Despite growing awareness of the teacher staffing crisis in rurally isolated, impoverished Montana school districts, little has been done to effectively address the issue. As opposed to a general lack of supply, current state and national research attribute the problem to challenges in teacher recruitment and retention. While many of these studies…

This study reveals the challenges confronting small, rural "frontier" schools in Montana and the practices that contribute to their sustainability. A Montana frontier school is defined as a school district with 200 or fewer students and its attendant community in a county with five or fewer people per square mile. The researcher…