Before Greg Lovelis became the superintendent of Stonewall Public Schools near Ada, Oklahoma, he was an alum. It’s a tight-knit community, and it’s where he wants to stay.
“I won’t consider bigger and better,” Lovelis said. “You know, it’s just fine right here.”
At Stonewall, which serves about 450 students, Lovelis wears many hats. He’s the chief executive and financial officer, the human resources department, a part-time bus driver and coach. When it snows, he’s shoveling salt on the sidewalks. If a class needs a substitute, he’s available.
“You can’t just come in here and shut the door and say, ‘I’m working on the budget today, don’t bother me,’” Lovelis said. “That’s what you are charged with in a small rural school. And we don’t say that to brag or ask for pity.”
“It’s just what we do. It’s what we love to do. It’s what we dedicate our lives for.”
He said going back to school for a doctorate was something that had always been on his mind, but the right opportunity had yet to present itself.
When nearby East Central University announced a new program, it seemed tailored to his experience: an all-online Doctor of Education in Rural Education. As a two-time ECU grad, Lovelis decided to enroll.
“For them to take that initiative and start this program with a specific focus on rural schools, I couldn’t pass it up,” Lovelis said.
Higher education takes on rural education
In 2022, ECU published the first edition of its Chronicle of Rural Education, an academic journal focusing on issues in rural schools.
Jerry Mihelic is the dean of the College of Education and Psychology at ECU and heads the new program. He said the journal began as a response to a lack of academic articles specific to rural education. Once the journal was in regular publication, the next step became clear: creating a doctorate program.
“We started investigating what it would take to bring a doctorate in rural education,” Mihelic said. “At the time… we discovered that there were only three in the nation. And that even encouraged us more that there was a need.”
Now, in its first semester, 72 students have been accepted, and 52 are currently enrolled. About 90% are from Oklahoma. He said the department was “shocked” by the numbers, but it showed a clear demand for specific instruction on rural education.
More than half of Oklahoma’s schools are considered rural, serving about 30% of Oklahoma students.
Mihelic said rural education presents unique challenges the program is trying to address with courses that include topics on special programs, finances and legislative policy.
It features an applied dissertation, which requires students to research issues in their communities and put solutions to the test at a local level.
“[With] the applied dissertation, you’re working with a challenge or situation and trying to see if there are solutions, or what other extra research is out there,” Mihelic said. “When you’re done, the application is ‘Did this work in your community? Could it help other communities?’”
Students will be required to submit their dissertations to an academic journal for publication. The aim is for other rural educators to easily find the research and adapt it to meet the needs of their communities.
He said preliminary ideas include supporting students stretched thin by extracurriculars, navigating special education requirements with limited resources and finding ways to expand wraparound services for remote communities.
Oklahoma rural schools face unique challenges
Jonathan Booth is the superintendent and principal of Tannehill Public Schools near McAlester, which serves about 140 students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. He enrolled in ECU’s program hoping it would help him find solutions for issues his community faces.
“It’ll make me go a little deeper and maybe come up with some answers and some newfound perspectives on how we approach some of the things we’re dealing with right now,” Booth said. “And bring my staff in and say, ‘Hey, I’m doing this work with my class. This is what I’ve found. [These] are some of the things I’ve talked about to other superintendents,’ and really help us focus and get more specific.”
Tannehill is a high-poverty area, and the school is on 100% free and reduced lunches. Booth said students are often raised by single parents or grandparents. Many experience food insecurity and childhood trauma, and it’s on the school to fill in the gaps — even on a thin budget that depends more on state aid than local property taxes.
“Just like any other rural school, I think [it’s] just [lack of] access to quality resources sometimes and access as a whole to a budget that allows you to do all the things that some of the larger districts … don’t have to deal with,” Booth said.
To do that, Booth has looked to grants. Three years ago, he wrote and was awarded a $300,000 grant to improve student safety and mental health. He said he writes grant applications often to get students what they need, and he intends to use the tools learned from the doctoral program to bolster future grant applications with research and strategy.
For his applied dissertation, Booth is considering investigating his district’s exceptionally high population of students needing special education services, such as remedial instruction and speech therapy. He said about 50% of his students require them.
“Is that something about rural education — their upbringing? Their situation? Their poverty area? Or is it more trauma-based?” Booth said. “I see that on a daily basis here, and so that was one of the reasons I wanted to dive into it.”
The goal, Booth said, would be to start tackling the roots of some of the social problems contributing to lowered student outcomes — some of which the school already does. For instance, it provides students with three meals a day and a backpack of snacks for weekends to help with food insecurity. He hopes through his research, he can identify more ways the school can step in to support the “whole child.”
According to the National Rural Education Association’s “Why Rural Matters” 2023 report, 19% of rural Oklahoma students are on an Individualized Education Program (IEP), a legal document outlining the delivery of support services to meet the needs of children with disabilities. Oklahoma ranks third nationally for its percentage of rural students with IEPs.
The NREA’s state ranking on the conditions places Oklahoma eighth overall for the highest priority states. This means it has some of the “most comprehensive needs for policymakers’ attention,” as determined by a “convergence of key factors impacting the schooling process [that] result in extreme challenges to rural schooling.”
Year after year, Oklahoma breaks its record for issuing emergency teaching certifications, signaling a deficit in traditionally certified teachers. Erika Wright, founder of Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition, said it’s an issue felt especially hard in rural districts.
“It’s harder to recruit and retain quality teachers for classrooms that are geographically isolated. There’s few professional and family resources for families when they move out there, from jobs available for their spouses to availability and proximity to health care resources,” Wright said.
Because of that shortage, Wright said Oklahoma rural schools’ high population of students with special needs are also left to manage with a shortage of special education teachers, paraprofessionals, specialists and therapists.
Wright cited other challenges, like food insecurity, health care deserts, low internet connectivity, high transportation needs and a shortage of resources to meet student mental health needs. She said she’s looking forward to seeing how the new doctoral degree can help administrators tackle the challenges of rural education.
She cautions, however, not to think of rural schools as only bastions of challenges. She said rural schools are in a unique position to connect intimately with each student and know their background and home to better meet their needs holistically.
“There’s something magical about this sense of family, and that we’re all in this together,” Wright said.
At Stonewall, middle school principal Jim Skender is also enrolled in ECU’s program. One of the topics he’s considering for his dissertation is finding solutions to transportation challenges.
For instance, Stonewall took on nearby McLish Public Schools when it was annexed about 20 years ago. That means the distance between Stonewall’s main campus, which serves elementary and high school students, and its McLish campus, which now houses middle schoolers, is a ten-minute drive up a bumpy, rough road.
Skender said buses have to undergo regular upkeep from Stonewall’s transportation technician — who is also the maintenance director and teacher of two STEM classes.
Stonewall’s entire district spans about 200 square miles, but there are only enough drivers for four routes. The district has had to get creative with finding transportation options for sports and activities that don’t conflict with regular routes. And because Stonewall uses a compressed schedule — which incorporates longer school days so students aren’t in class on Fridays — some students are boarding before 6 a.m.
Skender is also looking forward to ECU’s course on rural finances, hoping to bolster the district’s resourcefulness in getting students the programs they need on a thin budget. Like Tannehill, Stonewall has also looked to grants to fill the gaps. One of Skender’s middle school teachers was recently awarded a grant to purchase an aviation simulator that’s now a launching point for students to discover potential career options.
“A young man just told me today … that he’s actually considering going into the military because he had never even thought about flying a plane,” Skender said.
That resourcefulness, Lovelis said, is a necessity in rural school administration. While it makes for long work weeks, he said it’s worth it.
“That’s what we’re expected to do, and that’s what we love to do, is just get them across the stage as a 12th grader, prepared,” Lovelis said. “Despite all these barriers and backgrounds and experiences that they come to us [with] as three-year-olds, to get them through and beat all that to get them across, that’s the vision.”
