North State Together’s backbone team, our Lumina Talent Hub lead, county network coordinators, and other key regional partners attended the 2023 Rural Summit: From Cradle to Career in Charlotte, North Carolina, April 3-5, 2023. One of the few national convenings to focus on rural America, the Rural Summit brings together teachers, principals, superintendents, higher education leaders, legislators, and nonprofit leaders to share ideas and strategies for ensuring rural youth can enter school ready to learn and successfully transition from high school to college and career. Originally conceived as the Rural College Access and Success Summit, Partner for Rural Impact expanded their focus to include all points along the cradle-to-career path.
North State Together collaborates with Partners for Rural Impact to share ideas and strategies that ensure our youth successfully transition from high school to college and career. At this year’s summit, we had the opportunity to learn from the nation’s top rural education leaders and advocates on topics relevant to the North State, including:
- Rural Grant Writing 101
- Rural College Transformation: Capacity, Partnerships, and Data
- Leveraging Data to Improve Economic Mobility
- Every School a Community School
- Creating a Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway for Rural Talent
The North State Together team also presented a workshop at the national conference, entitled “Powerful Practice: Leveling Up Your Collaboration with Colleges to Boost Postsecondary Success!” which highlighted North State Together’s data-driven approach to college enrollment. This approach has helped our local high schools identify the right students to target with specific outreach efforts, increasing Shasta College’s matriculation and enrollment rates. Participants garnered first-hand practical tools they can take back to their own communities to scale the power of data and to provide critical information to increase student success.
The third day of the summit was invitation only for rural partnerships, including North State Together, who were identified by StriveTogether and Partners for Rural Impact as ready to further their cradle-to-career impact in their communities through a Rural Community of Practice leadership team. The North State Together team had the opportunity to learn how to engage in local, state, and federal rural policy development, and conducted a deep-dive analysis on a myriad of topics including mapping our existing structure, identifying strategies for improvement, and collectively conducting a plan, do, study, act (PDSA) cycle on our regional partnership structure. In addition, over the next year, in collaboration with Partners for Rural Impact, North State Together will be facilitating a results-based leadership program for our county network teams.
