Shrinking rural school districts threaten Republican strongholds

Districts experiment with structural changes as political resistance to new funding leaves Republican-leaning communities to absorb the fallout.

A rural school bus travels an increasingly empty route. (Photo by Grant Faint/Getty Images)

Education Week reports that 70 percent of districts across Wisconsin have lost students over the past decade, and the trend is similar across much of rural America. In California, some small districts that once enrolled more than 1,000 students in the early 2000s …