be eliminated.

Facility Policies
The report explains that many states have policies on school facilities that encourage new building over renovation, and that only support school building projects for large schools. The report recommends that these policies be adjusted to support building or renovation for schools of all sizes. The report also calls for the elimination of “other existing policies that create barriers to maintaining small schools, like acreage and enrollment requirements.”

Consolidation, Collaboration, Distance Learning, and Other Local Strategies
The remaining sections of the report deal with strategies that states, districts, and local communities can use to mitigate the impact of declining enrollment on the quality of their schools. The report emphasizes local control, noting that states should leave the option of consolidation up to local communities, and should not force or even encourage that option. Instead, the report posits, schools and districts should look to distance learning technology and “regional technology consortiums” to expand and improve the curriculum. The report also encourages “inter-district collaboration and sharing” to reduce costs where possible by sharing “certain personnel, student services, and resources with other districts.” States should facilitate these partnerships, the report recommends, with legislation as well as financial support. The report concludes by recommending a range of cost-saving and enrollment increasing strategies, aimed at achieving equilibrium and maintaining the quality of education available for students “left behind” in these districts. These students, the report notes, “are often the poorest, the least mobile, and the most at-risk of educational failure. It is precisely these people who need forceful policies supporting public education.”

The Benefits of Small Schools

The Rural School and Community Trust has long touted the benefits of small schools. That position is becoming more popular, having been adopted by several districts across the country. Studies continue to show the academic advantages of small schools: one recent report by Dr. Joe Nathan in the Rural Minnesota Journal showed that, after following student performance in Minnesota public universities, “all fifty of the high schools that had the lowest percentage of students taking a remedial course were in rural Minnesota. Forty-five of the schools were small.” According to “Dollars and Sense: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools,” published by the Knowledge Works Foundation and the Rural School and Community Trust, much of the “efficiency of scale” that many believe exist in larger schools is erased once the graduation and workplace productivity of those schools are taken into account. In other words, while larger schools spend less money per-student, much of that money is spent on students who will never graduate; though small schools spend more per-student, their students are much more likely to have a positive societal impact. These studies and many more contribute to the Rural Trust’s call for the preservation of smaller schools, and add weight to Jimerson’s proposals to mitigate the impact of declining enrollments.

Prepared by Nelly Ward, March 24, 2006