Brannon Ellis and his wife, Kate, had been living near Seattle, working remote jobs and homeschooling their three children. But when the couple decided to move to Indiana to put down roots closer to family, they wanted to live in an area with good public schools.
That led the family to buy a house in Muncie within walking distance of the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and the Humanities, the top-ranked public school in the state, and the nationally recognized Burris Laboratory School.
“Even though we’re homeschooling, the fact that we have those other good options like Burris was a huge draw,” Ellis said. “The fact that those are right next door is really attractive.”
As remote workers, Ellis and his wife could have lived anywhere in Indiana as long as it wasn’t too far from an airport and their family. They looked at other cities such as Richmond.
But it was the proximity of the Indiana Academy, Burris and Ball State University that helped persuade Ellis and his family to move to Muncie.
“If my wife wanted to stop homeschooling, we wanted good options for them to go to school,” Ellis explained.
Ask any remote worker with kids the main reason they consider moving to a certain town, and most of them will give the same answer: high quality schools, according to a study published by Ball State’s Center for Business and Economic Research.
A Purdue Extension survey gauging amenities most valued by potential residents found that quality of local schools almost tied for first place with a factor that nearly everyone can relate to — cellphone service.
“Nearly every study of the issue has identified school quality as playing a dominant role in household relocation decisions,” the Ball State researchers wrote.
Top-ranked schools in mid-sized cities like Muncie make it an easy sell to work-from-home parents interested in enrolling their kids in high-quality programs.
But in rural communities battling to attract remote workers to grow their population and economy, many school districts face declining enrollment and shrinking revenue that make improving education difficult.
That’s especially important in Indiana, which has one of the nation’s 10 largest rural student populations, according to a 2019 study by The Rural School and Community Trust. Nearly 37% of all districts are rural and nearly 250,000 of the state’s 1 million students are enrolled in those districts.
At the same time, Indiana is considered one of the 10 states most urgently in need of new educational policies to better address the needs of rural schools and students, the report says.
Add it up, and one of the biggest barriers to attracting remote workers to rural Indiana could be its school districts, which are often too small to garner the kind of funding needed to offer the advanced classes and programs that remote workers want for their kids.
“If they’re very small, it’s very difficult for rural schools to compete for remote workers,” said Michael Hicks, an economist at Ball State.
‘THE CRUX OF THE ISSUE’
Not all rural districts are created equal. Some are among the best performing schools in the state.
That includes Northwestern High School in Howard County and David Turnham Education Center in the North Spencer County School Corp. The U.S. Department of Education in 2022 designated both as National Blue Ribbon Schools, the highest mark of quality issued by the agency.
High-achieving, A-rated schools — and almost exclusively those kind of schools — are growing their student population, Hicks explained. In turn, the cities and towns where those schools are located benefit.
“Schools are driving population growth,” he said. “And it makes sense. If you’re moving around, the place you’re most likely to settle for a permanent period is going to be a place that has the right schools for your kids.”
It also makes sense that districts with growing student populations will continue to do well, said Christopher Lagoni, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association. That’s because school funding is directly linked to student population, with the state providing schools about $6,700 per student.
“The General Assembly funds students, and if there are less people, that is less funding for your school,” Lagoni said. “That is the crux of the issue.”
That means less money to pay teachers and offer advanced high-school courses, creating a downward spiral in school quality.
Location, lack of amenities and low teacher salaries also leave poor, rural schools facing extreme challenges with hiring and retaining qualified educators, according to a report from the University of South Carolina.
The national study of teacher labor markets spanning nearly 15 years found that rural schools were much more likely to report challenges hiring English-language learners and STEM teachers than urban districts.
Boil it down, and more funding means better schools. But finding ways to funnel more money to rural districts to boost quality and attract remote workers is no easy task, Lagoni said.
FUNDING FAILURES
Outside of state funding, the most straightforward way to increase revenue is persuading voters to approve referendums that would increase their property taxes to pay for school services and infrastructure improvements.
The problem? It’s tough to induce voters to raise taxes on themselves, leading many referendums to fail. As of 2020, less than half of the state’s nearly 300 districts had even attempted to put an education referendum on the ballot in the past decade.
A new state law approved last year has made it even more difficult to pass referendums. The new law requires a complicated — and sometimes misleading — explanation of how much the levy would raise taxes, Lagoni argued.
“They changed it in a way that made it somewhat convoluted for voters and for school districts to specifically understand what the referendum question was asking,” he said. “It’s confusing.”
That played out in November’s election, when four of eight school referendums on ballots in Indiana failed. Administrators blamed, in part, the complicated, dense and state-required language on the ballot.
“When they put forth policies that limit or inhibit our ability to raise dollars locally, that’s a poor policy choice,” Lagoni said. “I think people are willing to make those investments in their local schools if they actually understand what those investments are.”
Bringing back the state’s Small School Grant program could also help rural schools beef up teacher pay and advanced-class offerings to jump start school performance, he argued.
During the life of the program, it accounted for about $16 million in categorical support for small schools, according to the rural schools association. The grant was discontinued in 2010.
GO BIG OR GO HOME?
But small schools — and programs that contribute to their existence — are the problem to begin with, according to Ball State economist Hicks.
The best solution to free up dollars for school funding is to consolidate districts, he argued. By combining bus, food and health contracts, reducing the number of administrators and cutting overhead costs, consolidating two districts would save about $1 million, Hicks estimated.
If each district had one high school, that means each could see an infusion of $500,000 to increase pay, train more teachers to teach advanced courses and attract top talent — all of which would boost school performance and make it more attractive to remote workers who might consider moving to the district.
“You could go from being a sort of undistinguished school that’s not going to attract new residents to one that is able to do just that,” Hicks said. “I think every part of Indiana should consider consolidating corporations — but not necessarily schools, because that’s a very idiosyncratic situation.”
Jay County Community Schools is one of 16 districts in Indiana that encompass an entire county with one high school. The Jay County district serves more than 3,000 students with a consolidated, central administration.
Superintendent Jeremy Gulley said by saving money on operating expenses, the high school is offering a slew of popular dual-credit courses. The number of kids receiving college credits while in high school is well above the state average, he noted.
“We probably couldn’t have done that without consolidation,” Gulley said. “You’re getting better programs and better opportunities for the kids, and it probably allows us to be more competitive with urban or suburban schools.”
Rural schools will have to consider dramatic changes such as consolidation to become competitive in the fight to attract remote workers, said Keri Miksza, chair of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education-Monroe County.
And it’s not just school districts that need to be open to change, she argued. Thriving rural schools exist in communities that work hand in hand with educators to implement new programs and ideas, including consolidation, to improve their schools, she argued.
“It’s community stakeholders that support the schools and embrace change that are succeeding,” Miksza said. “In counties where you find issues, there’s this disconnect between the school district and the community.”
Superintendent Gulley agreed that one of the major perks of consolidating into one countywide district is the efficiency and ease of working with the community to implement changes.
That proved especially useful when setting a CollegeChoice 529 Investment Plan, which is administered by the state and incentivizes students to put money away for college.
By working closely with community groups to help fund the plans, Jay Schools ranks fourth in the state for the percentage of students with a 529 savings account despite half of the district’s students qualifying for free or reduced lunches.
“We didn’t have to get six districts to agree to this,” Gulley said. “You don’t have to get consensus among all these schools as you work with your economic development partners or county or city organizations.”
For towns struggling to attract new residents, improving local schools could finally tip the scales to reverse years of stagnation and economic decline in rural Indiana, according to Lagoni of the small schools association.
After signing up with MakeMyMove, an Indianapolis-based company targeting workers with higher coastal salaries looking to leave major metropolitan areas, Jay County officials in February started touting the school district as a reason for remote workers to move to the area.
And with the explosion in those workers looking to move to areas with a low cost of living and ample outdoor amenities, the time to improve rural schools is now.
“This really is a renaissance opportunity to attract workers and attract people to communities,” Lagoni said. “I think rural areas are poised for an explosion. People want to live in small communities and love to live in rural areas.”