A little town in southwestern Indiana has defied the odds, created an outstanding school option for its students, and set an example for what a rural community can do.
More than a decade ago, Sullivan County was a dying farming area on the Illinois border. Then, the community — 25 miles from the nearest midsize town — began a small charter school in 2004, nurtured it with community investment, reaped newfound pride and energized their sagging economy as a result.
Rural Community Academy (RCA) in Graysville now serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade and was the first rural school ever chartered by Indiana education officials. All others are urban and inner-city, with about 35,000 kids enrolled statewide.
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After a decade, RCA is earning praise among state and national school choice advocates who note its innovation, community transformation and excellence in student achievement across the region. What is so different about this school?
Heart of the Matter
“This is the heart of the community, this school,” said Gary Hayden, who had retired after a successful real estate career in Georgia and Florida, only to move back home to family in Indiana and set his sights on helping RCA move ahead.
It meant that much, he said, to see how the extended community was responding to the unique program that was going on inside a rehabbed 1927 schoolhouse building, which now houses its own art gallery. He went all 12 years there, graduating in 1960, and is buoyed by its renaissance, helping to start a foundation that contributes to its growth.
“The success of the school has been the community getting behind the school, and also the people in it, working hard. To me, it’s very gratifying to watch,” Hayden said. “It’s exciting to see what they are doing. One reason this school even exists is Susie Pierce. She fought for it. She is the glue.”
Pierce serves as RCA’s chief operating officer and school leader, partnering alongside a chief academic officer to lead the school. Her team, from teachers to cooks, takes ownership of their jobs and offers feedback on how to do better. All input matters.
She said charters that are given flexibility in how they educate must rise to higher standards for accountability and be transparent about their missions. It’s a challenge she gladly accepts in exchange for freedom.
“I fully believe that we should be held to the very same assessments and standards that every school should be held to,” Pierce said. “I don’t think we should be set aside because we are charters. I think we should be much more transparent and we should prove that were doing the best thing for the child. I think our assessment scores bear that out.”
Education is Local
At RCA, class sizes are capped at 20 students or less. Twenty percent of the curriculum is place-based — meaning learning is focused around the community and its industry, which includes mining — and the rest is a push toward stronger core academics like math, science and reading.
Students take field trips to places such as cemeteries where they learn not just local history but math — calculating ages based on headstones. If students are learning about rectangles, for example, they all bring in cereal boxes and examine them firsthand.
“Every kid is going to be able to paddle down Wabash River,” Pierce said of using the local area itself to teach. “Let’s not buy earthworms and formaldehyde. Let’s take them to farms and cut up a chicken. Let’s make it real life. That’s the interesting part. We can do whatever we can.”
Not that it is unstructured.
“We track those instructional minutes,” said Pierce, whose high energy and drive to do better comes through in her voice. “Our academic success has been good.”
In the 2013-2014 school year, for example, RCA beat all other similar schools in the country on required tests. Such outcomes have shown people from more traditional schools that charters have a place.
“Those people are starting to respect the charter school movement because we have done so well,” Pierce said.
The Title 1 school of 153 pupils accepts students from all over the county. This year, 45 students are in special education classes, and 60 are recipients of free and reduced lunches. They don’t pick and choose. No one is excluded if there is space.
Enrollment is capped at 180 and RCA often has a waiting list for different grades, even as it’s located about eight miles from a main county road and a far drive for many parents who make it anyway because they know its value.
Firsts
RCA also boasts a lot of firsts. They were the first to extend their school year from 180 to 185 days, the first to hold full-day kindergarten and offer Junior Achievement and Spanish in all grades. New projects include a music program and a growing band.
The county includes about 20,000 residents, but Graysville is an unincorporated city with 1,082 people living in 401 households. Per capita income there is $19,000 annually while median household income is $43,000. Farming makes up 64 percent of industry along with coal mining. The school brought in about 30 extra jobs.
Indiana passed its charter school law in 2001. RCA started three years later (through Rural Community Schools, Inc, a nonprofit corporation), and many locals asserted it would not work.
“When they got the charter schools, the community felt it wasn’t necessary. The feedback was ‘get over it. You are taking taxpayer dollars from local schools.'”
Pierce quickly learned they were wrong.
“I didn’t realize we didn’t get any local tax money. The money followed the student. We weren’t taking money away from local tax money. We don’t get any. So there is a big funding gap of about 33 percent.”
Nonetheless, RCA employees all earn pay the same way.
“Our school — it’s a staff. No one gets a raise unless all get a raise and that includes administrators.”
Not that money can solve education’s struggles, Pierce made clear. “You can’t throw money at problems sometimes. That is not resolving it. Here, we’re small and we put the kids first and make a decision on what’s best for them — for each of them,” she said, with flexibility to make changes if curriculum or instruction methods aren’t working.
Also key is local partnerships — 15 required each year from groups as diverse as the local Red Cross, hospital, Lions Club, Salvation Army and others. The school also holds four public events each year — raising funds to give back to the community.
Parental involvement is required. Families must agree to donate 20 volunteer hours per school year — from field trips, to driving, to reading to classes — “anything they feel comfortable doing.”
“We want them involved in their children’s lives in the school.”
Pierce said she is proud of where RCA has come but won’t stop pushing for better.
“We don’t want to be a crossroad across from the cornfields. We want to be small but mighty.”
This is part 3 of a 3-part series, which includes Charter Schools Spread Across the US and The Schools that Defy Politics.
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