Rural Matters

To a person, everyone I talked with told me that ACRE is a group of rural community members and parents who help each other share responsibility for making their communities and schools stronger. The group is state-wide, and everyone I talked with emphasized that there are all kinds of people involved.

There’s a lot to learn from ACRE. Community people bring ideas and perspectives about how to improve schools that don’t occur to professional educators. Many rural people share a common interest in making sure kids get a good education. Communities will work together in that shared purpose and will pool their resources and their knowledge to help each other handle difficult challenges.

(You can read more about ACRE’s work, organization, and accomplishments at their website, www.aracre.org or in the October issue of Rural Policy Matters.)

For all the accomplishments of this group, however, two things stood out to me in the way people talked about it. One is that every person I talked with credited other ACRE members and communities not only for the success of the organization, but also for accomplishments in their very own local community.

The second is the way people described ACRE’s work using the same kinds of language they used to describe their community schools -- or in some cases, their former community schools that have been forced by the state to close. From the way people describe it, they are transferring the things they value in their community schools to the ways they interact through ACRE.

Crediting Each Other

The people I talked with had all accomplished important things in their own communities to improve their schools. And, all of them attributed a significant measure of their success to support and help from other communities in ACRE.

For example, an ACRE member In a small school where students score well and community support is strong described how the school was nevertheless threatened with closure after its district was consolidated. The person told me how people from several other communities had helped them understand how the state’s various "distress" laws work. These laws can be used to force a school closure or takeover. “We’ve been able to understand a lot more about the ways the distress laws work from people who have actually had to deal with the state. They have helped teach us how to avoid some of the problems they have had.”

People in several communities talked extensively about how they had learned from other ACRE members how to help local residents understand the ways a local tax increase would benefit the school. “Not everyone understands right off the bat the connection between taxes and what we can offer academically at the school. Or why we need to improve our facilities,” one person said. “So people from two different communities met with our local group to help us strategize.”

In one community a person I talked with described how a group of land owners do not support the school. “When we had our own district we could outvote them,” the person said. “But after the district was consolidated and they moved some grades out of our school, a lot of people in our community lost confidence. They thought it didn’t matter any more what they did.” In the vacuum, the land owners ran some people for school board on a platform of cutting taxes—which could put the new district in fiscal distress. “There were some people in another community - twe knew them through ACRE, too - and they had been in a similar situation. They gave us materials and helped us think about how to talk to people about what was going on and motivate them to get out and vote." The person told me they didn't tell people how to vote, but they helped educate voters on the issues and remind them why their vote mattered.

Several people talked about how they had learned from students in ACRE meetings. Specifically, they mentioned that students stress the need for teachers who respect them. “Not everyone had thought about it that way, about teachers respecting students," one person said. Another said, “Being in ACRE helps us realize how much we need to understand the students’ point of view. Now we’re doing more at our own school to try to get better at listening to students.”

More than anything else, however, people talked about hope--and how they got hope and inspiration from each other in ways that translated into new energy at home.

Everyone I talked with had faced some challenge related to their school that had caused some local people to lose their sense that they could make a difference. The most heart-rending examples came from people whose communities had lost their schools. “It was like everyone just gave up,” one person told me. Another said, “people thought there was just no point; they had tried so hard to support and keep the school. But it didn’t make a difference. Everyone was just real depressed.”

But all these people also credited ACRE with turning things around in their own communities. “We thought nobody cared about us at all,” one person said. “And then we found ACRE and we found out there are a whole lot of people who care.”

Another person said, “we thought we were all alone, the only people with the kinds of problems we were having. But someone with ACRE came to see us and encouraged us to go to a meeting. In ACRE we have ways to work with people in other communities. It’s given us a lot of hope. Now people think we can make things better after all.”

“Everyone Matters”

The second striking thing about the way people talked about ACRE was how often they used the same language to describe the organization that they used to explain why they valued their community schools.

“In our school, it doesn’t matter what your back ground is. Everyone is somebody.”

“In ACRE, there’s all different walks of life. And there’s parents and community people and kids and some teachers. It doesn’t matter who you are or what kind of background you have, you’re somebody in ACRE. You feel respected, and you know you matter.”

"The way our school is, we have to have everybody pulling together or we can’t make it.”

“It really makes you feel good how everybody pulls together in ACRE. Everyone is pulling for each other. And everyone is pulling together for things we care about.”

“One thing we know in our school is that everyone has something they bring that the rest of us need. The youngest kids, or the ones who struggle with their academics sometimes, they’ll turn up with an idea, or something they are really good at. A parent who seems, well, just ornery, they’ll come up and help with something and we are just amazed. It’s like every one brings something to the table. It helps you want to hang in there even when it’s hard.”

“In a lot of organizations you feel like people are looking down on you. Or like some people are feeling sorry for some of the others—like, ‘I need to feel sorry for them—they’re so pitiful.’ But in ACRE it’s not like that. People recognize that everyone brings something to the table. You’re going to get something from everyone. And you know you need them.”

“In our school, we’re kind of relaxed. Oh, I don’t mean it’s just anything goes. But it’s comfortable. I think that makes it easier for the kids to learn. They can ask questions when they want to. And they don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen in the hall or on the playground.”

“At the ACRE meetings, it’s a serious atmosphere, but it’s relaxed. You’re free to express yourself without worrying and able to feel comfortable with people as a group. I like that. The more comfortable you are, the more you can be expressive, the more you can ask questions, and the more you learn. Having peace of mind makes it easier to learn.”

“Everyone knows each other so you can’t really fall through the cracks at our school.”

“If you’re having trouble, somebody in ACRE notices.”

“Everyone matters in our school.”

“In ACRE everyone matters.”

Hope for the Future

By the time I’d finished my interviews with ACRE members, my outlook, so dampened by the radio story, was lifted considerably.

I recognize that people in rural Arkansas, no matter how committed to sharing responsibility, will inevitably face internal conflict. Values and experiences will clash—no doubt that to some extent they already have. ACRE members, like anyone else who is honest, will find themselves acting out personal preferences and agendas and privileges without taking into account the needs or perspectives of other people, or of the group itself. And while their organizational structure already builds in some accountability around these issues, growth and time will bring challenges that require new responses.

But none of these realities of human existence diminishes what this group of rural people have already accomplished.

The hope that they credit each other with creating is what they gave me. Hope that people can create an expectation and an experience of working together that breaks some new ground. Some new ground where it’s easier to see that we can take responsibility for each other and in so doing make all of us better.