Year: 2023

By Marnie Werner, Vice President, Research April 26, 2023 Click here for a condensed two-page summary of this report.  Click here for a printable version of this report. Click here to register for our upcoming webinar on Wednesday, May 3, 2:30 pm. In January, Abdulla Gaafarelkhalifa was the only reporter left at the St. Cloud ...

EXCERPT: “In many rural towns, a grocery store is a thing of the past, as more of these small businesses fold. Yet entrepreneurs and community initiatives are working to turn that trend around. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 76 counties nationwide are without a single grocery store, and ...

EXCERPT: “The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association, six county jails and other partners have joined together in a pilot project designed to help children and incarcerated parents maintain family ties. Having an incarcerated parent can lead to an increased risk of illness, poor mental health, substance abuse ...

How the K-12 general education revenue program’s complexities work for rural districts March 2023 By Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher For a printable version of this report, click here. To watch a short video about how the education formula works, click here. To read a short blog post about the research, click here. Increasing education funding ...

  The Center for Rural Policy and Development were presented with a question – if you only increase one piece of the education formula, does it benefit certain types of schools more than others? In this presentation, Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher, presents an overview of a report that provides an answer to this question. The ...

March 2023 By Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher To nearly everyone, the education formula is a mystery. And where there’s mystery, there tends to be misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and incorrect narratives. Making changes to policy that is well understood is hard enough. Imagine trying to change policy that isn’t well understood. This is the predicament rural schools ...

EXCERPT: “The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) launched a $1.9 million test pilot that aims to improve public transportation needs across western and southern rural Minnesota. If the test pilot goes well, it could be expanded state-wide and improved upon. ‘This is a huge step forward for rural transit agencies to provide trip planning and ...

EXCERPT: “There’s great excitement as Alissa Kretsch hides purple hearts around the playroom in her home day care. Kretsch has been a child care provider in New Ulm for more than a decade and runs the business from her home. Her services are in demand, and it’s only getting busier. ‘I get calls like at least ...

EXCERPT: “According to a July 2022 report by Feeding America, rural counties make up 63% of all U.S counties but represent 87% of counties with food-insecurity rates in the top 10%. That means counties with the highest rates of food insecurity are disproportionately rural. ‘In North Dakota, 95% of the land area in the state is ...