2005 NREA Conference

It looks like the 97th Annual Convention of the National Rural Education Association is going to be a great event. Bob Mooneyham and the program committees deserve a lot of credit for developing a program that has much to offer participants.

In my admittedly biased opinion the highlight of the convention will be the 4-hour grant-writing workshop Hobart Harmon and I will be doing on Tuesday (November 8) morning. This session is a shorter version of our grant-writing institute for rural schools and communities. With state and federal funds for schools becoming scarcer, rural schools have to be able to compete for public and private grants. Our workshop is designed specifically with rural communities in mind.

The other session I'm really looking forward to attending is the U.S. Department of Education's focus group on doing another Condition of Rural Education report. It's been over a decade since the last report and a lot has changed in rural America since then. The focus group is on Wednesday (November 9) morning.

I won't be able to attend the Research Symposium on Saturday and Sunday due to a prior commitment. I'm disappointed that I won't be able to ask some questions of the presenters. I'd like to ask Tom Farmer, Director of the National Center on Rural Education Support what his center would do with an extra $1 million a year. In an earlier post (More R&D for Rural Schools) I wrote that his center should get an extra million dollars a year and it would be good to know what we would get in return.

From the representatives from any of the regional educational laboratories, I'd like to know why over the past 5 years the labs haven't fulfilled their legal obligation to develop strategies to utilize schools in revitalizing rural communities? Based on a search of the lab's network website, it doesn't look like any products have been developed in this area.

If anyone would like to ask these questions for me, I'd be happy to post their report on Mr. Rural ED. Let me know if you'd like to do it so I can give you some additional background information.

More importantly, anyone interested in rural education should register right away for the NREA conference because it will be money well spent. Speaking of money, don't forget to bring plenty of it for the NREA Foundation Auction on Tuesday night!