Bureau Valley CUSD #340: Investing in Rural Career Pathways

This Thanksgiving season, we’re celebrating the incredible variety of CTE programs that help students build real-world skills and bright futures. We asked you to share [...]

Co-authored by David Ardrey, Executive Director, Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools and Roger Eddy, Former Executive Director, Illinois Association of School Boards This [...]

AIRSS Joins Hundreds of Organizations in Condemning Sweeping Cuts to the U.S. Department of Education

The Illinois Report Card is an annual report released by the Illinois State Board of Education, detailing how schools, districts, and the state as a [...]

Rural teachers need to be elevated and celebrated. For all the conversations and challenges we hear about our public education system, it is all too [...]

MACOMB, IL –The National Rural Education Association (NREA) recently launched the 2025 Why Rural Matters report, a project with a more than 20-year history of [...]

The AIRSS team looks forward to seeing you at this year’s Joint Annual Conference! We have several sessions featuring AIRSS leadership, including the return of [...]

Stillman Valley High School: The Changing Field of Ag Education

MACOMB, IL – The Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools (AIRSS) has completed its initial statewide assessment of rural career and technical education programs [...]

AIRSS is dedicated to advancing education for rural students, and supporting Career and Technical Education (CTE) has become a main focus in that goal; our [...]

We are excited to present our 2025 Annual Report: “We Are Here!” Defining “rural” for Illinois is an essential task that AIRSS is determined to [...]

Intro When most people hear “career and technical education,” (CTE) they picture high school students in a shop class, coding in a computer lab, or [...]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASESeptember 1, 2025 Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools Announces Premier Sponsorship with OPTERRA to Support Rural School Infrastructure and Facilities Modernization [...]

The Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools is excited to welcome Karli Strom to our work as an Assistant Director reviewing Career and Technical [...]