Who We Are

The Rural School and Community Trust is a national nonprofit organization addressing the crucial relationship between good schools and thriving communities. Our mission is to help rural schools and communities get better together.

Working in some of the poorest, most challenging places, the Rural Trust involves young people in learning linked to their communities, improves the quality of teaching and school leadership, and advocates in a variety of ways for appropriate state educational policies, including the key issue of equitable and adequate funding for rural schools.

Our Goals

• High quality place-based education, widely practiced in rural schools and communities
• Effective, permanent organizations of rural people, active in every state, participating in state and local policy development and ensuring high-quality rural education.
• A national agenda where rural people and their issues are visible and credible.

How We Work

The Rural Trust provides a variety of services--training, networking, technical assistance, coaching, mentoring, research--and materials to increase the capacity of rural schools, teachers, young people, and communities to develop and implement high quality place-based education.

We encourage rural people through education, research, organizing and advocacy to become knowledgeable, persistent, and effective citizens who are actively engaged in policy issues that directly affect the quality of education in their communities. We also serve as a resource for educators and policymakers at the state and national levels—identifying and analyzing policies and practices that strengthen rural education, and changing policies that are detrimental to rural schools.

Our Strategies

The Board of Trustees of the Rural School and Community Trust has identified seven overall strategies for accomplishing the Rural Trust's goals.

1. Expand Place-based Education.

We are committed to expanding place-based education across rural America. Place-based education enlarges student learning and improves community life by better connecting rural schools and communities and by engaging students in community-based public work.

2. Improve Teachers and School Leaders in Rural Places.

The Rural Trust is committed to increasing the numbers and improving the quality of teachers and school leaders in rural places, and to creating a policy environment favorable to meeting these goals.

3. Improve Research and Analysis on Rural Education.

One of the Rural Trust's key goals is to improve the quality and increase the quantity of rural education research. Lack of research on issues critical to rural education limits the ability of rural people to be effective advocates for their schools.

4. Enhance Rural Community Organizing and Develop Rural Leaders.

The goal of community organizing and school and community leadership is integrated throughout the Rural Trust's work. We partner with a national network of community groups working at the state level to improve policy for rural schools, and emphasize training school leaders who understand the methods and values of well-connected schools and communities and of place-based learning as a means to accomplish these connections.

5. Ensure Appropriate Policy for Rural Schools.

Our Rural Education Finance Center seeks to improve the school finance systems in leading rural states, to increase the capacity of rural education organizations to sustain effective school finance reform efforts, and to increase awareness and understanding of rural education policy issues among the general public. The Rural Trust is the national leader in developing knowledge and understanding of the impact of state school finance policies on rural schools.

6. Engage Rural Young People in Community Building and Civic Action.

Our goal is to engage young people as partners in the work of the Rural Trust, participating alongside adults in research and action designed to improve their schools and communities.

7. Build Visibility and Credibility for Rural Places and Their Schools.

At the national level and in targeted states, we cultivate the media to help inform the public about the importance of rural communities and schools.

Our Board of Trustees

The Rural Trust is governed by a national Board of Trustees, serving rotating three-year terms and led by a chair elected from its members. The Board sets policy for the organization and secures the resources to advance the Rural Trust's mission.

Chair:

Paul Martinez, Ed.D.
Executive Director, Center for the Education and Study of Diverse Populations,
New Mexico Highlands University

Members:

James B. Beddow
Director, Rural Learning Center

Virginia Blankenbaker
Ameritech, Wilmette, Illinois

Ernest Brooks
President/CEO, National Youth Connection

Cara Cookson
Cabot, Vermont

John Covington
Superintendent of Schools, Pueblo School District No. 60, Colorado

Lewis R. Donelson, III
Senior Partner, Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell, PC

Patricia Albjerg Graham, Ph.D.
Charles Warren Professor of the History of American Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education

Francisco J. Guajardo
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Leadership
University of TexasPan American

Linda B. Martin
Education Coordinator, Challenge West Virginia

Greg Smith, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education, Lewis and Clark College, Oregon

Rachel B. Tompkins, Ed.D. (ex officio)
President, Rural School and Community Trust

Jesse L. White
Director, Office of Economic and Business Development
University of North Carolina

Our Funders

The Rural School and Community Trust is a nonprofit tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The Rural Trust is supported by a diverse and growing list of individual, corporate, and foundation donors. Past and present donors include:

Annie E. Casey Foundation
The Annenberg Foundation
Archer Daniels Midland Company
Arthur Vining Davis Foundation
AT&T Foundation
Corporation for National Service
Dibner Fund
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Ford Foundation - Organizational Development
Ford Foundation - Rural Finance Center
General Mills Foundation
George Gund Foundation
Lyndhurst Foundation
Marguerite Casey Foundation
Mary Renolds Babcock Foundation
McMaster-Carr Supply Co
New York Community Trust
Northwest Areas Foundation
Orton Family Foundation
Providence College
State Farm Insurance Foundation
Wallace - Readers Digest Funds
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
W.R. Hearst Foundation

Our Staff

The Rural Trust staff is headed by Rachel Tompkins, Ed.D., who serves as president of the organization and ex officio member of the Board of Trustees. A staff of 27 works mostly in home-based offices located throughout the rural U.S., with a small national headquarters staff located in Washington, D.C. We strive for diversity of race, gender, age and geographic location in all our hiring decisions.

Our Publications

The Rural Trust publishes two newsletters, the quarterly Rural Roots, which provides news and information on place-based education for teachers, administrators, students and community members; and the monthly Rural Policy Matters, which provides news of interest to citizens and community groups working on state-level policy issues affecting rural schools. In addition, the Rural Trust maintains a Web site. We have an active publications program that includes Why Rural Matters, a biennial snapshot of the condition of rural education in each of the 50 states, and numerous special reports and white papers.