In Wyoming, the state's school funding model recaptures money from affluent districts and reallocates it to districts with fewer resources. This unique and heralded system has allowed Wyoming to keep the doors of its rural, one-room rural schoolhouses, which often are a key part of a communities' fabric, open.

The Nez Perce Tribe and Lapwai School District are making a concerted effort to keep the tribe's language alive -- as part of an elective, every day students at an Idaho high school have the chance to learn the language from members of the tribe.

A sprawling rural school district in Idaho has placed two-way radios with every teacher that connect directly to first responders and triage bags in every classroom as part of a plan to increase safety and coordination in emergencies across nine different buildings. The idea is to cut down response times from fire and police and deal with emergencies onsite. Teachers train monthly with the radios and the district may add an app would use GPS to locate students if there's an emergency.

Since Wyoming passed legislation in 2018 requiring all grade levels to teach computer science curriculum by 2022, teachers have spent significant time outside of work getting themselves up to speed. The idea is that these coding skills will transition the state's economy away from the coal industry and keep young people in the state. However, some critics note that there are few success stories of technology clusters in remote areas.

A six-week, half-day kindergarten jumpstart program in Billings, Montana is helping students to get acclimated to the classroom before formally entering school. While the "preschool-lite" offerings are not meant as a stand-in for a comprehensive preschool experience, they are a step towards closing the achievement gap, local officials and school administrators say.

Placing students into smaller groups with peers of similar learning ability allows schools to allocate resources to struggling or underprivileged students. The Peterson Elementary School in Kalispell, Montana, has begun to close the achievement gap for students of lower income families by creating three tiers of educational development. Teachers then tailor curricula around the needs of each peer group.

In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, where more bears and more people are increasingly occupying the same general space, the Montana Bear Education Working Group is prepared. By holding workshops and events to teach locals how to interact with bears, carry bear spray, and adopt habits to minimize potential conflict, the group reached over 20,000 people last year and continues to educate more people.

Cut Bank, Montana has incorporated education about Native Americans in all grade levels with a special emphasis on and participation by Blackfeet Nation students because of the reservation's proximity. This effort is also state legislature: the Indian Education For All (IEFA) law was passed in 1999 and funds schools conducting the curriculum. Cut Bank School is special because of how Blackfeet Nation students contribute to the teaching, but students are also learning by reading stories about American Indians, learning words and phrases, talking about the first Thanksgiving, and playing traditional music.

Funding from the US federal government is helping one Utah nonprofit bring educational resources to children in Montana. UPSTART, developed by the Waterford Institute, uses computer programs to teach children academic lessons. The program is geared toward rural students and students otherwise socio-economically disadvantaged. With a grant from the US Department of Education, Montana will begin a pilot program with the software.

Native American children are 2.5 times more likely to experience trauma than their non-Native peers. Recognizing the significant impact of trauma on these students and others, a group of Montana public schools has fought against funding shortages and lackluster buy-in to employ a trauma-sensitive approach to teaching. One school nurse explains, "All teachers are trained in how to respond to behaviors by asking questions such as, ‘I wonder what happened to them,’ versus ‘Why are they acting this way?’”

Making space for mental health awareness in school curricula aids in suicide prevention among teens. Schools in rural Montana have begun to adopt the Youth Aware of Mental Health program (YAM), which originated in Sweden. An initiative at the Center for Mental Health Research and Recovery at Montana State University succeeding in developing the pilot program, launched in 2018. The ongoing classes serve as a safe space for discussion and student-driven activities, using role-play scenarios and teaching students how to look out for signs of mental illness and reach out for help.

In Montana, an elementary school is changing the dynamics around bullying and suicide through the Say Something Assembly program, which helps create an environment for students to feel safe and empowered to speak up. Montana has the highest rate of suicide in the country and the assemblies are designed to help youth understand it's OK to be struggling and to seek help. School officials also offer a companion program of support from trusted adults who can continue engaging and helping students.

Trauma-informed care and social support systems encourage resilience in the face of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). With evidence of strong links between childhood trauma and long-term health, behavioral, and even social issues in adulthood, programs like the Best Beginnings Children’s Partnership of the Flathead Reservation and Lake County in Montana and the BARR (Building Assets, Reducing Risks) curriculum promote healing and resilient thinking. Creating positive, supportive environments also reduces the likelihood of passing down inter-generational trauma.

Having a trusted network of adult mentors promotes social engagement and resilience in kids. The Kaleidoscope Connect program in Seeley Lake, Montana teaches seventh and eighth grade students the importance of trusted adult support and healthy decisions using colorful balloons, strings, and anchors as a metaphor. The two-year curriculum aims to address challenges ranging from rural isolation to student trauma by giving kids the tools to build healthy relationships with multiple adult mentors inside and outside of school.

Kaleidoscope Connect is a curriculum program that helps middle school students build strong relationships with adults. The program helps students define what is important to them in relationships and helps them develop the skills to connect well with adults who support them. This curriculum is designed to help combat mental health problems before they arise, and give students a strong support system that they can seek help from if they need it.

Pintler Suicide Awareness and Prevention in Montana trains community members in a mental health first aid method called QPR: Question, Persuade, Refer. The state of Montana is encouraging citizens who regularly interact with large populations- people like teachers, bus drivers, and custodians, to complete the training so that they are prepared when they encounter someone who is contemplating suicide.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for adolescents in Montana. The Arlee Warriors, a high school basketball team, and a group of students at St. Ignatius High School, are initiating conversations to de-stigmatize mental health issues and make their schools a safe space for their peers to seek help.

After a 2010 mill closure led to school staff cuts and student departures and threatened to compromise the central role of the K-12 institution in the community, a small rural town on the outskirts of Missoula took a risk and opened its doors to out-of-district students. By welcoming over 100 new pupils through a screening process and benefiting from the resulting extra state funding, Frenchtown jumpstarted a district-wide revival.

Montana saw the rise of child abuse and neglect cases due to parental substance abuse, particularly with those using methamphetamine. Family drug courts are reversing this trend due to a more holistic approach striving for permanency through rewards and sanctions program, frequent testing, and treatment.

Montana, home to nine Native American languages, becomes the second state to fund indigenous language immersion programs in public schools. The same languages were once forbidden, but now they are helping to preserve a disappearing culture and closing the graduation rate gap for Native American students.

A school district in New Mexico is finding success with a dual language education program. A regular school day for an elementary school student in a Gadsen school district school might entail reviewing their math or history in Spanish or English, depending on the assigned language that week. “Our bilingual programs are not just for English learners, they’re for all of our students," Mayra Valtierrez, the director of language and culture at the New Mexico Public Education Department, said. "That’s something that’s unique to our state."

In Thoreau, New Mexico, many of the district's teachers live in the "teacherage," a neighborhood of modest, affordable homes set aside for the town's educators. Thoreau's model, which offers rent subsidization and a built-in community, is just one example of strategies rural and urban areas are using to combat teacher shortages and low teacher salaries.

Taos High School's EQ Retreat is an opportunity for seniors to share their experiences with stress and trauma with underclassmen, providing a relatable voice and lessons for overcoming the challenges inside and outside the walls of high school. "Peer-led social emotional learning is the answer," the teacher-leader of the retreat said.

At Lynn Middle School in New Mexico, local partners have joined together to bring social services, such as wi-fi, clothes, food, and health clinics, to students and their families on the school's campus. Advocates argue that these extra services offered are not in fact "extras" but instead essential components to a quality education.

In the past few years, an influx of oil field workers to Jal, New Mexico has put pressure on the town's child-care offerings. Several teachers are pioneering a creative solution. By using funding from several sources, Bright Beginnings Child Development Center has colocated in the local elementary school, cutting down on travel time for working parents and creating benefits across programs.

In many states, schools are now required to offer computer science curriculum. But in New Mexico, particularly in rural towns, there are few resources in place to expose students to the growing field. In Melrose, a town of 700, the state's Supercomputing Challenge is an attempt to fill this gap. By participating in after school sessions and submitting their final work to the competition, teens who wouldn't otherwise learn these highly marketable skills may even receive related college scholarships.

To improve its consistently high truancy rates, last academic year Española Valley High School implemented a new truancy and dropout prevention program aimed at shaping up poor attendance. The results are yet to be determined — but debate still rages within the school about the best method for battling truancy.

To address the lack of available WiFi outside of school settings, a local college in Farmington, New Mexico, offers students the ability to check out wireless hotspots for one week at a time, While the school's resources are limited and aren't able to provide for all students, the program has shed light on the need for Internet services in rural areas around the country.

A New Mexico network of native schools, called the NACA-Inspired Schools Network, addresses the failure of traditional schooling to incorporate native culture into lessons by designing a culturally relevant curriculum for students. Beyond cultural education, the network also requires students to take at least two Advanced Placement courses and apply to at least 10 colleges to help level the playing field for native students in New Mexico.

In New Mexico, independent libraries that operate as non-profits provide services—in addition to traditional library services—that are not readily available throughout the state and especially in rural areas. Libraries provide early childhood education and pre-school classes as well as spearheading community projects such as a radio station and mural creation.

Many families in rural New Mexico still do not have high speed internet access at home. In Farmington, the public school district, a local college, and nonprofits are working to close the gap in the digital divide for students by addressing access to technology and the internet.

In New Mexico, public libraries are funded by municipalities. That means, if you live in an unincorporated town, there’s no funding stream for a local public library. But, in northern New Mexico, residents in several towns have joined together to create independent libraries that have transformed their communities.

Taos High School has recently lost a couple of students and a recent graduate, all of whom committed suicide. The school has developed an Emotional Intelligence Retreat for its ninth graders as an opportunity to form deeper connections and build their own emotional understanding, in order to help them cope with hardships.

Native American students are 237% more likely to drop out than their white counterparts. Organizations like the Native American Community Academy (NACA), are changing those statistics by creating curricula that focus on tribal identity values. These alterations have proved successful as graduation rates and college attendance have risen among Native American students attending NACA.

Colorado has one of the highest rates of suicide for both adults and children in the country. Ignoring concerns about liability issues, one school is giving high school students a mental health screening to determine how and when to best intervene to help struggling teens.

It's not just soaring tuition expenses that prevent students from completing their college education - emergency expenses such as medical care and car repair can also be disruptive. A new program at Fort Lewis College in Colorado provides microgrants to students who find themselves in these situations.

What started as a telephone tip line, Colorado’s anonymous tip program, Safe2Tell has now become an app that is publicly funded and part of the Attorney General’s office. The program gives students a way to report potentially dangerous situations they hear about or read online. While Safe2Tell does receive some false reports, overall, it has bolstered a sense of trust and protection in schools across the state.

A K-12 public charter school in Colorado was facing a shortage in resources when it came to mental health counseling for students, so professional counselors have started training students to help. These students act as volunteer peer counselors and provide support to their fellow students by giving them a place to talk about their struggles and stressors.

Inclusion, access, and relatability – these are the foundations of Colorado’s “Below the Surface” program aimed at preventing teen suicide. The program is a text line that teens and adults can use to contact an on-call counselor, 24/7, and has been driven largely by teen voices who have experienced suicide and depression up close. Spreading the message about the program is a series of marketing materials, all conceived of by teenagers, that speaks to the disconnect between how people act and what they’re really feeling.

In Colorado voters approved spending money from marijuana tax sales on education. As much as $2 million is distributed to Colorado schools to spend on evidence-based anti-bullying programs. “Usually it means getting students, teachers and parents and the community involved.” The effort is working, “the percentage of students that reported being bullied dropped from 59 percent to 25 percent last school year, and the state was ranked third in the country for best bullying practices.

Landed, a philanthropic for-profit organization, has loaned money to 90 Colorado school district employees for down payments on homes. This funding fills a pressing gap - in Denver, the average home goes for over half a million dollars while the average teacher is paid an annual salary of $57,000. As Landed expands to 14 new Colorado districts, it stands out from similar initiatives for its generous down payment loans and focus on securing teachers permanent housing instead of rental units.

Western State Colorado University is implementing an on-campus program called "Sources of Strength". The program helps prevent suicide by connecting trained students with their at-risk peers. The program will be used alongside the "question, persuade, refer" training that is administered to students and faculty to be used in a suicide crisis situation.

A Colorado-based educational organization (Right on Learning) has expanded its services beyond tutoring to bring "preschool in a bus" to a mobile home park in the Denver area. Right on Learning hopes to eliminate the barriers and cost of travel for many young learners and by doing so to offer more children the opportunity to improve their social skills and start kindergarten on the same level as their peers.

A Colorado nonprofit takes a "place-based" approach to improving student outcomes. By offering wraparound social and educational services, Blocks of Hope aims "to flood a carefully defined geographic area with services in the hopes of touching a critical mass of residents, usually around 60 percent." On its third anniversary, the trumpeted program has started to lose steam, running up against the realities of a gentrifying neighborhood and funding shortages.

In Mancos, Colorado, the school board voted “no” to arming school staff in the traditionally Western town. Across the United States, the question of arming teachers is being brought up as a response to the increase in school shootings. The policy is highly contested, with some saying it provides students with a feeling of safety, but others saying the risks associated are too high. For the Mancos community, such a vote is a surprise given the town’s gun-friendly history, but is explained by the increase in new residents.

For the past decade, Colorado's preschools have used external coaches to improve quality of instruction in early childcare education classrooms. To address the high cost of this one-on-one approach, the Denver Preschool Program has launched a program to allow teachers to earn credentials to mentor their own colleagues.

Only one percent of Denver teachers have the means to buy a home within the city's limits. Landed, an organization that has located places for California educators to live, is now expanding to Colorado. Buyers provide 10 percent of the down payment, while Landed gives the other 10 percent. A representative from Landed explained, "It is not a loan – it is a shared investment."

To mitigate against growing concerns about the disconnect between Carbondale, Colorado police officers and community members, a local high school proposed a plan: have the cops learn Spanish. Not only has this impacted the police departments outreach, but it has also improved community and police trust.

Many rural towns with limited resources are struggling to provide their students with the devices necessary to stay ahead in the digital age. In Greeley, CO, a town with significant minority and refugee populations that have little or no internet access at home, the digital divide and the wealth disparity between school districts is particularly stark. But the schools in Greeley remain determined, cobbling together old donated computers, salvaged devices, grants and fundraisers, to try and help provide better opportunities and more efficient education for all their students.

Providers Advancing Student Outcomes, or PASO, is run by Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition and helps early childcare providers learn critical skills to enhance children's socio-emotional skills. Many of the participants are undocumented and therefore work under the radar without special training.

The one-stop shopping for public, magnet, charter and innovations schools has proved popular in Coloroda but generated controversy in Massachusetts.

Colorado has had challenges teaching climate change to elementary and secondary school students because of political divisiveness. Regional advocacy groups and professionals manage to teach climate change through engaging field trips, filmmaking, and outdoor learning.