 This meeting is now being recorded. Again, welcome to today's webinar. I'm very briefly. I'm Caitlin Howley and I'm for enough to serve as the Associate Director of the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center for the ARC. ARC is one of 15 regional centers that's funded by the U.S. Department of Education to provide capacity building technical assistance to state departments of education and other education stakeholders. We serve Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. I'm really pleased to introduce today's presenters to you. First up is Dr. Holbert Harman. He's one of the nation's leading experts on public education in rural America. He's currently an independent consultant and co-director of the Rural Math Excel Partnership, which is a project funded by a 2012 U.S. Department of Education investing in innovation grant and operated by the Virginia Advanced Study Strategy. He served as an executive assistant to the superintendent of the West Virginia Department of Education, associate director and acting director of the Eric Clearinghouse on Rural Education in Small Schools, and a senior research and development specialist in a regional educational laboratory. His work has been honored by the National Rural Education Association, and he's published wisely in the Rural Educator and the Journal of Research in Rural Education. John Hill also joins us today. He's executive director of the National Rural Education Association and is a professor of education studies at Purdue. He's served as a middle school math teacher, middle and high school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent. He's also involved in the Purdue Educational Leadership Initiative for small and rural schools and the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Program. His interests primarily include the role of instructional leaders at the district and building level, rural education leadership, and rural capacity. And we're very pleased to have them both here today. Very briefly, so you have a sense of where we're going, our objective today is to consider strategies for supporting rural school districts in terms of implementing best and promising practices, increasing fiscal capacity, recruiting and retaining teachers, developing policy and building partnerships, and finally increasing economies of scale. So let's get rolling. I'm going to turn things over to Robert now. Robert, it's all yours. Thanks, Caitlin. It's indeed a pleasure to be able to participate in this webinar, one of the few activities around the country that is focusing on the unique needs of school systems in rural areas. And in this presentation, John Hill and I have taken some of the information from a previous webinar that the ARCC sponsored. And here we attempt to address some of the issues regarding the capacity limitations of small and rural school districts. This is a particular challenge in some places more than others, particularly where the school systems might be located in isolated areas of the country. In the four states, of course, that target this webinar, I think it's surprising to some to know that there are very small school systems. As we learned in the last school system, the person who was participating as a co-presenter had a school system with about 800 students. That's not real common in Virginia because they're countywide consolidated school systems, as they are in the four states that we're addressing. But I know John Hill, the co-presenter in this one, will particularly be referencing some situations that are particularly applicable to the small ones that may exist west of the Mississippi. I'd like to start first by addressing this issue of implementing best practices. And, of course, this webinar is focused on support strategies. How can state departments provide technical assistance in particular, or along with that, arrange, in fact, initiatives that can be expected to be implemented in rural places? And, of course, we're talking about small rural school districts or rural school districts. So some of the very basic issues, of course, in this topic of implementing a best practice, which is a concern almost in any state across the country, there is an initial interest to identify a best practice, a model, a program, something that is believed to be essential for school systems to best serve kids, and therefore an initiative is underway with the hope that school systems will implement it. Some of the very basic concerns, of course, as we've listed here, determine first, of course, if the practice was, in fact, designed for use in a rural context. While that seems like common sense, it is most often the common practice that specific initiatives are developed in urban places with the hope that they will be useful for school systems in rural places. So it's particularly a concern if a practice was, in fact, designed in a rural context, and to if evidence exists regarding the success of that practice from use in a rural place. Technical assistance, of course, is absolutely essential as we learned in the last webinar because of the limitation capacity of many rural systems. And so the focus of the technical assistance coming out of a State Department, while it may be common to focus on a central office as an efficiency strategy, particularly in countywide systems, there may be a need to examine who, in fact, is supposed to implement the practice and be concerned with focusing the technical assistance on that particular level of the school system. So if it's math teachers that's supposed to implement something, assuming that contacting central office people will result in a math teacher receiving the appropriate information could be an erroneous assumption. The issue of avoiding the one model fits all approach, I think all of us are aware of that concern. I think it makes that worse is also than one that's developed in an urban place for which then we have a one model expected for everyone to implement and it may not be possible at all. And another basic concern, of course, is in technical assistance, it's easy to, in providing a generic approach, make an assumption that information enough of it will enable people to implement a best practice, when in fact this could very easily simply overload the person who's wearing a multiple hat in the local school system and therefore achieve the opposite effect. So in essence, the more strategic technical assistance approach focused specifically on the person who's supposed to implement the practice is a better strategy. Some of the things that a Department of Ed can consider when I was in the State Department and then of course frequently talk with people in those capacities still things are changing for the good, I think. For example, we now have web-based kind of practices and so a State Department can very quickly establish a repository and particularly have practical how-to documents on that website such that the people in the rural areas now have access to resources like that that they didn't have in a not-too-distance path. So a web-based repository of best practices with the related how-to documents can be an essential kind of useful assistance item by State Department. Integrated professional development, of course, we know is occurring in most places. In question, however, though, may be whether or not the essential support materials are with that and that was addressed in the first workshop with the co-presenter indicating in the small district he was in oftentimes. No one's available to develop materials and so forth, so you can have professional development, but if the materials are not there to accommodate implementation, you shouldn't expect much to happen. Webinars, of course, presented by a panel of in-state rural practitioners tends to be effective because people want to hear from people like themselves. So any State Department assistance where webinars can involve people who are actually performing the role that's expected to be implemented tend to be successful. Face-to-face conferences with a specific rural strand have success. People still want to be in face-to-face meetings. However, again, having a real focus strand of some sort will be most attractive and beneficial to the people from the small rural school systems. YouTube demonstrations, of course, are becoming more common and they're very effective because they're a just-in-time flexible kind of delivery where people who want to watch it at 7 o'clock at evening can do so. Network of Field-Based Practitioners and Innovators is an excellent strategy for a person in the State Department of Ed to know some key people in the school systems who they can rely upon and ask questions about a particular best practice to see whether or not before rolling it out, it could have the intended effect or whether they're going to be unintended consequences which a person would like to avoid. An evaluation checklist approach is useful. That is, people having information that enables them to quickly gauge progress in the process as well as the impact of a particular best practice. And so with people that are wearing multiple hats, simply having a quick way of examining what they're doing in a checklist format accommodates a capacity limitation of less time available by personnel. Recognition of a school and or individual success is an important item for trying to get best practices implemented because practitioners pay attention to each other's success as does school board members, as do school board members. A partnership with support organizations is almost essential in small rural school district locations whether it's a regional education service agency or a co-op or a center or some university kind of entity. Support kind of partnerships are essential to give the capacity for many small rural school districts to implement a best practice. Including personnel from a rural LEA to serve on state committees can be very helpful to help give insight to the development of a best practice as well as to be an advocate for people in the rural areas who are asking questions about a particular practice. So many states try to do this when implementing a particular best practice. Get input from a committee structure that includes a rural LEA individual. Funding incentives of course are important in some places regarding personnel use of time and particularly where they don't have personnel. So initiatives of best practice that are expected to be implemented by existing personnel with no funds provided to hire an additional person which is an absolutely essential person in a key project will have little chance of implementation. Research development evaluation studies of course the reality in many places when you ask people what do you really know about your rural school districts in the state. It simply causes more questions to be asked than answers. We don't find a lot of evidence of many studies going on that pay particular attention to how particular practices will work in rural areas. So that research development evaluation studies focused on rural specific can be an essential kind of activity to help implement a best practice. I'll spend the next few minutes focusing on supporting strategies for increasing fiscal capacity and I do want to thank everyone for the opportunity to speak and these remarks will be made from a national perspective. But some of the things that the Department of Eds could do in terms of building capacity would be in the area of grant writing assistance and the use of awards funds for professional development specifically. Consider employing full time grant writers for rural districts. They do not have the capacity to write proposals of consistent high quality to be competitive in many instances. And then beyond that point districts may not have the personnel to monitor those grants possibly if they do win. Another example would be flexibility in the use of federal and state funds and be thinking along those lines how can you leverage state dollars to gain federal dollars and think beyond the Department of Education. There are many other federal departments that have monies available for educational purposes. An example it doesn't even come from a department that comes from the FCC as this whole e-rate issue. And some states apply as a state to provide internet service to really drive the cost way down for local school districts. Consider competitive grants for rural LEAs or schools and that would be part of your program at the state level which would give them some capacity to try some things that they ordinarily wouldn't have the facilities nor the personnel to get involved in. Be an advocate for the funding of rural schools and look at the impact that sparsely funding allocations may have in state aid formulas. In fact what we see from our organization around the country is an effort to pull out those indicators for rural schools and general ed funds. And so that needs to be monitored and then look at state transportation aid. For example some states have what's called a linear density index and that is they look at the number of pupils per mile as a factor in calculating funding for transportation so that if students are spread out then rural districts receive more dollars per student per mile in terms of funding those services. Designated funding for facilities, labs, technologies, many rural districts do not have a large tax base. The manufacturing jobs have left. The number of people that are involved in farming due to increased mechanization and the use of technology have decreased. And so there needs to be assistance in terms of updating labs. We just participated in a study I think it was three years ago where the average rural lab was either had been remodeled 14 years ago or had been built 14 years ago. And when we look at labs especially in schools today the use of probes, the use of micro labs, the use of virtual labs. This is a whole different ball game and many rural districts need help in that particular area. Loan forgiveness programs. There are some state programs where if a teacher or administrator moved to a rural school especially in tough to fill positions that their loans are forgiven over a period of time or they receive assistance for loans. And then sharing and collaboration incentives among LEAs and began to think about what are things that you could do that would cause districts to share services, to share personnel perhaps. And again, think beyond schools. We have some interesting things in some states where schools, local government and hospitals create consortiums to purchase products or to provide services. So those are some ideas in terms of increasing fiscal capacity of rural districts. Great. Thanks very much, John. Kim, will you please unmute the participants' phone lines? We'd like to pause and see if there are any questions or comments. All guests have been unmuted. So feel free to speak up if you have any questions. Please feel free to ask questions or make comments in the chat box if you'd like. Okay, it doesn't sound that we have any questions at this point so we'll continue with the rest of the webinar. Kim, will you please mute participants' phone lines at this point? All guests have been muted. You can unmute your line by pressing star six. Thanks very much, Kim. Okay, I'll turn it back over to John and Hopper. Just a couple thoughts here on supporting strategies for teacher recruitment and retention. Be thinking of becoming part of some real transition to teaching programs, especially in the STEM fields. I've personally been involved in one of those programs where we recruit mathematicians and scientists and we found funding to pay their tuition while they're in school and to pay their living expenses and in return for that training and licensing they have to teach in a rural school for a three-year period and obviously if they complete that obligation then they don't have to pay anything back. The other thing that we see in some states, especially in the western part of the United States, is providing housing at a lower cost for teachers, especially in the STEM areas. And in one particular district in Colorado, the Building Trades program has built seven houses and those are made available to teachers and administrators for a rent that is considerably lower than if they were renting some of those in town. Another thing to think about is creating a leadership academy for district and school leaders. These would be persons who are already on the job, but the job is changing radically. Many administrators, especially in rural areas, are isolated. They need to keep up with their craft and they need to be involved in networking and collaboration with others and leadership academies provide them the opportunity to do those three. Holder? Yes, and I believe, unless the slide is different for other people, the one I'm looking at is one slide that's advanced. I believe we need to go back to one slide where it's the Supportive Strategies for Teacher Recruitment and Retention. There we are and we just quickly, a couple items to highlight here. State Departments of Education in most states commonly approve teacher education programs in some fashion, so knowing whether or not those programs have some consideration in them for graduates who might then go to rural areas. So that's something State Departments of Ed might consider as they examine the issue of teacher prep and how then, consequently, people who have the students taught in rural areas and so forth and have been informed of what it might mean to teach in a rural school location might be in a better position to be successful as a teacher and of course that, as we all know, is a positive aspect if you hope to retain a teacher. That first year of experience can be so critical and whether or not there is a mentoring program. Training recognizing co-opting teachers or student teachers in rural schools could be something that could be examined and advocated by the State Department of Education. A web-based depository of job announcements for rural public schools and I think a lot of states are doing this, some are using Ed service agency systems, but making job announcements more available because the pool of candidates is a particular issue in rural places. Examples of effective recruitment strategies for rural schools would be useful to make those available. A few years ago I developed a document for the Southeast Regional Laboratory involving superintendents in the states in the Southeast where that document suggested strategies and so forth for how to recruit teachers in hard to serve places. Subject specific mentoring programs are critical in rural areas and of course we know the problem of why they don't exist. Typically if you've got one algebra teacher in a high school it's kind of hard to give a mentoring experience by someone in that same subject so some programs are evolving now over the web and so forth to help subject specific teachers get the kind of mentoring experience. A generic experience will be adequate for a person understanding the school culture, being able to address policies in the school system and so forth, and that is the subject specific content area that is the one that typically is not addressed. Parent and family, community engagement kinds of issues are important, particularly in working in a rural place where you cannot escape the reality as a teacher of having to meet with parents and family members on the street or of course maybe in school, it's a much different experience where teachers are absolutely absorbed as their personal experiences in the community become essential and information that people know about so how to work in an area becomes important. There are others that people can consider but we want to move on to the area of support strategies for policy development and partnership building. This first one of course is one that may exist in states because you now have a coordinator for the REAP program however that person may also be a multiple hat wearer just like the people in the school systems and they may not have much time for that role except for unique times during the year but it's important if it can happen that in the State Department of Ed someone is knowledgeable about the rural school systems and can share information and of course these are most successful where that person has some access to the Chief State School Officer as when I was in West Virginia the state superintendent access because oftentimes people may or may not have access to that position such that the adequate information about rural schools are able to be there. These pilot periods or longer implementation periods for new state ward policies in the rural school systems they with the inadequate personnel are likely to need some longer implementation periods and of course I think good practice regardless of whether the rural or urban is the pilot initiatives first in some small scale way to determine if the impact will be and the consequences will be what's expected. The issue of collecting credible results of a policies impact in rural LEAs we would like to think occurs however what we see most often happening is a study or some document report will be produced that says a particular initiative is being implemented and what the results are but it's seldom that you see any results specific to the rural school systems. So therefore it's a missed opportunity for sharing the successes and the lessons learned so that the rural school systems can have some knowledge base as well as some hope that that practice is intended for them. Customized reporting requirements someone has often mentioned that we need a short form for the small rural LEAs like we do with the IRS for doing our income tax. The reality is they have to fill out the same information whether you have three schools in your school system or whether you have 30 and of course this becomes an issue where there is very limited personnel. The forming partnerships to address mutually beneficial goals of schools and communities is important and I know here John you would you want to share some particular kinds of activities that are possible. Sure and many of our rural communities access to medical care is very difficult and as time moves forward and new policies are implemented in terms of health care it will become even more difficult to staff offices in rural areas and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is submitting or I think it's $17 million and grants are available right now to implement telemedicine in rural areas specifically using schools as the focal point and these telemedicine centers can be used with many insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIPS programs and so forth. But where departments of Ed can really help out is making local districts aware of these grants and educating how these telemedicine centers can be integrated with local insurance benefits and then helping them come up with a local match and there are companies out there that are willing to make the local matches so that's a big one. Working with Cooperative Extension Service especially in some of their primary initiatives, their popcorn economy initiatives, project-based learning initiatives, again in essence this is another set of educators that can help us in our goals and so I would encourage cooperation between the Department of Ed and the Cooperative Extension Service. As the U.S. Department of Ed is in the process of developing core assessments when you look at those RFPs for the Park Consortium and the Smarter Balanced Consortium they are required to create libraries of resources and in those libraries of resources will be sample lesson plans, formative assessments, professional developments on how to teach each of the standards and language arts and mathematics and so it's going to be critically important for departments of Ed to become familiar with those and really encourage local districts to utilize those resources. Now the fields of occupational therapy, speech therapy and some issues with autism can all be dealt with over the Internet and departments of Ed can be familiar with those services. Again it's hard to find therapists to work in sparser is or districts are paying those individuals from port to port when they travel to provide therapy and when it's done over the Internet you only pay for the time and Bowling Green State University has done some interesting research in this area that has found that especially in the areas of speech therapy that this therapy is as effective or more effective over the Internet than it is face to face and it's more efficient in terms of cost. Finally economic development, look at partnering with other departments within state government and other departments within the federal government to assist local districts in their economic development efforts. Again if we can help a local district build capacity then that builds the financial capacity to support educational efforts. I think, are we going to break for some questions at this point? I think we're going to finish the rest of the material before we break for questions. Okay, that sounds good. I wanted to mention one thing about the economic development for rural. Of course there's a certain reality here that in many cases may not be reinforced by the concept of what ed reform is. I recall back when I served in the state superintendent's office and served on a state rural development council, the fact of the matter was the only time public school education was ever brought up was when I would bring it up because people in rural areas know it's a better investment of scarce resources to invest in sewer systems and roads and healthcare and those kinds of things than it is to invest in young people that are going to be leaving the rural area. So there's a reality therapy here that we need to be aware of that this partnership of how public schools not being excluded from the real world concerns of local places that relate to bettering communities. And the reason I bring that up is because in too many places, public education has in fact become a separate entity. And John, as you mentioned earlier about the extension service, if you talk to people in the extension service, they will quickly tell you that they've almost been excluded from the public school curriculum because of the, in some measures, no child left behind law or state accountability measures where everything that is to be offered in a public school has to be tied to the state accountability standards. So they have to go and revise all of their programs and so forth in order to get into a public school. I simply bring this up to say that in a state department of education role, being a partner with other agencies in the state helps particularly in also advocating public schools as a solution to the issues of economic development and workforce development in rural places. And it's important to note that because in too many places, it's being considered not a benefit. Simply graduating students from a public school system and indicating that there may have been a good education experience is in and of itself not convincing to people that they need to invest in public education. Particularly if it is only providing evidence of how students end up having to leave the area. So it's a win-win relationship of schools working together, but that has to start at the state level as well of working with other state agencies. Strategies for increasing economies of scale are important as we move to the next one, Caitlin. And this is because of the limited capacity that the school systems have. There's a whole host of things that can be done by the State Department of Education in thinking about how they might support the increasing economies of scale. Let's see, did our slide move to the next one? The slide we're on is the supporting strategies for increasing economies of scale capacity. Yeah, I advanced it to that one. Okay, well, mine hasn't moved yet. There's not real technologies moving slower out here. I'm a victim of reality. So some of the things that can be supported from a State Department of Ed perspective. And again, we're focusing particularly here on the systems of educational service agencies, whether it's RISAs in West Virginia or Cooperatives in Kentucky or centers or some other kind of configuration. And there again, these don't exist in all states, but they do exist in 45 states. So the issue of how we're trying to increase economies of scale as a support structure and then how State Departments, in fact, link with these in ways that it helps deal with some of the capacity limitations of rural school systems is important. For example, the vetting of programs and products is an important one. And John, I think you wanted to say a little something about this one. Right, there are just a ton of people producing online programs. And quite frankly, in many rural areas, rural districts are looking to online programs to maintain a variety of classes or for credit recovery, those kinds of things. But what I can share with you, that much of it is of low quality. And these programs need to be vetted for rigor. They need to be vetted for accuracy. They need to be vetted to see that there are the kinds of things that students will become engaged in. And the programs need to have the ability to hold students accountable, not only throughout the course, in terms of formative assessments and so forth, but in terms of an end product. And so it would really help many rural districts if we were to vet those programs for them and let them know what's out there. And then the synthesis and use of student data at the school level. Our teachers are trained to teach and they're just not data experts. And we need people in the state departments who can explain the use of data. And it must be in terms that are useful for teachers and administrators. And it also has to be done in a way that it can be useful to their clients also. And so finding individuals within the state department that can do that is critical to building capacity at the local level. Over. Another issue with that particular one is the issue that unless the information is presented to the school system and particularly at the school level in a way that a principal and teachers can use it, it's very unlikely that the teachers themselves are going to have time to disaggregate data and present it in ways that we think will be most useful for them. It's simply a timing issue. And in some cases, John, I know you mentioned it's an expertise issue as well. So the whole issue of data use we know is important. There's a belief, of course, that for teachers to take ownership in the problems or deficiencies of a school that they have to be using data. But the point is somebody else has to be crunching the data, putting it into infographics or presentations that teachers can look at and make some determinations. Not all the other assorted kinds of work that typically goes along with data use. Some of the other items, of course, in the economies of scale that's mentioned, you see in the list, the administrative support for new initiatives, trying to get a new initiative off the ground in a real place where there's very little support for planning and so forth can be especially a problem. So an education service agency or some kind of support function on a regional basis where there's the planning effort and the database decision making or a host of other things that you see we've listed that can particularly be available, including grants management. Some school systems do not go after grants and I guess we see a certain criticism here that there's been grant opportunities but rural school systems do not pursue them. In many cases, it's because it's simply looking around in your district and wondering who's the volunteer that has the time to do that and then there's the issue of managing the grant itself and so some support service has to be available in an administrative capacity for that to happen and also reporting services. So in many cases, that service agency might perform some of these that give school systems as a group capacity to be successful with grants. Cost savings and quality purchasing, we know that's occurring in a lot of places and it's absolutely essential in saving money for school systems and consequently making some instructional materials and equipment available that would not be available if it was an individual school system trying to do this. So states can encourage this. Also the encouraging of course offerings on a regional basis. In some places, career and technical education is offered on a regional basis in some places around the country. Dual enrollment, AP, all those kinds of course offerings that too often do not exist in an individual small rural school or school system can be encouraged as we think about that in a state kind of way. Professional development opportunities for educators, of course, are not possible particularly in the subject specific areas where there's small numbers of teachers. So again, thinking about how leveraging a regional approach of some fashion enables that to happen and the concept of a customized technical assistance to educators, whether it's a teacher content coach or other kinds of support. As you notice, most of these we're talking about end up being support kind of people that are available or can be available on a regional basis if school systems will collaborate, share resources, perhaps invest some of their dollars, gives them some opportunity to have a support of personnel or a particular service that they could not have on their own. And one of the items that we see that's evolving around the country is the support of the grow your own programs. The candidate pool for teachers particularly in math and science in some other areas is often small. It can be in special education and in foreign languages. And so the issue of how those kind of programs might be supported at a state level where school systems come together, create some kind of an approach to grow their own particular personnel that are of the caliber that's needed to change schools today is very important because it's well known if someone is from somewhere else, they are likely to go somewhere else. So recruiting somebody into an area from somewhere else is a much less effective strategy than finding people that are committed to the area who are the right kind of people who can be given the support to learn the qualities for implementing key reform initiatives, being objective about making decisions and working with people in the community are much more likely to be a successful school person who stays. Technology access, whether it's Internet or technology services, this was addressed in the first webinar how simply indicating to educators in the rural school systems that all this information is available on the Internet is not viable if they don't have access to a quality Internet service provider and or if they're spending almost all of their money simply to get access to the Internet then there's no dollars left for purchasing technology services. So some of these issues can be addressed on a regional basis, again in the concept of an economy of scale by using an ed service agency to make this possible. Program evaluation services, of course, are almost non-existent yet now one of the most essential services that's needed for people to implement programs that get results and that's where we all are today. Today is about gone although, as John mentioned, we have so many providers of so-called successful programs coming to the school superintendent door or principals door saying we have the answer to your problem, the issue of vetting those in a way that there is evidence that programs work in the context of rural schools is becoming more critical all the time. So program evaluation services are important for implementing best practices for students but they're also important related to that next item of grant seeking that without evidence of programs, and this is the case in states and we know in certain states there is very little information available about the success of their rural schools. So on the one hand on a national basis to compete for a grant on a national scale to have no information collected with credible evidence of the success of the program makes it very difficult to compete for grant money without worthwhile and credible evaluation kinds of information. The grant seeking services in many cases the ed service agencies will provide someone who helps people know about grants and so forth but as John and I have talked in the past and in fact a colleague and I offered a workshop at the National Rural Vet Association a few years ago on how to more successfully organize and develop grants and what we found to our surprise the people in the workshop were people wanting to in essence provide the second income kind of situation for themselves. The reality is most rural places don't have people and so they need someone to help write the grants it's not just enough to give them the information that there's a grant opportunity. Other things listed there of course are school improvement consultant services. A regional approach can help give capacity because they can draw on the expertise that exists in the region and if superintendents and principals and others will share expertise that way some of the best effective consulting services come from the very people in the region who have been successful at implementing a program that the state wants implemented. So it can be an effective strategy as well as of course if there are consultants needed from outside the area usually an agency that is regional in nature such as a co-op or a resa or something of that fashion has more resources to bring someone from the outside that the educators may need to hear from that otherwise they would not and certainly as we see budgets dwindling for travel expenses there's less hope that teachers and administrators can be going to conferences far away. Statewide contracts this can be common in some states where to leverage the most economy of scale out of the available resources that exist a statewide contract can be released such that certain education services or products are available to schools that they obviously would not be able to afford otherwise and obviously students will not get the services or teachers will not get the certain kind of product that they need to best help students in the rural areas. States supported common core of services we see this occurring around the country where as states are looking to make ed service agencies a better partner yet they may not fund them very much and of course we're talking to people I know in this region where in some cases the ed service agency is almost totally entrepreneurial they exist only because they're able to either win a grant or get the resources available from their member school districts but in some states if the state has a certain support system in place that focuses on a common core of services being provided by these regional assistance agencies then this is a better strategy for supporting implementation of ed reform initiatives in the local school systems but because of limited dollars then the issue of a common core becomes important. What is the essential common core services that the state might support that ensures that the school systems and consequently the teachers and ultimately students receive some essential kind of support services for the education. And lastly a state supported center of excellence among ed service agencies we see in places where particularly with limited dollars the old strategy of everyone being equitable in services provided is not the same as saying dollars are very limited therefore we're going to have one entity in a state that's going to be with expertise in a particular area whether it's math or reading or whatever it might be. So the notion of having a concentrated expertise in one part of the regional education system that it then becomes in essence a support system for other ed service agencies in the state for which all of them tap that particular expertise to serve their particular member districts. Obviously not as good as each person having or each ed service agency having all of the services needed but the reality of tight economics means we're trying to find ways where sharing the limited resources and the expertise gets a greater impact at the school level. Okay, thank you very much. It's touched on most of all the things that we had planned. Great, thank you. Please unmute everyone's lines. All guests have been unmuted. Thank you. We'd like to invite you now to make comments or ask questions about what you've heard today or how the ideas might relate to your own state context. So feel free to jump in. Okay. Well the chat box continues to be open so if you'd like to make a comment there. Susan Arred from Kentucky writes in the chat box that the presentation reaffirmed Kentucky's approaches. They've relied heavily on educational cooperatives and collaboration. That really does align with what you all talked about today. Okay, so feel free to jump in if anything occurs to you and again the chat box remains open. Caitlin, this is John. One of the things that people may think about is they need to seriously get involved in these broadband issues. The FCC right now is considering changing rules on e-rate and raising money and the plus to that is is that there'll be a bigger tube going into every school in the nation. But many services are not available through technology because rural schools especially just don't have the bandwidth. The other issue that takes place in some of the states that are represented here is the whole idea of deregulation where the big telephone companies the whole system deregulated so that they can use market value in their pricing or even the offering of services which means that either services may not be there in rural areas or the expense will be a greater. So it would be who it's all to get involved in those issues if we see technology as one of our solutions. Yeah, that's a great point, John. None of curiosity. This is Hobart. Does the COMP Center facilitate or is it the position to facilitate what might be occurring in each of these states in rural school systems regarding best practices? Can the COMP Center facilitate in any way the sharing of those among these four states? We can't directly do the sharing but we can help state departments plan for and implement that kind of sharing. Absolutely. Okay, so for example, if some of the REAP program schools where they're receiving the federal REAP money if it was known what was successful in some of those places there might be a way to get that shared among the region in the four states. Absolutely. Any other comments or questions? So if we prepare to close this webinar, I'm going to sum up real briefly what we've heard today from talking with Hobart and John. A key principle for one is that support for rural districts is best when it's customized to accommodate rural strengths and constraints and is responsive to context, which is something that Susan pointed out earlier today in the chat box. The second theme is that SEA can use very wide range of support strategies to help rural districts with a variety of efforts, including implementing practices, enhancing fiscal capacity, recruiting and retaining teachers, developing policies and partnerships and achieving some economies of scale. And then finally some important support that we heard about today include regional education service agencies, rural targeted resources and programs, designated incredible advocates for rural districts at the state level, and deliberate inclusion of and engagement with rural district and state efforts. We're going to follow up today's discussion with a third webinar scheduled for Friday, August 30th at 3 o'clock. We'll feature Kai Schaft, who's director of the Center on Rural Education and Communities. And the webinar will focus on the socio-cultural dynamics of rural places, how they might manifest in rural districts and in interactions with the State Department. And then finally how states might address any resistance to state initiatives that they encounter from rural districts. We'll be sending you an email invitation shortly. We'd like to invite you to take a very short survey about this webinar. I've added a link to the chat box. You can access it just by clicking on it. And later we'll send you an email with a request for some more information about these events. We take your feedback seriously and your feedback helps us improve these events. And as always, we invite you to connect with us in any way that you'd like. We have a number of mechanisms where you can reach us. On the web is via Twitter, YouTube, and of course the old-fashioned way, you can give us a call. Your goals are ours in lots of ways and these services are intended to help you achieve them. So thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you, Hope, for sharing your insights with us. And we'll be in touch soon with an invitation to the third webinar. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you.