On an early morning late last spring about 100 educators from districts serving California’s rural areas trickled into a meeting hall north of Sacramento for the inaugural launch of a network meant to address their isolation and frustration.

Among them were staff from county offices of education, school superintendents, principals and a handful of students. They hailed from as far as southern Imperial County on the Mexican border to remote northern Modoc, from Mono County to the east to coastal Humboldt in the west.

Their common interest: Addressing what they call a crisis in rural education. The goal of the nascent California Rural Ed Network, which launched online Oct. 1, is to join forces to attract new resources, share expertise and focus attention of policy makers to schools outside urban and suburban California — many of them underfunded and serving a preponderance of low-income students.

To continue reading this article by Lee Romney, to go: https://edsource.org/2018/cali...are-resources/603083