Greene County
Alabama's Black Belt: Where Chronic Absenteeism Is Twice the State Average
Across a crescent of rural counties stretching from southwestern Alabama to the state's eastern border, students miss school at nearly twice the rate of their peers statewide.
30 Alabama Districts Now Serve Fewer Than 1,000 Students
In Linden City, the eighth grade class has 19 students. Five of the district's 13 grade levels have fewer than 30. The entire system enrolls 399 children, down 27.8% from 553 a decade ago.
The Black Belt Split: Same Region, Opposite Trajectories
The Alabama Black Belt (the crescent of historically impoverished, majority-Black rural counties stretching from Sumter to Macon) is supposed to move as one. Same demographics. Same poverty. Same dist...
Eleven Rural Alabama Districts Have Lost 40% of Their Students Since 2015
Perry County enrolled 1,730 students in 2015. This year it enrolls 731. That is not a typo. The district has lost 57.7% of its students in 11 years, a rate of decline so steep that it amounts to losin...