Rural Schools Have Local Care but Lack Outside Investment
In a Rooted + Rising reflection on rural education in London, Kentucky, Trey Jackson argues that local schools are sustained by unusually dense networks of care but constrained by a lack of outside investment. Jackson describes teachers, coaches, neighbors, and nonprofits as central to students’ lives, while warning that underpaid staff, staffing shortages, and unmet basic needs cannot be solved by community commitment alone. For him, the problem is not that rural communities lack will; it is that their schools are being asked to make care do the work of resources.
Rural education is held together by care, but care is not a substitute for investment
Trey Jackson describes London, Kentucky, as a place where rural identity is not merely a census category or label. For him, it means knowing the people around you, treating neighbors like family, and “showing up every day for other people because that's what we do in rural communities.”
The education system he describes is dense with relationships and, in his telling, strained by conditions local care cannot fully answer. London’s schools are surrounded by teachers who check in, coaches who mentor, neighbors who respond in crisis, and local groups that meet needs students carry home with them. But Jackson also names the limits of relying on that care alone. Rural schools face lower rankings, staffing issues, underpaid teachers, and gaps that local commitment can soften but not erase.
Schools are not just places where instruction happens. They are employers, gathering points, and sources of community connection. Jackson says the school system is “the center of everything,” in part because so many people are connected to it directly: as teachers, relatives of teachers, students, coaches, or community supporters.
The central tension is that rural communities are often asked to run on commitment alone. Jackson acknowledges “the challenges, the lower rankings, the staffing issues,” but rejects the idea that those deficits reflect a lack of local will. The care, he says, is already present inside the community. What is missing is investment from outside it.
It's not a lack of care, it's really a lack of investment at, from the outside, not from within.
Rural education, in Jackson’s account, cannot be understood only through deficits. London is not perfect, and neither are rural communities generally. But schools and students are sustained by relationships, obligations, and daily acts of support that are easy to miss when the discussion begins and ends with rankings or scarcity.
The school system functions as a force for community connection
Trey Jackson frames schools in rural counties as unusually central institutions. In London and Laurel County, he says, the school system is the largest employer, and “everyone is connected to the school system in some way.” People know a teacher, have a family member who teaches, or are otherwise linked to the school system. That gives schools a role beyond academics: they help unify the community around young people.
The clearest example for Jackson is the way a community rallies around students. A high school sports team, or simply “a group of kids from a high school,” can bring people together in a way few other institutions can. The shared focus on students gives residents a visible reason to gather, encourage, support, and identify with the same young people.
Teachers occupy a special place in that system. Jackson says teachers in rural communities are essential in students’ lives because they do more than deliver lessons. They support students, check up on them, and provide continuity across the school system. He speaks from personal experience, saying he had teachers and coaches who made that kind of difference.
He also underscores the conditions under which that work happens. Teaching requires commitment anywhere, but in rural communities, he says, teachers often work while “underpaid and understaffed.” His praise for teachers is not a claim that the system is adequately resourced; it is part of his argument that people inside it are stretching to meet students’ needs.
Community support shows up through ordinary people, not only formal programs
When Trey Jackson names who shows up for young people in London, the answer is deliberately broad. It is not always the expected institution or professional role. It can be “random mentors, community members, coaches, teachers,” or anyone who wants to make a difference.
One example is the Backpack Club in Laurel County, a nonprofit group of everyday residents who pack food bags for underprivileged students to take home over the weekend. Jackson presents the work as both critical and easy to overlook. The organization’s role is part of what makes school function as a support system beyond academics.
The support does not come from a single savior institution or a single category of adult. Jackson describes people “pouring into students from all sides,” with coaches, teachers, nonprofits, mentors, and neighbors all contributing to students’ stability and sense of possibility.
For Jackson, this is part of what makes the rural community special: support is not always centralized, but it is persistent. Young people encounter adults who want to see change in their lives, even when those adults are not acting through a large or highly visible institution.
London’s strengths are visible in crisis and in ordinary local rituals
Trey Jackson roots his account of educational life in a broader description of London’s social fabric. He points first to how residents responded after a tornado struck his hometown a few months earlier, causing devastation and fatalities. In the immediate aftermath, he says, people came together to serve others in the middle of tragedy.
What stood out most to him was that some of the people helping others had themselves “lost everything.” For Jackson, that response captures the tight-knit community he is describing: not an abstract niceness, but a concrete pattern of action under pressure.
He also points to small-town rituals that may seem quirky from the outside but carry local meaning. In London, he names the Chicken Festival, a community event celebrating Colonel Sanders and his legacy creating Kentucky Fried Chicken, “which is just down the road” from him. The example is local and specific: “Little things seem to just matter a little bit more,” he says.
Jackson is careful not to idealize the place. London is “not perfect,” and he says rural communities are not perfect either. But he insists that the care is “real and constant.” It can be felt in town, in the aftermath of disaster, in school life, and in the work of local changemakers trying to move the community in a better direction.
The unanswered question is what rural schools could become if investment matched local commitment
Trey Jackson turns his portrait of London into a challenge: what would rural education look like if communities like his had “the same level of investment” as they already have care from local residents?
He does not define investment in technical terms, but his examples make the need visible. Rural schools face staffing issues. Teachers are often underpaid and understaffed. Community nonprofits help meet basic needs, including weekend food for underprivileged students. Schools carry responsibilities well beyond classroom instruction. Residents respond with commitment, but Jackson argues that commitment alone does not answer every gap.
The care's there, we just we need the other aspects to come in.
Jackson says rural communities already have much of the human foundation needed for young people to thrive: teachers who check in, coaches who mentor, neighbors who respond, nonprofits that meet overlooked needs, and civic rituals that create belonging. What they lack, in his words, is the “extra investment” and “extra punch” needed to help them “cross the finish line.”