Student registration is now open for the Small & Rural School District Virtual College Fair, presented by the California Small School Districts' Association, the National Rural Education Association, StriveScan, and Collegewise.

Direct your students to register at strivescan.com/ssda, which provides the schedule, groupings, and process and provides the students' links to register for each session.

This is a fantastic experience for your students to hear from nearly 200 colleges and universities from around the country and internationally who will share information about their institution, college admissions process, campus life, and much more! Click here to view the full list of colleges that are participating.

Collegewise will host panel presentations for parents the evening before the fair to discuss popular topics in higher education! These presentations are also open to school counselors and other staff, as well as students!

6:00-7:45 pm Pacific Time

9:00 -11:45 AM Pacific

12:00 - 2:45 PM Eastern

Any questions? Email Corrie Pelc, SSDA Director of Member Services, at corrie@ssda.org.

Just days away! Join us as we bring in community, school nutrition and educational leaders, and industry experts, to discuss how we can strengthen schools during this unprecedented time. Tune in to the Healthier School Communities Forum, March 24th and join the conversation. Register at HSCForum.GENYOUthnow.org #HealthierSchoolCommunities

Several months ago, the editors of The Rural Educator, in collaboration with the editors of the Journal of Research in Rural Education and Australian and International Journal of Rural Education released a statement regarding our renewed commitment to promoting scholarship that addresses the intersection of race and rurality. We believe these words should be followed by action. To that end, we are issuing a call for a special issue of The Rural Educator focused on research and practice that interrogates how racism operates and is challenged in rural schools and communities to be published in January of 2022. We envision this special issue as a foundation from which we will continue to grow our efforts at recruiting and publishing more diverse scholarship and promising practices in rural education.

For the special issue, we are particularly interested in scholarship that addresses race and rurality broadly and from diverse perspectives, including a focus on learners, educators, leaders, community issues, resources, and equity policies, across the P-20 spectrum and both school and out-of-school education settings. Research manuscripts should, in some way, interrogate the intersection of race and rurality in rural education settings. We are also interested in publishing brief Promising Practices manuscripts (approximately 5-7 pages in length) that focus on instructional efforts aimed at creating more inclusive and equitable learning and work environments in schools and postsecondary institutions. The Promising Practices manuscripts should showcase both the work with which you are engaged and how that work affects learners and educators.

Special Issue Timeline:

Deadline for Submissions: April 15, 2021

Publication decisions and feedback to authors: July 15, 2021

Publication: January 2022

The Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges (ARRC) is a collaborative established by faculty members at four institutions to advance our understanding of colleges and universities with regional-serving missions by expanding research, partnerships, and knowledge sharing about these institutions. We were established with seed money from a grant awarded by The Joyce Foundation in 2020, and our first report on supporting rural anchor institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic can be found on our website (https://www.regionalcolleges.org/project/ruralanchor). We are planning a number of other releases of research and other materials through the course of the year, and people interested in receiving updates can sign up for our mailing list through the website.

The Rural Schools Collaborative is pleased to present the Fourth Annual National Signature Project, a $2,500 grant to an outstanding and innovative classroom project that exemplifies the very best in place-based education. The Fourth Annual National Signature Project award application is now open to any rural classroom teacher in the United States.

The South Carolina Organization of Rural Schools (SCORS) was founded four years ago. SCORS was founded by Dr.Vashti Washington, Carol Hillman, and Dr. Arnold Hillman. All work performed by SCORS is handled by volunteers. All expenses are paid for by these volunteers. The SCORS website www.scorsweb.org is a joint effort by SCORS and R&R productions of Harrisburg, PA. The cost of the Go Daddy site is once again paid for by volunteers.

At the outset of the organization, its founding members contacted all of the extant educational organizations to see whether such an entity was necessary. It succeeded a rural school organization that disbanded in 2006. Since there are well over 30 such organizations in the United States, the conclusion was that they should be created.

Since many of the rural school districts in South Carolina are resource-poor, it was a decision that a membership organization with dues would not be appropriate. The next step was to look at other ways of organizing.

After a number of face-to-face meetings in Columbia with interested school superintendents and other education-related folks, a decision was made that these meetings, which were not well attended may have been inconvenient in the face of so many other meetings.

It was at that point that several of the SCORS family suggested that a steering committee could be formed and that meetings could be held by conference call (and possibly later by electronic means). We were fortunate that Marc Drews, of EdVenture, could provide us with the phone conference means to have our meetings.

Our Steering Committee is composed of a number of rural Superintendents, legislative aides, consultants, political operatives, attorneys, and higher education folks. The committee is composed of seventeen members.

To understand our goals and our mission, please go to those sections of this website. Thank you for your interest.

In rural America, the number of students requiring special education and related services—across every disability category—is rising. At the same time, inadequate state and local funding and a national shortage of related service providers is having a disproportionate effect on the nation’s most underserved students.

Then this new white paper is for you. “Rural America in Focus: Delivering on the Promise of Special Education Related Services” offers an in-depth report on the challenges rural districts face and a guide for how to open up opportunities for students with special needs in your care.