Developing partnerships is one way to reduce educational isolation for rural teachers and school leaders. TeachUNITED recently reached out to Christopher Lagoni, Executive Director of Indiana Small and Rural Schools (ISRSA) to understand his perspective on how organizations can respect the unique identity of the community while collaborating to develop innovative solutions to challenges. 

Lagoni provided context to the situation facing rural and small Indiana schools, and described how collaboration with businesses and education-focused partners in concert with cooperation amongst schools has accelerated the trajectory toward success.

The Situation

Indiana has diverse landscapes and traditions. We have lake country in Northern Indiana, prairies in Northwest Indiana, traditional farmland, and hilly forests in Southern Indiana. Each one of these communities has many historic industries related to its location, and many of these historic industries influenced the school communities that re-organized in the 1950-1960s school consolidation.

And, like many states, Indiana has a healthy rural population. What’s great about small and rural schools is that we are able to adapt and pivot to a changing environment quickly. The flipside to this is the ongoing hardship we face today in that we continue to lose population at an alarming rate. This decreasing population translates to our rural schools’ difficulty to attract and retain quality educators and limits the schools’ ability to cooperate with educators at different schools.

Partnerships are Paramount

Students

One strategy we have implemented to combat the isolation affecting small and rural schools in Indiana is our focus on Pathways and apprenticeship opportunities for our graduates. A solid partnership and collaboration with businesses is crucial to recognizing the success of this strategy. Schools have a limited number of career pathways they can connect students with, therefore businesses have to drive the Pathway and apprenticeship models, not the school. 

Schools

Indiana’s focus on only funding individual students has caused some schools to de-emphasize cooperation when it comes to special education cooperatives. Many co-ops have either reorganized or disbanded altogether. This educational isolation has laid bare challenges that were manageable as a group, but near impossible to overcome as a single small or rural district. 

Solutions

Indiana Educational Service Centers offer professional development, teacher support, on-site meetings for teachers to collaborate across departments, and grant writing services. The various education service centers are not funded by the state and must compete for membership. This has made them very focused on providing resources based on schools’ needs.

Indiana has also funded a special program called Keep Indiana Learning. This cooperative-shared resource enjoys over 100K users and is funded by the state and administered by a service center. We promote this service to our members—teachers can create content, provide training, and become experts to support peers—and school district and school building leaders also contribute to this resource. 

ISRSA recently collaborated with the Cell Uindy Center for Rural Collaboration to help Indiana schools implement the Early College Model to help our communities access dual credit programming.

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