Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see?  Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.

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Imagine, for a moment, a world in which a former U.S. president is nearly assassinated, a Republican vice presidential nominee is announced, and the current U.S. president and presumptive Democratic nominee drops out of an election occurring not even four months from now, all in the span of roughly one week. 

Oh, yeah! We don’t have to imagine, our reality really is this absurd. 

I am still reeling from the past week, but of course, the news cycle races on so my journalist brain is already onto the next question – what does all this mean for rural America? 

The most likely Democratic nominee is Kamala Harris (enough Democratic delegates say they will back her, according to an AP survey, to clinch the nomination), but the former Bay Area prosecutor doesn’t have much of a rural track record. 

However, her association with President Joe Biden, who made large investments in rural America through the novel Rural Partners Network and laws like the Inflation Reduction Act, Infrastructure and Investment in Jobs Act, and Chips & SCIENCE Act, could bode well for rural under a Harris administration.

As vice president, Harris was tasked with being a spokesperson for reproductive rights after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Earlier this year, she visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota, to see how the Midwest has been affected by abortion bans. The issue is likely to be a central talking point in her campaign if and when she’s officially declared the Democratic nominee. 

Harris’ other focus as VP has been on immigration. Since 2021, she’s helped secure private sector investments from companies like Nestle and Target to create local jobs in Central America in order to decrease migration into the U.S. Whether this actually worked is debatable: the number of undocumented folks hailing from nearly every region of the world who moved to the U.S. grew by half a million people between 2021 and 2022, according to Pew Research Center data. 

Lastly, Harris has worked to codify voting rights protections. She was one of the biggest proponents of the now-stalled Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act that would have expanded voter registration and access, and established Election Day as a federal holiday. 

All three of these focus areas intersect with rural interests. Abortion access in rural communities is limited because of the location of abortion clinics (and as clinics have been shut down in more red states, rural folks have had to travel even farther). Medication abortion by mail is another option for rural folks, but many states have restricted access to medication abortion and one state – Arizona – has fully prevented its delivery by mail.

Immigration has also proved to be a hot button topic, with a Gallup poll from early this year showing it as a top issue for voters. Immigration is likely to be front of mind for folks living in the rural border regions of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. 

Voting rights protections also have big implications for rural America where voter turnout is the lowest, in part because of barriers like mail-in ballot restrictions and fewer in-person polling locations. 

Rural voters are likely to be an essential voting bloc this presidential election. A 2023 survey from the Center for Rural Strategies (publisher of the Daily Yonder) and Lake Research Partners suggested as many as 37% of rural voters could be swayed by either party. 

Harris’ work as VP intersects with rural interests nicely. (In a Venn Diagram, perhaps?) Pair that with expanding the Biden administration’s work to invest in rural America, and she could make headway with some rural voters – if she chooses to pay attention to them.

The post What Would a Harris Presidency Mean for Rural America?  appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in Mile Markers, a twice monthly newsletter from Open Campus about the role of colleges in rural America. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox.

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A few years ago, Sara White moved back to Harlan County, the rural Kentucky community where she was raised. 

Her home is coal county. Well, was: The pickaxes are mostly gone. Now, the closest you can get to the glory days is in a rail car shuttling through a former U.S. Steel mine, as the area’s mining history is told by automated displays of coal-dusted mannequins at the tourist trap Portal 31.

White has long known some of the challenges that come up in the region, having spent decades in eastern Kentucky as an education advocate at Berea College and, later, the nonprofit Partners for Rural Impact.

To her, students had limited vision when it came to their future education and career goals: when all you know is what’s in front of you, it’s hard to imagine what else is possible. Most of the professionals here are in teaching or medicine, which makes it difficult to see how students can turn their interests into other career pathways.

“Those are really the only mentors and role models they have,” says White, who works remotely as the Southeast regional admissions recruiter for the Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania. 

“If you wanted to pursue something artistic, there isn’t a lot of demand locally for that, outside of teaching art. Even in the science fields, it’s really hard to consider being, say, a biologist, when the only person you hear talking about biology is your biology teacher,” White says.

There are other ways her home is changing though. When she was growing up, highschoolers couldn’t wait to get their driver’s licenses, for example. Now, it feels like her nephews and all their friends could care less — and even without cars, their exposure to the wider world is greater than ever.

“They don’t care because they all connect virtually anyway,” she says. “I don’t hear much from them about career planning, but if I do, it’s all about gaming and other virtual stuff.”

Her observations are particularly interesting at a time where many wonder if getting a four-year degree is still worth it. The connection between education and career outcomes is especially important for lower-income rural students, who often can’t afford to risk pursuing degrees that won’t pay off in the long run. 

What they are exposed to plays a major role in determining the pathways they may choose, whether or not that route best serves them. And rural areas are more likely to have a mismatch between the types of courses available to students and the projected local jobs of the future. 

That’s according to the Georgetown University Center on Education Workforce, which found in a recent report that a “Great Misalignment” is occurring across America, with most labor markets needing to shift at least half of their middle-skills credentials programs to accurately match projected local labor demand.

Rural areas are particularly struggling with that mismatch because they tend to have fewer educational institutions, which makes it harder for them to meet broader job-training needs as a result. 

Eastern Kentucky is one of the most misaligned stretches in the eastern United States, according to that Georgetown report — to more accurately align with future workforce demand, the darkest-blue counties in these charts would need to shift more than 70% of their credentials programs.

The Georgetown report relies on 2019-2021 IPEDS data from the US Department of Education, which means it could be missing some of the fast-track and shorter-certification programs that many rural colleges have started offering in fields like construction, welding, and nursing. 

Still, the report provides an interesting shorthand for universities and colleges to start assessing whether the programs they offer are well-suited to prepare their students for the types of careers that will be available to them.

It’s a topic that is often on the mind for Heather Davis, the director of transition services at Eastern Kentucky University, which is based in Richmond, a suburb of Lexington that borders this stretch of misalignment.

Davis works mostly with adult learners who have never attended college or transfer students of various age groups. They often joined the military, married young and had a family, or were just forced to immediately enter the workforce. 

“Regardless, the narrative is the same: I had a big life event happen, and I put myself and my education on the backburner,” she says. 

“Those who do pursue education later are either pursuing a lifelong dream or they’re working in a place that is willing to pay for their continuing education, and they know they’ll be promoted once they get that credential.” 

One example at Eastern Kentucky University: The Associate’s of Applied Science in Nursing program, which is “blowing up right now,” Davis says. 

Offering a quick path to becoming a registered nurse, the program isn’t just a good example of degree-workforce alignment. 

It also shows how colleges can assure prospective students that the skills they learn will make them hire-able after graduation: Last year’s cohort reported a 100% pass rate in national licensing exams, compared to the state average pass rate of 77% in 2022. 

“If there is a two-year degree that is lucrative here, it’s AASN,” Davis says.

She’s seen similar success for rural students in four-year programs like early childhood education, business, and social work — in fact, the university just partnered with Somerset Community College to start offering a new social work degree an hour away in Pulaski County, one of those rural counties that currently struggles with significant misalignment.

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The post Rural Student Qualifications Don’t Align with Local Job Markets appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

A new survey of small business owners from rural parts of the country shows that 87% believe it has been difficult for working parents to afford high-quality child care programs for their children.

The survey found that small businesses across the country, and especially in rural areas, are wanting to grow, said Janetta King, Midwest regional director for Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Voices, which conducted the study.

“But the No. 1 challenge that they have is hiring and retaining workers. And one of the reasons that they cite for hiring and retaining being such a challenge is the lack of access to affordable childcare in their communities,” King told the Daily Yonder in an interview. “We found that this challenge is exacerbated in rural areas,” she said.“Rural small business owners who want to grow, who want to expand, are citing lack of childcare as one of the reasons that they are unable to do that.” 

The study also found that 66% of rural small businesses say their communities do not have enough high-quality and affordable child care programs. That’s 9 percentage points higher than the general population, where 57% say that child care is lacking in their communities. Additionally, 43% of rural small businesses say that a lack of child care has had a negative impact on their ability to operate or grow their businesses, which is 5 percentage points higher than the general population, in which 38% say that a lack of child care has had a negative impact on their ability to operate or grow their businesses.

“Childcare is very expensive,” King said. “For some candidates who are considering going back to work, they look at the cost of childcare in relation to what they might be making and their job. And the math doesn’t add up. And so they’re opting not to enter into the workforce because childcare is so expensive. So it’s both an affordability issue and an access issue. And for our small business owners, it’s a competitiveness issue, especially in rural areas.”

Ashley Kingdon-Reese is a graduate of the Goldman Sachs program and runs multiple businesses in rural South Dakota, especially in-home care for aging adults and disabled individuals. 

The age at which people can do that sort of work, she said, is the mid-point of life, when many have children to take care of. 

“We really had to pivot and change even how we do everything from orientation, to their onboarding,” Kingdon-Reese said during a phone interview. “What we started doing is in lieu of or where their options are a match for daycare, and using things like co-ops with other agencies who are facing the same problems.”

Instead of working three 12-hour shifts like what is normal in the industry, Kingdon-Reese has her employees work a more traditional schedule so that they can be home for their kids. 

“Our morning meetings start at 8:15 as the kids get to school, and we set up carpools,” she said. “And we rotate. It’s been some strategizing just to make sure that you’re able to start the job.”

Sarah Rittling, executive director of the First Five Years Fund — an organization dedicated to working with Congress and the Administration to increase support in early childhood education — said there just isn’t enough child care across the board, no matter where one lives. 

“We have a lack of availability, and [it] tends to be incredibly expensive and unaffordable for families,” she said in a Zoom interview. 

Head Start is one policy solution, Rittling said. There’s also a bill called “Expanding Child Care in Rural America,” which would be attached to the Farm Bill and prioritize projects that would address availability, quality and cost of childcare in rural communities. The bill was introduced in 2023 by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and had a committee hearing in April. 

Tax credits are another important policy initiative, she added. There’s “a tax credit called the Child Dependent Care Tax Credit to help offset the cost of care,” Rittling said. “It’s in dire need of updating both in costs and also refundability in order to reach some families who need it the most.”

Rittling said people need to come together to address the issue. 

“What we do know is that despite the fact that these are unique challenges and differences, we have to come together and come up with some solutions, because it’s affecting everybody,” she added.

The post Survey: Affordable Child Care a Problem in Rural America appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

State governments across the country have been tasked with stewarding a portion of funds acquired through regional and national legal settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors in recent years – including the likes of Johnson & Johnson, McKesson and CVS. The settlements stem from multiple nationwide lawsuits levied against the companies for their role in fueling the opioid epidemic.

According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, around 75% of drug overdose deaths were connected with opioids in 2022. That accounts for the deaths of more than 81,000 people that year. Kentucky’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet said in their 2022 Overdose Fatality Report that a little over 1,500 people who died from overdoses in the state were found to have fentanyl in their system.

State governments and localities are using the settlement funds to try to heal communities affected by the opioid crisis and prevent others from being affected.

Kentucky has secured around $900 million from opioid settlements. Those funds have been split into two pools, with half earmarked for the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission (KOAAC) – a group specifically formed to handle the state’s use of the funds – and half divvied up among the state’s county and city governments. The first installments were distributed by the state to local governments in December of 2022. Payments are expected to continue until 2038 with no deadline in place for when funds must be spent.

Lauren Carr is an Opioid Settlement Advisor for the Kentucky Association of Counties (KACo). She assists county officials in navigating the best practices and reporting guidelines for the opioid settlement funds, which can only be used in specific ways.

“You can’t take these funds and use it for a program that was already being funded. You can’t take these funds and supplant. These funds are supposed to be to supplement,” Carr said. “Either integrate a new program or supplement the existing programs that you have – seeing where barriers are – and providing those services.”

Kentucky’s legislature has already outlined a list of possible uses for these funds in a state statute. Carr said the list – which was created when KOAAC was chartered – provides pathways for localities to take but she said it doesn’t expressly limit their use.

The Paducah Police Department, in far western Kentucky, is using some of the city’s settlement dollars to staff a new position focused on lowering recidivism for the people with substance use disorders.

Paducah Police Chief Brian Laird said hiring a deflection specialist has been a long-term goal for his department.

“We encounter folks regularly that are homeless, folks that have mental health issues, folks that have drug abuse issues,” Laird said. “So the goal was – instead of the officers continuing to respond over and over to these folks – we have somebody that can follow up with these individuals and try to get them some help.”

Deflection is a relatively new philosophy in law enforcement that focuses on keeping individuals with substance use disorders from entering or reentering the court system by avoiding interactions with police. Laird said that he’s aware of other social work positions within police departments in the state but believes Paducah may be the first department in Kentucky to hire a deflection specialist.

The position will be paid, in part, by the police department’s budget, but the majority of the funding comes directly from the city’s opioid settlement money. Applications for the position closed in April, but Laird hopes the specialist to be officially onboard by August.

Other county and city governments in western Kentucky are still trying to figure out how to spend their portion of settlement funds.

Murray officials formed a work group before the first settlement payments were received to investigate possible uses of the funding. City Administrator Jim Osborne said the city is still working alongside the Kentucky Attorney General’s office, but that no official plans have been made as of yet.

“The goal would be using the money to not necessarily just in one area of but could combine areas that are approved uses,” the Murray city administrator said. “I think the key is finding a happy medium of where best it would be used … something that’s legal, transparent and would help the community.”

Similarly, Marshall County Judge Executive Kevin Spraggs said he wants to make sure settlement funds are used in the most efficient way possible.

“We want to make sure wherever this money goes, ultimately, it’s put to the best possible use,” Spraggs said. “We don’t want to jump into something without doing a lot of research, and we’d like to do something with a proven track record, percentage wise, where the most people are being helped.”

For Carr, addressing the opioid epidemic has two major components – prevention and harm reduction. She said that many localities focus on prevention, with enacting programs like “Just Say No” to keep individuals from becoming substance users in the first place. Harm reduction, instead, focuses on helping individuals who are already using drugs.

The statutory list includes 29 potential uses for settlement dollars that would provide funding for projects aimed at helping those with substance use disorder or those who are at risk of using. These include programs focusing on supporting intervention, treatment and recovery services to substance users. The funds could also be used to educate the general public and provide training to healthcare providers, recovery specialists or law enforcement.

The list also includes things like drug-take back and disposal programs and any programs that cover the cost of administering naloxone.

The over-the-counter medicine (also known as Narcan) can be used to treat opioid overdoses in a crisis situation. Carr said that increasing accessibility to the medication and teaching the public about its use could help to prevent deaths.

“At the end of the day, a dead person doesn’t recover,” Carr said. “We all can be first responders. Whether it’s at a basketball game, at the library or at a Walmart, you never know when you may be a first responder, and so being prepared is something that will help save lives for individuals that are in active addiction right now.”

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The yearly Kentucky Drug Overdose Fatality Report said overdose deaths in 2023 dropped by 9.8% from the year prior. The 2022 report also showed a 5% decrease compared to 2021.

That comes as access to naloxone has improved, in part because of state and federal programs that support local health departments and emergency services. 

Holly Buchenroth, assistant professor with Eastern Kentucky University’s Emergency Medical Care Program, said requesting access has become an easy process.

“Any first responder agency can get access to this naloxone if they qualify and are in a rural county that’s eligible, and all they have to do is complete a training, make a request and document the usage or distribution,” Buchenroth said.

Naloxone is a nasal spray medicine that reverses opioid overdoses with no negative side effects. It’s also sold under the brand names Narcan and Evzio.

Kentucky got $800,000 last year from the federal government to dispense Narcan to first responders in rural counties. Last year, more than 160,000 units of the medicine were distributed across the state.

Scott Lockard is the public health director of the River District Health Department, based out of Hazard. He said the added resources have been a big help. 

“A couple years ago, Narcan was much harder to access, and we’ve seen much more awareness around harm reduction and the importance of getting Narcan, Naloxone out there,” Lockard said. “So pretty much there’s no excuse now.”

Other agencies, like the Pike County Health Department have fared similarly. Director Tammy Riley said, in 2021, the agency wasn’t able to distribute any naloxone kits to individual community members. Just 82 Narcan kits were distributed to the county in total.

They’ve since been able to turn that around.

“Compare that to our 2023 data, 3,500 Naloxone kits were distributed through the Harm Reduction Program, 25 Naloxone kits through first responder and community organizations, and 240 Naloxone kits to individual community members,” Riley said.

Riley said they’ve also focused on education. For every box of Narcan they give out, they inform its receiver on how to use it.

“When you see those numbers of distribution, every box that’s distributed to an individual is provided with about a five to ten minute education session,” Riley said. “We don’t just hand naloxone to an individual and say, ‘Good luck.’”

The life-saving drug is also getting cheaper. Buchenroth said that’s in part because of its availability over-the-counter at chain pharmacies.

“You can pick up a generic two pack now for about $35, so the price has come down,” Buchenroth said.

But access in rural areas could still be improved. Riley said in places like Pike County, where the health department covers a large area, it’s harder to follow up with those in recovery compared to urban areas like Lexington or Louisville.

“We need a quick response team in Pike County, so when those individuals do refuse those 911, first responder services, we could deploy a quick response team to find that individual in the throes of reversal when they’re most likely to seek treatment,” Riley said.

Other officials, like Lockard, say getting rid of the stigma that carrying Narcan involves is also an issue.

“Although the resource of the service may be here, they’re still reluctant to make themselves available to the resources that they can access,” Lockard said. “So how do we reduce the stigma? How do we do more training in the communities?”

Maria Slone is a social worker with Lexington’s community paramedicine program and works with a quick response team. She said there’s a simple way to bridge that gap: community involvement.

“They’re not going to have as many resources as we have, but how much buy-in is in their community members and their law enforcement and their courts and EMS providers?” Slone said. “What does that look like for them to have that buy-in?”

Most recently, the state has launched a website that shows a map of all the locations naloxone is available, both for free and for purchase. It’s available at findnaloxone.ky.gov.

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LEXINGTON, Neb. — Naidid Aguilera was feeling stuck.

Stuck at her job at a Tyson meatpacking plant. Stuck in a central Nebraska town after emigrating from Mexico roughly 15 years earlier with her husband. Instead of working in her dream role as an elementary school teacher, she spent her days hauling cow organs for inspection. 

Then she learned about one group’s effort to expand access to high-quality child care here, specifically for families who speak little English, through free training and help navigating state licensing laws. The classes would be entirely in Spanish, eliminating one of the single-biggest hurdles for expanding care in this town of 11,000, where 2 out of 3 residents are Hispanic. For years, it had just one Spanish-speaking child care provider.

As Aguilera dialed the phone to sign up for classes, she recalled feeling overcome with emotion because she had believed her goal of working with children was left back in Mexico.

“The only question they really asked me was why I would want to pursue a child care license,” Aguilera said through a Spanish interpreter. “My response was, ‘I want to do more than where I’m at right now at Tyson and move further in life. I’m looking for another opportunity.’”

Through the local advocacy of several organizations, the community will have nine Spanish-speaking providers by this summer — including Aguilera. Although Lexington still has a waiting list of 550 children in need of care, the town’s child care gap has been cut by nearly 100 children with the addition of new providers, according to local data. 

A nonprofit group called Communities for Kids, partnering with other organizations, began training providers after community surveys revealed the town’s need for Spanish-language child care. The group, founded in 2017, helps develop quality early care and education programs in Nebraska communities that don’t have enough of them.

“If you can’t communicate, or your culture is different, trusting a white English-speaking woman with your child — that’s a lot of trust,” said Shonna Werth, Communities for Kids’ assistant vice president of early childhood programs.

At the time, with only one bilingual provider, most Hispanic families were shuffling their children among neighbors or family members for care. It was the only way for Spanish-speaking parents to communicate with a provider directly.

Some parents employed by the local meatpacking plants worked split shifts to ensure their children were with someone they could communicate with.

“You wonder, ‘Where are those kids? What experiences are they having?’” Werth said. 

Related: Our biweekly Early Childhood newsletter highlights innovative solutions to the obstacles facing the youngest students. Subscribe for free. 

There’s a lack of Spanish-speaking or bilingual early childhood education providers across the nation, said Tania Villarroel, early childhood senior policy analyst for UnidosUS, a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization. One of the barriers to growing the child care workforce is the process of getting certified.

“It’s a resource to speak Spanish, but if you don’t have good English skills, it can also be really hard to get those degrees,” Villarroel said. “It benefits Latino children to have a Latino provider because they have the same lived experience, same heritage — it’s easier for them to connect to families, to get more family engagement.”

Recent research from the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families found that Latino families across the United States consider multiple factors when trying to find child care, like schedule flexibility and whether the provider offers culturally responsive care for their children.

“Some [places] serve only Hispanic children, and they have Hispanic providers. But then other sites have no Hispanic children, and probably no Hispanic representation. So we see this sort of segregation going on,” said Julia Mendez, a researcher for the center. “There’s the families who are seeking the care and the families can’t find what they need, because it’s not available.”

Mendez said it’s common for home-based care to be of lower quality for Hispanic families, becauseif their providers don’t speak English, they have fewer opportunities for professional development or credentialing.

Boosting the quality of Lexington’s child care — not just its accessibility — was crucial, Werth said. She joined two local child care advocates, sisters Stephanie and Maricela Novoa, to implement the free training. Maricela Novoa is an early learning bilingual specialist providing assistance to early childhood educators through the Nebraska Department of Education. Stephanie Novoa, a realtor, also works with Communities for Kids and volunteers as a special advocate with the courts.

The training in Lexington began in 2021 with a program called the “Professional Learning Series,” which included 55 hours of classes on the licensing process or required skills for high-quality early childhood education. The series was taught exclusively in English – and did not attract Spanish-speakers.

Another series followed in 2022, and this time, there was a professional interpreter and headsets available for translation. The class was held every Tuesday night from August through November at the local YMCA, with free child care and food available.

“We were kind of building that foundation of [making] sure there are things that if they want to get licensed, this will be useful for them if and when they ever get there,” Werth said. “Like, let’s not just do training for the sake of training, but training that has a dual purpose. They’re building their education and their skills so that they can have better interactions with the kids they are caring for or as parents, because not all of them are on that trajectory of being a child care provider.”

Related: Our child care system gives many moms a draconian choice: Quality child care or a career

Werth said when the classes first opened, the goal was to reach five or six participants. Twenty showed up.

“Midway through the classes, participants would bring a neighbor or a friend. And so we had to close the class because it was a small room,” said Maricela Novoa. “It was just that word of mouth, that trust piece — this is safe, this is good. This is something that you’ll value.”

Next was a 10-week business class in 2023, followed by courses on parenting and safety that were provided in English with a Spanish interpreter.

Aguilera said she remembers many long days last spring working at the meatpacking plant, then attending classes in the evening.

“The classes were one after another, but at the same time that was nice because it was just all over at once,” Aguilera said. “I was tired, but it was very worth it.”

Werth said it was slow-going to license the nine women, especially when they ran into language barriers.

“Stephanie and I met with six or eight participants one night. They all brought their licensing packets, and we sat down with them to help them just try to work through that. And [it] took hours to do, which should not be the case,” Werth said.

It took several hours more to help participants navigate an online class. Most of them had little experience working with technology other than their phones. Werth recalled the library closing around them one evening as they helped participants use computers for the first time.

Maricela Novoa said the lack of Spanish materials or Spanish-speaking representatives is a constant hurdle for future providers. Even now, a Lexington resident could call a state agency for help but not get anyone on the phone who can speak Spanish.

“It does get tiring, because you’re the only person in the room saying, ‘Hey, is this available in Spanish?’ when there’s a new resource available,” Maricela Novoa said. 

Mendez, of the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families, said her organization calls these obstacles “administrative burden.”

“It’s true across the board that any barrier, like a language barrier, can keep people out,” Mendez said. “With administrative burden, you have to learn what the resources are, but first, you have to know about them. And then you have to navigate the systems to try to figure out how to get the credential or the support that you’re looking for.”

Related: In-home child care could be solution for rural working parents

Just a few years ago, Miriam Guedes was the only Spanish-speaking child care provider in Lexington. She started a daycare on her own after being a paraprofessional at the public school district’s preschool for 19 years.

She obtained her license by herself — an uphill battle, she said, with all the paperwork in English — but soon wanted to do more, although she didn’t know how. 

Guedes, whose business is attached to her house, said people started knocking on her door asking if she had room for more kids, but she could take only eight at a time. 

“People were coming in, asking for more and more and more,” she said.

She learned about the free training being offered through Communities for Kids and signed up. The training gave her business experience and the skills to expand her certification, allowing her to care for 12 children at once at her center, “Blooming Daycare.” Now she’s a mentor to Aguilera and the other women who are getting licenses.

Aguilera opened her own child care business, “El Niño Del Tambor Daycare” early this spring. The name means “little drummer boy.” It’s in her basement, recently renovated to include cribs, small chairs and a table, organizers filled with colorful books and crafts, an alphabet rug and more. Her new license is taped to a marker board at the entrance.

She enrolled her first child mid-March and now has four children in her care, in addition to two of her own children. Aguilera said she could easily see herself hiring an assistant and taking on more children in the near future.

It’s something that changed her life for the better, she said.

“When I first started taking in kids, I kind of broke down a little bit because it came full circle,” Aguilera said. “I didn’t have the opportunity to stay home with my kids. And now I get to do this. I’m so happy.”

This story about child care solutions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post A small rural town needed more Spanish-language child care. Here’s what it took appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

A new report shows that at least 36% of annual greenhouse gas emissions in the United States come from rural America, but they’re mostly used to produce energy and food for urban and suburban America. 

And while rural communities – particularly low-income and rural communities of color – are exposed to a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gas emissions, they’re not receiving the federal investments to decrease these emissions. 

“If we really want to meaningfully reduce emissions, [we need to invest] in efforts that are rural to reduce the emissions that are connected to that consumption,” said Maria Doerr,  lead author of the report and program officer for the Rural Climate Partnership, in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “Rural America is the source of these emissions, but they are not the ones driving the demand that creates these emissions.”

The report was produced by the Rural Climate Partnership, a project of the nonprofit rural advocacy group the Heartland Fund. Using data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), they found that energy production and agriculture are the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions in rural America. Industry like natural gas, petroleum, and cement manufacturing was the third leading source, and transportation and residential energy uses were the fourth and fifth, respectively. 

Doerr said that the emissions produced by power plants are a particularly potent source of greenhouse gas emissions, and nearly half of those emissions are produced by rural power plants. “That energy is being shipped out to the cities and suburbs,” Doerr said.

While the rest of America benefits from this power, rural communities are exposed to the toxic air pollutants from this power’s production. And these effects aren’t felt equally. 

Approximately 37% of rural residents within a three-mile radius of rural combustion plants are low-income, and 29% of residents within that radius are Black, Indigenous, or people of color, according to the report. Long-term exposure to these pollutants can lead to respiratory and cardiovascular problems, immune system damage, and cancer, according to the EPA. 

The federal government has passed legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change, but very little has been earmarked for rural America. 

Of the combined total appropriations from three major climate laws – the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS & Science Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – only 2.3% of the funding is earmarked exclusively for rural communities, according to an analysis from the Brookings Institute. About 20% of the funding is rural-stipulated. 

Rural America should be prioritized for this funding because it’s at the center of some of the most carbon-intensive industries, according to the Rural Climate Partnership.

“In the vast expanse of rural and small-town America, there is a story that has been largely untold, one of significant emissions reduction potential shadowed by systematic underinvestment,” wrote Doerr in the report. 

Doerr said they hope this report encourages legislators to rethink rural America’s role in climate solutions. 

“I hope that this report can help start some powerful conversations about…how we support, uplift, and invest in rural America and rural-based climate solutions,” Doerr said. 

The post Report: Rural America Produces Greenhouse Gasses on Behalf of Urban and Suburban Areas appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Patty Coen was able to finish her bachelor’s degree because she had an abortion. Ever since, the Southwest Colorado resident has been an advocate for abortion access and reproductive justice. 

She worked as a nurse at a reproductive-care agency in Durango for about seven years. When a campaign started to protect abortion rights by getting a state constitutional amendment on the ballot, she headed the petition drive in rural Montezuma County, where she lives.

She said her personal story and her experience working at Planned Parenthood 

compelled her to get involved. 

“I worked at Planned Parenthood when Texas shut down abortion as unnecessary healthcare during Covid,” Coen said. “So I saw the people with uteruses drive 12 hours, have their abortion, get right back in the car and drive back to Texas.” 

Coen said she wanted to make sure that voters in Montezuma County had a chance to help get the amendment on the November ballot. 

“I really wanted our county to be represented,” Coen said. 

Although rural voters as a group are more likely than voters in large cities to support conservative candidates, that doesn’t necessarily translate into anti-abortion preferences. A poll of rural voters in swing states to be released this month by the Rural Democracy Initiative found that three-quarters of respondents said women should be in charge of decisions about abortion. 

“I know we [people who support abortion rights] are here,” Coen said. “You see the loud people of hate, and it’s like, yeah, they’re loud and they make you think they’re a lot of ’em. But I mean, wow, we got a lot of signatures.”

Abortion is currently legal in Colorado at all stages of pregnancy. The proposed Initiative 89 seeks to amend the Colorado constitution so that the legality of abortion in the state can not change in the future. It also would allow for public health insurance funds to cover abortion, overturning a current constitutional amendment prohibiting state insurance and Medicaid from paying for abortion care. 

To get on the ballot in Colorado, initiative petitions that seek to make changes to the constitution need at least 124,238 signatures with signatures from at least two percent of the registered voters in each of the 35 Colorado state senate districts. 

Cobalt, a Colorado abortion advocacy nonprofit, helped organize the signature gathering for Initiative 89, along with a coalition of organizations under the name Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom.

According to Laura Chapin, communications consultant for Cobalt, the petition was turned in to the Colorado Secretary of State with 230,000 signatures on April 18th, a week earlier than the deadline of April 26th. On May 17th, 2024, the Proposed Initiative 89 qualified for the November ballot.

“​​Rural Colorado was pretty awesome because people are really motivated. If you come to them and say, ‘we want to put abortion rights in the Colorado constitution,’ you get a really strong response. We’ve been really pleased with the rural outreach and the rural response,” said Chapin.

Coen, who lives in Montezuma County, said that even within Colorado there is not enough access to abortion care in the more rural regions, like Southwest Colorado. When Coen worked there, the Durango Planned Parenthood offered surgical abortions, but now only offers medical abortions. 

The Cortez Planned Parenthood, in Montezuma County, also offers medical abortions, but for a large chunk of the region including Montrose and the San Juan Mountain towns, accessing abortion care means driving over the San Juan mountains to one of two Southwestern Planned Parenthoods, west to Salida, or north to Glenwood Springs, a trip of at least 2 hours and including several mountain passes depending on the direction. 

At the same time that the petition drive to get Initiative 89 on the ballot was underway, a petition for an opposing initiative was also underway in Colorado to ban abortion after conception. The initiative did not receive enough signatures to appear on the ballot.

Abortion-rights petitions to add abortion access to state constitutions as a 2024 ballot initiative are in progress or have already been successful in many states including Arizona, Nebraska, Missouri, Maryland, Florida, and others. However, most of these measures only protect abortion until viability, which is not the case in Colorado. Colorado allows for abortion throughout the pregnancy. 

Montezuma County and Southwest Colorado’s location in the Four Corners makes it the ideal destination for out-of-state abortion seekers from neighboring states with harsher abortion laws like Arizona and Utah, or further away in Texas and Oklahoma.

“We’ve got to be a refuge state for this. We’re surrounded by states that are 100% against abortion,” said Coen.

The post Rural Coloradans’ Show Strong Support for Abortion-Rights Constitutional Amendment appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Throughout rural America, non-native English speakers are less likely than their urban peers to get proper support in school, sometimes leading to a lifetime of lower educational attainment. But some rural schools are developing multilingual education strategies to rival those found in urban and suburban districts.

In general, it’s easier to fund more diverse course offerings in bigger schools. From Advanced Placement U.S. History to Spanish immersion, more students means more funding. But in rural DuBois County, Indiana, administrators are prioritizing English-learner education. There, students have access to “gold standard” multilingual programming, a hard-won achievement for any U.S. school, but especially for such a small district.

“We are the only school in the region who started a dual language program,” said Rossina Sandoval, Southwest DuBois County School District’s director of community engagement, in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

To meet the gold standard, students in the dual language immersion program receive 50% of their instruction in English and 50% of their instruction in Spanish. Fifty percent of the program is made up of students whose native language is Spanish and the other half is made up of native English speakers. The program is currently offered from kindergarten through third grade, with plans to expand to fourth and fifth grade.

By developing a program with 50/50 language instruction and 50/50 student enrollment, students are able to not only learn both their native and target language from their teachers, but they are also able to learn from each other, Sandoval said.

“That has proven to be the most effective way to develop language skills,” she said.

When the program was first introduced, the school received pushback from both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking families. Spanish-speaking families felt the school should prioritize English learning, given that their children already speak Spanish at home. And English-speaking families worried that they wouldn’t be able to help their children with Spanish homework.

To address family concerns on both sides, the school shared information about the benefits of formal bilingual education. In addition to maintaining their conversational skills, Spanish-speaking students receive instruction in grammar, spelling, and reading in their native language. This approach helps students who already speak another language read and write in another language, too.

Learning two languages does not hurt a student’s ability to master either one. Bilingual children are shown to have better focus and logical reasoning, and – according to Sandoval – will be suited to a wider range of opportunities in the workforce.

“It’s natural, we want the best for our kids,” she said. “The best we can do is educate the community as a whole that this is the best method to develop multilingualism, this is the best method to enhance global skills and produce global citizens.”

Intersecting Problems

The Latino population in DuBois County has been expanding for decades. Today it sits at 9.5%,  which is approximately half the national percentage. But in Southwest DuBois County schools, more than a third of students identify as Latino. (The disparity in those numbers reflects higher birth rates within the Latino population and the uneven distribution of those families within the county.)

The demographics of rural schools have been changing nationwide. According to a recent report from the National Rural Education Association, 80,000 more English-learner and multilingual students were enrolled in rural districts in the 2021 school year than in 2013.

Historically, rural school districts have struggled to provide high quality education to non-native English speakers. When English-learner populations are small, it can be difficult to fund robust bilingual programming and easy to overlook their necessity.

Rural English learners sit at the intersection of overlapping structural problems in public education. The national teacher shortage is worse in nonmetropolitan places, and it’s most problematic in racially diverse and high-poverty rural schools. Nationally, there aren’t enough bilingual educators, or educators certified to teach English as a second language (ESL).

According to recent research, while English-learner populations are growing in rural places, rural multilingual learners are less likely to receive instruction in their native languages. And while federal guidelines require that all non-native English speakers receive specialized instruction, in rural places only a little more than 60% actually do.

DuBois County’s top-tier bilingual education program should be used as a model in other rural school districts, Sandoval said. “As an immigrant, as a U.S. citizen, I feel very proud… because this can be replicated in communities that look like ours.”

Support for these programs must be built inside and outside the schoolhouse, Sandoval said. “There has to be a degree of openness toward bilingualism or multilingualism.This is an effort that’s not just made by me, it’s made by the school and by the community.”

Programs that increase accessibility and trust with parents include “Cafe en el Parque,” a parent meeting held in Spanish that draws in over 100 families each month, and the “Emergent Bilingual” program, which meets after school and on weekends helps new immigrant students and families learn more about how the American education system works.

Programs that help establish community support and participation include “Fuertes Together,” a partnership with the public library where families can hear stories in Spanish and English and engage with cultural music, dance, and art. And a new program, “Bilingual Village,” helps bilingual students identify speaking partners in the community who can converse in the student’s new language.

A Wide Range of Strategies

When Esmeralda Cruz was a child in the 1990s, she immigrated with her family from Mexico to rural Clinton County, Indiana, where she lives and works today. “Back then,” she said, “there were not a lot of Latino families in the area. In my first grade classroom I only had one classmate that was bilingual.” This posed major challenges to her education: Esmeralda said that, instead of receiving proper language instruction, she was placed in classes meant to address learning disabilities.

Cruz’s experience is not unique, according to Maria Coady, professor of multilingual education at North Carolina State University. In places that aren’t accustomed to supporting immigrant populations, she’s seen English learners sent to speech therapy in place of proper ESL classes. “Schools might think that all these kids have special learning needs because it looks like they’re not learning,” she said, “when in fact, they’re just learning the language.”

As immigrant populations grow throughout the rural U.S., newcomers often find themselves in Cruz’s childhood position – navigating school districts unaccustomed to educating non-native English speakers.

Today, Cruz works as a Hispanic community engagement director for Purdue Extension. Prior to that, she was the health and human sciences educator at Purdue Extension office in Clinton County, Indiana.

According to scholars of rural multilingual education, schools that do have ESL or bilingual systems in place exist across a broad spectrum, from gold-standard bilingual education programs like the one in DuBois County to ESL sessions that require students to miss part of the school day and provide no native-language instruction.

In places with very small English-learner populations, Coady said, schools might pool resources and “bring in an itinerant teacher – that is, a teacher who might travel between several rural schools to provide ESL services.”

This is the least effective method of multilingual education for two reasons, Coady said: it’s disruptive to pull students out of class, and ESL teachers are only able to offer very limited amounts of time to individual students.

Where to Begin?

In rural places, small expansions in local industries that rely heavily on immigrant and migrant labor can create major shifts in student populations, said Holly Hansen-Thomas, professor of bilingual education at Texas Woman’s University. “And these teachers may not have the experience or the background to serve these emergent bilingual families that keep coming to work and to support the industry.”

For rural school districts inexperienced in providing multilingual education, said Hansen-Thomas, professional development is the place to begin.

Federal grants are available to support multilingual certifications for teachers and administrators. For instance, the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition offers a National Professional Development Program, which makes grants to colleges and universities to fund work on multilingual teaching skills for local educators. Hansen-Thomas also points to the U.S. Department of Education’s “Newcomer Tool Kit,” a resource for rural educators looking to support recent-immigrant students and families.

In Indiana, colleges and universities are attempting to build manageable pathways for multilingual educators who might not be formally trained as teachers. “Our pre-service teachers tend to be white and monolingual,” said Stephanie Oudghiri, clinical associate professor at Purdue’s College of Education. “Especially in the Midwest, as our demographics are changing, we need folks that are multilingual.”

Experts like Cruz stress the importance of listening to non-native English speakers themselves when building out these programs. “We’ve had a lot of focus groups and community conversations and I can’t tell you how many times people at the table have said, ‘Thank you for including me,’” Cruz said.

“I think oftentimes they do want to be at the table, they just don’t know how, and so we’re making sure that we’re listening to them and then going from there, rather than the other way around.”

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