Disproportionate Impact Magnified: Rural America’s Children and Families as Collateral Damage?

Building on GLR Week 2025’s theme of “Focusing on the Gaps,” this session zeroed-in on the outsized gaps impacting children living in rural areas. With the recent federal spending cuts and policy shifts to programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, and Head Start, these gaps have been severely exacerbated. The majority of the 350+ stakeholder coalitions in CGLR’s network are serving children and families in rural communities, and Census data shows rural children rely more heavily on Medicaid (47% vs. 38%) and SNAP (14% vs. 12%) than their urban peers. This GLR Week 2025 session offered the opportunity to learn from state and national advocates about the challenges and potential solutions that are being generated in local communities.

Moderator, and former Director of Rural Engagement at the U.S. Department of Education, Julia Cunningham launched the discussion with Gbenga Ajilore, Ph.D., of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Ajilore provided an overview of what constitutes a rural community based on economic and demographic data, grounding participants in what these communities look like and what makes them unique.

Cunningham then engaged with state leaders — Emily Moore of Voices for Virginia’s Children, Josie Green of Teach for America, South Dakota, and Mayra Alvarez, MHA, of The Children’s Partnership in California — about the challenges for children that are particular to their regions, including limited access to hospitals and health care options and the needs and impacts on Indigenous and migrant farming communities. Green explained the unique context for sovereign nations and the ways in which educational leaders need to work through federal policies to best serve children in these nations:

To be a sovereign nation means holding a unique relationship with the U.S. government, given treaty obligations that establish this nation-to-nation relationship. [How the sovereign nations respond to federal policy] is potentially complex, given this legal relationship. Our tribal education leaders who are holding that complex reality are constantly working through layers to identify what will be in effect. Importantly, they are continuing to always put the well-being of Lakota Wakan and what is working for Native students at the forefront of any decision — relentlessly caring for Lakota children now as they’re presently in existence in their vital humanity but also ensuring that they can have a future.

Cunningham continued the conversation with two national advocates who are primarily working to ensure specific streams of funding from the U.S. Department of Education are not so diminished as to leave children in rural communities without much-needed services in the classroom. Melissa Sadorf, Ed.D., of the National Rural Education Association and Kayla Patrick of The Century Foundation highlighted historic funding streams that are uniquely directed to support rural communities. They also discussed how rural education leaders are determining ways to “blend and braid” both federal funds and local supports to continue to provide what students need to be successful. Sadorf explained how this works:

You’re braiding Title I for academic intervention and IDEA to ensure that you’re supporting inclusive practices. And maybe 21st Century Learning Center funding to fund extended programming beyond school hours. And then maybe you’re tapping into your local church for donated meals and snacks. None of those dollars would have covered the full model alone, but together they’re able to build something pretty powerful. I want to be clear that blending funds is not a solution for inadequate funding, but it is a strategy to stretch insufficient dollars as far as they’ll go. And it is a testament to rural innovation and determination.

Thank you for joining this GLR Week 2025 learning and engagement opportunity. We hope that you found it informative and engaging. And we would like to remind you that we have a series of rebroadcasts throughout August and return to live sessions on September 2 with an important discussion featuring two former Secretaries of the U.S. Department of Education. We hope that you will plan to join us for a rebroadcast and join us again in September!