Our Rural Policy Roundtable kicked off in September with state and national rural education experts who shared their policy needs from infant and toddler care, into K-12 education, and through college in rural communities.
Key Policy Takeaways
- Protect access to fair funding for a free public education
- Support living wages for teachers and child care providers
- Support child care and education access through robust infrastructure, like childcare and transportation.
What Do You Think?
Please share what resonated or what is missing from the conversation here!
Expert Bios
Anne Hedgepeth
Anne Hedgepeth is a government relations and grassroots advocacy strategist. As Child Care Aware® of America’s Chief of Policy and Advocacy, she guides the organization’s public policy work, as well as supports the advocacy and awareness efforts of child care resource and referral agencies and other early learning stakeholders across the country.
During her time at CCAoA, she successfully pushed Congress to invest over $50 billion in COVID-19 relief funding in child care and early learning and provided technical assistance and guidance to numerous state initiatives to advance a high-quality, affordable, and accessible child care system.
Anne previously worked with the American Association of University Women (AAUW) where she helped to pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and to update and implement Title IX regulations and guidance in schools across the country.
Sherri Jones
Sherri Jones is currently the Development Director for Rural Arizona Engagement (RAZE) and carries over 20 years of experience in fundraising, program management, and education system improvement.
She served as key facilitator between the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Child Care Administration and First Things First, Quality First program for developing a dual enrollment process and agreement to support resource leveraging for eligible early childhood education programs to pursue national accreditation through the Arizona Self-Study Project while participating in the Quality First Program. Resulting in 90% of dual enrolled programs successfully achieving national accreditation.
Sherri served on the Arizona Center for Afterschool Excellence statewide team for developing the Arizona Quality Standards for Out-of-School Time Programs and has been a frequent presenter at local, state and national early childhood education conferences.
Dr. Jill Loveless
Dr. Jill Loveless is the President of the Rural Community College Alliance. Dr. Loveless was the first in her family to earn a bachelor’s degree at West Virginia University. After teaching in public secondary schools, she attended Middlebury College’s Breadloaf School of English and earned a Master of Arts in Literature. She holds a doctorate from Capella University and has enjoyed several years leading in rural community colleges. She has served on the board of the Community College Consortium for Open Education Resources, Valley View Board of Directors, and Ohio Valley Workforce and Education Consortium.
John Glasgow
John Glasgow is the Program Director at The Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools where he is partnering with the Seymour Center for Rural Education at Western Illinois University to conduct an investigation into Rural career and technical education (CTE) programs across Illinois.
Heather DuBois Bourenane
Heather DuBois Bourenane is passionate about ensuring our public schools are places of joy for all students. She is a proud public school parent, a founding member of Support Sun Prairie Schools and the Sun Prairie Action Resource Coalition, and co-director of the SPARC Local Action Fund 501(c)(3). She taught college English and literature and worked in K-12 outreach at UW-Madison before becoming the Executive Director of Wisconsin Public Education Network. She has been with the Network since 2015.
Dr. Cornelia Butler Flora
Dr. Cornelia Butler Flora is the Emeritus Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University and Research Professor at Kansas State University. She served for 15 years as Director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development. Previously she was holder of the Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems at the University of Minnesota, head of the Sociology Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, a University Distinguished Professor at Kansas State University, and a program officer for the Ford Foundation. She has taught at universities in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and Spain. She is past president of the Rural Sociological Society, the Community Development Society, and the Society for Agriculture, Food and Human Values. She is a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. She is author and editor of a number of books, including Interactions Between Agroecosystems, Sustainable Agriculture in Temperate Zones and Pentecostalism in Colombia: Baptism by Fire and Spirit. Her newest book is Rural Communities: Legacy and Change, 4 th edition, co-authored by Jan Flora. Her current research includes immigrant community inclusion, the impact of networks in forming jet fuel value chains, and monitoring the community impacts of food and fitness initiatives. Her degrees are from the University of California at Berkeley and Cornell University. She was president of the Boards of Directors of the Henry A. Wallace Institute of Alternative Agriculture and the Northwest Area Foundation Board of Directors.
Dr. Jan Flora
Dr. Jan Flora is Professor Emeritus at Iowa State University. In the College of Agriculture, he was an Extension Community Sociologist. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Kansas; graduate degrees are from Cornell University. He was Program Advisor for Agriculture and Rural Development for the Ford Foundation for Spanish- speaking South America for 2 ½ years, living in Bogotá, Colombia. His research, teaching, and consulting have taken him to various countries in Central and South America, Mexico, China, the Cape Verde Islands, Malawi, and Spain. He was president of the U.S.-based Rural Sociological Society. He is concluding research on Latino farmworkers in Northwest Iowa and is co-author with Cornelia Flora of Rural Communities: Legacy and Change, soon to be in its sixth edition. He grew up on a wheat-livestock farm in western Kansas. He is fluent in Spanish and can manage in Portuguese. His English improves daily.
Rachel Rush-Marlowe
Rachel Rush-Marlowe is the founder and executive director of ResearchEd, an education policy research group founded in 2020. ResearchEd’s mission is to conduct work that is student-centered, informed by the experiences of today’s learners, particularly those who have been traditionally underserved by our education system. This includes students with children and students with disabilities, students that are first generation, from racial minority backgrounds, from rural communities, and students with intersections of these and other identities. ResearchEd conducts and publishes research, provides data capacity building support, and acts as a liaison between students, education institutions, and policymakers through advocacy and communications. At ResearchEd, Rush-Marlowe has conducted research with partners including the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities, Achieving the Dream, the Aspen Institute, Community College League of California, and New America, among others. She earned her master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University, where she continues to work as an associate instructor. Rush-Marlowe’s research interests and expertise are in rural student success, institutional data capacity, and federal student aid programs. She has published reports on these and other topics, and is the author of the book chapter, Teacher Education in an Audit Culture in the Wiley International Handbook of Educational Foundations.
