“We're nine miles from the board building, but the perception is that we're 100 miles away out in farm country”: The case of a rural school in a non-rural district

Abstract

Abstract Due to historical district reorganization, Maplewood Elementary School remains the only school within its community: a rural school in a non-rural district. Participants' definitions of community are analyzed using local and institutional definitions of community to explain the distance (literal and figurative) and estrangement of this school from its district. Findings illustrate participants' definitions of community in geographic and demographic ways that are comparative (rural/non-rural) in nature. Educators articulate a third layer of community influencing their work: a local and institutional community. Theoretically, these findings complicate the neoinstitutional perspective that eschews the effects of the local ecological community and instead demonstrate in a rural community the institutional forces of a local and professional community: the school district. In addition, findings suggest the isolation of the school may influence the role of the rural school principal, the teachers' relationships to their rural students, as well as students' experiences of school transitions.