ļ»æEpisode 49. 2025 & The Impact of Policy Shifts with Dreama Gentry
Michelle Rathman: Hello, one and all, and welcome to The Rural Impact. You know by now, and if you didn't, you do now, we are the podcast that works hard to connect the dots between policy and rural everything. I'm Michelle Rathman. It is wonderful to be here with you. I'm so grateful that you've tuned in for another conversation.
And I just, really wanna say to you, thank you to all of those who've been sending me notes through LinkedIn, uh, through Bluesky now through Facebook and in my inbox, letting me know how much you appreciate these conversations and bringing rural issues, policy related issues to my attention so that we can continue to bring them to you, our listeners.
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We do want to hear your feedback and we do appreciate if you would share our work with your friends. Okay. With that said, we are continuing our conversation that's focused on 2025 and policy shifts. And I am recording this the first week of February. It feels like it's been a long year so far, but we're only in the second month.
And I think we can all agree. There is a lot of shift happening in Washington, D. C., which is where I'm headed just tomorrow, as a matter of fact, after I'm recording this. So we're gonna be having a lot of conversations, but today I am continuing the conversation that's focused on rural education.
You know last week, and this week, we've been kind of on a roller coaster where federal policy is concerned with respect to the Department of Education as well as access and freezing of grants to those who rely mightily, on making sure those streams of revenue come in to do their rural serving work. So again, as I told you, I've been hearing from quite a few individuals, grantees who have been affected by this.
So, I thought I would reach out to someone whose work, it's not just groundbreaking work, but honestly, the work that they do is life changing. And so if you don't know her name, you're going to learn who she is today. And that is Dreama Gentry. And Dreama is the founder, the CEO, and the President of Partners for Rural Impact.
And they do amazing work. Their programs really do focus on children at the core, meeting them where they are, and it really is about helping them in their entire education journey, as they say, from cradle to career. And so I did reach out to Dreama Gentry to have this conversation because their work relies heavily on grants and federal grants included. So in our conversation, we discussed the impact of what a phrase of those dollars would look like, if that should happen. Again we're recording this conversation the 2nd, week of February. So, by now, things might have already changed, but I think it's really important for us to say organizations like Dreama's and so many others.
It is really important for us to have a plan B, plan C, plan D in the event that these federal grant dollars are no longer available. And since it's been threatened, we do need to be talking about it. It's an authentic concern for people to have. So. In addition to the conversation about kind of this, what's going on in D.C. right now, we also have a wide-ranging conversation about the present and future of the Department of Education.
And, you know, just the importance of making sure we keep our focus on the education experience for, I think the number is about 14 million young people. So, my goodness, I am so grateful to Dreama for having that conversation with me. And I invite you now to sit back and put yourself in your podcast frame of mind and listen to my conversation with Dreama Gentry.
Are you ready? You know I always am. So, let's go.
Michelle Rathman: Dreama Gentry, President and CEO of Partners for Rural Impact. I love the name. Welcome to the Rural Impact. Thank you for being here. We have a lot to talk about, don't we? It's been a long time.
Dreama Gentry: It's been too long and there's so much going on so many great things and so many things we also need to be thinking together on.
Michelle Rathman: That's right. You know, because I had had this intent to kind of starting off because we're recording this. I want to tell everyone a full disclosure. The first week of February, you'll be hearing this about a week later, right? But I wanted to start off because it was hot off the press. You know, the nation's report card, but we're not going to start there because we're going to start somewhere else because we, you know, it's important for us to have, you know, candid conversations with a focus on policy.
So, speaking of policy, organizations such as yours, and so many of those you serve. The circles, I run in the same thing. There has been quite a bit of confusion, chaos and uncertainty with respect to grant dollars that come your way to do to help make the impact that you make. So, I thought we could just start there and let's have a real conversation about the rural impact of what the freeze and the on again, off again, laid out for us. Will you please.
Dreama Gentry: Yeah, it was a crazy week. Right? And I think what helped me was having folks across the country that were struggling with the same thing. And it was really interesting to see organizations coming together to think about how do we continue the good work to serve kids and families, particularly rural kids and families?
And so I'll speak, you know, Partners for Rural Impact. Uh, we do our work in Appalachian Kentucky, Mexico, Missouri, and East Texas. In addition, we support places across the country. And so when we think about our work, especially in Appalachian, Kentucky, and I'm from Appalachia, this is where I started the work 30 years ago.
When we look at the work there, it is actually funded by federal grants, discretionary grants, grants that serve kids that serve schools from birth to high school, right? And to actually on into post-secondary. And so it was a hard time as we started to think about the 50,000 young people weā€™re serving in Appalachian Kentucky by placing educators in schools, by out of school time, all of those different services.
What if that funding was frozen? And so what we, and I think the part that we, that kept us going through this is that those programs and services are so essential because our schools are doing good work, but what they don't have is the extra people, the extra support to actually meet the needs of all the students.
Michelle Rathman: And that takes capacity, and capacity takes resources. It's all so connected. You know, your work is so inspirational. And I, you know, if you have not been to the website, and we'll make sure it's in our resources. The work is so inspirational. And I think sometimes it's really easy to say, well, you know, because it's discretionary funds.
It's really hard to identify exactly what it's doing. And, you know, I think that you are somebody who could certainly share a few stories about what it actually looks like on the ground. You know, what are some of the top things that you see, you know, really happening, really working. And you said it earlier to me that you put the children that you're serving at the center, what does that look like in motion in the communities that you are working with?
And the number is, I think, 14, what I read here, 14 million, uh, families, children impacted by your work.
Dreama Gentry: Yeah, so I think, you know, there's 14,000,000 rural young folks across the country. And so what we're doing across the country is working with others that serve them and their places through place based partnerships. But the work I'll use the work in Appalachia because it's the easiest because it's where I'm located every day and I'm seeing it every day.
So, what we realize, and, you know, we had, we had talked about the name, the data that came out and what we're seeing is, kindergarten readiness in Appalachian, Kentucky, the average is around 48 percent in the state. We have some rural communities where it's much, much less. So, kids are not entering school ready to learn what some of this discretionary grant funding allows us to do is prepare families and kids for kindergarten, right?
Whether it's kinder boost programs, right before the summer before kindergarten starts, whether it's home visiting programs that we do in collaboration with our partner, Save the Children where we actually go into the homes and support the families, all of those pieces are essential.
So, the federal discretionary grants we have are actually focused on moving the results and the indicators that may actually provides a data on right? How do we increase kindergarten readiness? Third grade reading through the funding of our community schoolwork. We have folks in schools throughout Appalachian Kentucky working on literacy.
And then we were able, we were so proud. We were able to take the Dolly Parton Imagination Library region wide. So, every family is receiving books on a regular basis for the kids. So, it's things like that. The things that actually probably you and I do in our home, and we're able to do it because we're not living in persistent poverty, but we're providing those resources, those supports and those caring individuals to work with families and young people in schools with.
Michelle Rathman: I was just going to say, you know, I was thinking about our previous episode, you know, we ended with a conversation that talked about, listen, if we're going to address this at the end of the day, we have to address persistent poverty and, and so much of your work is focused on that. I wonder, you know, I think about how much of that discretionary grant funding that comes your way.
And I know which way it flows for other parts in education as well as in healthcare and so on and so forth. And, and I think about we're going to be doing an episode or a series, actually, on now the intersection of philanthropic dollars and policy as well. I mean, so where do, when you think about Dreama, where do you go?
What is the plan B should these funds no longer be available? For whatever reason or they shrink and no one wants to even think about the shrinking because you fight so hard, work really hard to be good stewards of those dollars, and I speak I know before I speak on this one. What happens where do where do you see philanthropic organizations being able to help you all navigate paths of funding to help you sustain the work?
Dreama Gentry: And I think this is a dilemma, especially for rural places and I, and I know that, you know, this Michelle, but I think it's 7 cents on a philanthropic dollar corporate dollar goes into rural America. So, most of philanthropy has forgotten about rural America. And I think that it's easy to say, well, if the federal discretionary grants go away, philanthropy and corporate America will step in, but they won't step in and rural places and in rural communities.
The data has shown us that. So, I do think that the federal funding and having these services in rural places is more incredibly important because without them, what will happen is that families are not being supported. Schools aren't being supported. We're going to see those NAEP scores dive and go down.
We're going to see, the epidemic of chronic absenteeism not be addressed. And so I do think it's what worries me the most about what happened with the funding freeze, is it'll have a disproportionate impact in my mind on rural places and rural communities.
Michelle Rathman: Yes I share that deeply. I'm concerned about that. You know, I think about also, you know, the, the ripple effect we like to say, you know, connect the dots, but the end of the day, you can use whatever analogy you want. You get it. Right?
So, the freezes on grant funding and then the other side of the coin, they kind of keep coming if you think about it, and I wish I had something more inspirational to ask you about, which we will get there. I promise. But it's also then pulling funding or using, you know, using certain imposition of policies around saying, no, you cannot talk about equity. You cannot talk about, um, diversity, you know, all these things that are, I look them up on the, I looked them up in the dictionary.
They it's a good thing that we're looking at here. What happens when there's funding, that's tied to that as well in the schools? It's one thing to have the grants. It's another thing to have the now kind of restrictions, this is double whammy it feels like.
Dreama Gentry: Yeah, and I think it's a double whammy that's really almost false. Right, because when I think about the, the programs, the activities, the services, the federal discretionary grants, and many of our grants are from the Department of Education, from AmeriCorps, we have grants from Department of Justice.
We pull in funding from anywhere we can to serve rural America to improve outcomes for kids and families. And, and the way the federal discretionary grant process goes is to get the funding, they give you a rubric you have to write to. And you show your need, you show your what you're doing and you show the impact that you're going to have.
And I do think what concerns me is over the last 4 years in order to even fill out the application. We had to talk about equity. Right? We had, it was boiled into the templates for the funding. And so, of course, you're going to see that in many of the programs. Right? But when I think about equity, what I think about is every young person having the opportunity to have the programs, activities and services.
And it is actually, ensuring and one way that we have addressed equity in our grant applications is if you have funding for a 3rd grade reading program, what you do is you look at data across all the students and you determine who is below grade level in 3rd grade reading, and those are the kids you target, right?
Because if they're below grade level, they're going to need different services than if they're above grade level. And so, I do think that, the, the work that we do is to move the dial for all kids and rural America and do that. And we have framed some of it in equity because to bring the discretionary grants in, you had to use that language.
I really hope that what we see is an opportunity to really share what the programs, activities and services are, how we are addressing and connecting it to communities. And so that's the piece that that has me troubled.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, and I have been scouring. I mean, maybe you are doing the same thing. I'm not obsessed, but I think it's important for me to understand these things is just kind of taking a look at some of the biggest grant makers out there and, and seeing how, you know, they are now, and I'm asking the question, how are you managing your pursuits of these things that, you know, are, were a criteria, as you said, they're baked they baked in to the sauce.
Um, I just mixed metaphors, but you'll, you get what I mean. You know, Dreama, I have another question for you. And I just think about this from, I mean, you are a big picture person, your work in your organization. You reach, there's so many aspects to it. And one of them is the educator you talk about, you know, where the rubber meets the road for you is the work that's happening in the communities in the schools, you know, student centered, if you will.
What does this do in your mind, even short term or longer term impact both, if you will, for the educator and you know, what these kinds of shifts, are going tofor your ability for the ability for for us to maintain and sustain our, our, our workforce.
Dreama Gentry: Yeah, I think being a teacher right now is hard, because, there's so much that is expected of educators and for teachers. And so all of our programs, and I'll think specifically in the Department of Education programs here, and the AmeriCorps is how do we put more bodies, more caring individuals, more trained local people into the schools to work alongside the educator so that there are mentors there, there are tutors, there's college and career navigators, there's success coaches.
And so I think by surrounding and bringing into the school more people that are prepared to serve the students. We're actually letting the educators take a breath and teach. And do the piece that's so essential and I know that if you look at the research, you know, one of the pieces and one of the ways that you have to work, especially in schools of persistent poverty is bringing caring individuals in to support the school infrastructure. And that's the piece that we built all of our programs on.
And I do think that the other big piece that was impacting me last week, as I was thinking about, if there's a freeze in funding. Right first and foremost is that young children, high school students are going to lose their college and career navigator they may have had for three years. They're going to lose that mentor.
They're going to lose that academic interventionist is actually helping them. Right? They're going to lose those services. The families are going to lose their point of contact with the schools, that's actually helping them navigate their own educational journey too. That's a huge loss. But the other piece is that in our work in Appalachia, we've been hiring local folks and placing them in the schools.
And as a result, I think I thought, yeah, I looked last week. We had 260 full time people working in Appalachia inside schools and inside those communities. And that's a huge hit to the economy of the place and an economy where there's not a lot of jobs. So, I do think we have to also recognize that the federal funding that's flowing to provide services also is an economic engine in communities.
And so not only will the services stop, but the folks that were doing those services will no longer have work. And that's going to actually have a huge because their kids go to the same schools. And so it's, it is very complex. And I really hope as we think through, the nation thinks through the piece, how do we actually make sure that these programs are having the impact there?
They need to be having right? I'm all for that. How do we make sure they're compliant? How do we make sure they're actually working? And we take the time to think through them that way versus doing the broad brush of that they're just not necessary.
Michelle Rathman: I want to shout. I want to throw my hand over my head and shout because I'm saying everything she said. And I think, you know, I, I really do mean this. It is really important to connect these dots because if you look, there's, and we're going to be, I'm going to be traveling to D.C. this week. I told you, uh, Dreama, and I'm going to be there next week as well, recording as many conversations as I possibly can.
And it's important to connect the dots. You know, what, a lot of folks don't get up in the morning and say, hmm, I wonder how much federal funding comes into my state to make sure. Well, I got news for you. There's a calculator. I know you know this. There's a calculator for that where, you know, states are upwards of 50 percent of the revenue they have received comes through these federal chains.
And I think about an email that I read this morning about a university based medical education program. You know, it's like now clinging to what you already have and fighting for what you have versus doing the important work of advancing this important work. It's very frustrating.
On a positive note it can feel really frustrating for many of us out here. And I read something this weekend. It's natural to feel that way when the things that you do that you care about so deeply are interrupted. So, we're being interrupted, but we can deal with that.
How can we manage the awesome tasks before us to advocate for the resources and maintain the resources, educate our any lawmakers policymakers who will genuinely hear? You know, this is my, my call out to you is it, what's in your advocates toolkit? What are the things that we can be talking about that? Keep us out of partisan and culture conversations and focused very squarely on being able to continue having the resources we need that Partners for Rural Impact that you all are doing and that all the organizations that we're going to be talking to in the weeks to come are doing as well.
You have the floor.
Dreama Gentry: I have the floor and I love the fact of thinking about the positive piece because I do think the reason we've scaled this work up at Appalachian. We're serving so many kids and so many families, and we have so many people doing the work, is it works. We see those indicators and those scores move in schools that actually, are implementing programs, having local people in the, in the, in the schools doing the work.
So I think on the advocates toolbox, I like this, like, what could be in my toolbox? I think the first piece is, knowing the why, and I do think it's important anytime we talk about the federal program or any type of program, any type of intervention in our work, we talk about the why.
And so, for us, everything we do ties to our strong, strong belief that in this great nation, every young person should be provided a path to upward mobility and provided the opportunities I can provide my own kid. And so I do think it's continuing to go back and not just starting by talking about a specific program, but talking about the why behind that program and why that program is in the community.
So, it's tying it all back to that. It's also important to have the data and to be able to show that the work we do is having a measurable impact. On those that we serve, and that there is a strong return on investment of the work. So I do think it's, it is continuing to lean in and talking about return on investment and why it's necessary.
The other is the stories. I do think, And one of our downfalls has been, we've been so busy doing the work. We often don't think about documenting the stories and having the, the families that now have choice and have opportunity for their young folks share how the impact the impact having the young people share the impact.
So a big piece I think of our toolbox going forward is, being better about capturing it in the moment and sharing it in the moment.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, I love all of them. Well, I'm working on a project right now to help a certain state elevate their stories about the impact of community benefit organizations. And Dreama, I got something for you when you're talking about why, you know, we're always looking for, we have to search and this is my I add on to every advocate toolkit where I think it might be helpful.
You might disagree. You could certainly throw it away. But I think, to your point on the why, we can ask questions of the policymakers, their staffers who are focused on these areas and ask them, why does it make sense to stop this work? Why? What is the motivation behind ending this work? What is the plan B for f us through a policy, uh, you know, through the process of policy?
So why, what, how does it make sense? And maybe we, we can ask them those questions. Yes. Tell the stories, collect them, tell them, make them impactful, but I love that you gave me an idea. We can ask why as well. We, if we're coming with our why, we got to understand their why as well.
Dreama Gentry: And then we need to be sharing the stories back that address their why, and maybe not what we're so excited about. And I think that's the other piece too is we often want to talk about, like, the piece of it that really gets us up every morning. But we also have to realize the why might be how many jobs does this create.
Right and really talk about that too. So, I think there's a piece there. The other thing that's, that's a big part of our work, especially as we, it was, it was key when we were working in Appalachia. Now we're working across the country is huge, is how do we actually unite folks from different rural places together so that we can all have a collective why?
And that we can show up and not be competing against each other, but actually have a shared narrative, shared stories on why these type this type of work, these types of programs are necessary in rural America. So, one of the things that we've started as a rural to rural collaborative that we have partners from the Delta Health Alliance and Mississippi, Shasta Office of Education in California, New Hampshire partners, Kentucky partners, but they're all folks that are on the ground in their state or leaders that are thinking about policy. We come together regularly and then we go visit the agencies regularly. And we talk with the agencies in D. C. we talk with, and we're really focusing on education, educating the agencies around this program is great, but if you did this, it would be really great for rural.
Or maybe this program doesn't fit in rule, but it could
Michelle Rathman: And I have found that they are genuinely interested
Dreama Gentry: They are
Michelle Rathman: I mean, you know, and so that that is still I reminded that there is still the business. You know, there is still business happening. Dreama I could listen your I would be I would welcome an invitation to one of your parties of policy minded people.
That's the kind of party I'm done with.
Dreama Gentry: Yeah, we'd love to have that and I will do a plug. Our, our Rural Summit is an Anchorage, Alaska, April 28th and we have folks from across the country. We have a policy track. We're doing a policy session on Wednesday, and it's really about how do we embed the narrative, the policy work and everything we do because policy is really educating everyone.
So they understand and they can see behind the, the curtain and what we're really doing. So love to have you join us there. Michelle, I'll send you the information
Michelle Rathman: Will you send me a ticket?
Dreama Gentry: to be here.
Michelle Rathman: No, I'm kidding. Hey, hey, philanthropic. No, I'm kidding. Oh, Dreama. It really is wonderful, cathartic to have this conversation with you. And I hope for our listeners the same. So with that again, you are welcome back anytime. I say that as long as we're able to, you know, keep talking, we're in good shape onward we must go.
Dreama Gentry: That's right, and we're doing it together, so I appreciate you.
Michelle Rathman: you go. Thank you. All right, everyone. Well, this has been a wonderful conversation here on the Rural Impact. I want to quickly thank Brea Corsaro and Sarah Staub for everything they do to help make this, and every episode possible. If you are not yet a subscriber, what are you waiting for?
Please go to theruralimpact.com. Please sign up and you're going to get eblasts and information and resources from every episode that we do. Be watching for my time in D.C., certainly a lot of really important conversations to have. But until next time, I always say, please take good care of yourself and those around you. Nobody else can do it better than you. We will see you soon on a new episode of the Rural Impact.
