As a rural charter school leader, I know how critical it is that our school exists. Kids are with us as a last resort of sorts, not necessarily because they are bad students or even bad kids (though we have those challenges as well), but because they were marginalized or seemingly shrugged off by other schools.

Large, overenrolled district schools do what they can, but they cannot serve all students. Our school cannot possibly do all the extracurricular things, but we can know kids and serve them where they are and how they most need it. Plenty of needs to be met by plenty of options.

I really hope president trump and congress will listen to rural, not only is alternative schools important to me but to many others. If it wasn't for Bluesky online charter school I would have dropped out. They saved my education, I don't think I could go back to regular school after my horrible experience with bullies.

Rural charter schools can and do serve as important academic lifelines for their students. To learn more see here - http://safalpartners.com/re... But, taking a note from Minnesota's Ted Kolderie, the concept of chartering has the potential to be transformative for rural districts. Fact is that charter schools and rural districts share similarities - they often lack scale, struggle to recruit and retain top talent, and operate on financial shoe-strings. Charters and rural districts can and should work together to share lessons, opportunities and find common solutions. Consider this challenge - federal data from the 2011-12 school year indicate that 47 percent of rural districts in the country did not have even a single student enrolled in AP coursework. In contrast, less than three percent of urban districts had no students taking AP coursework. Can charters and rurals work together to offer more AP to their neediest students? Why not try.