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Smithsonian STARS serves schools located in rural communities. For the program’s initial phase, federally established classifications will be used to identify eligible schools. The program will reference the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) locale system and consider schools classified as Rural — Distant or Rural — Remote to be eligible. Schools may review their local classification using the NCES Locale Lookup tool.
However, we recognize these classifications are not always representative of communities. Schools that do not fall within these NCES categories may still be eligible if they can reasonably be considered rural in terms of geography, community and/or school size, or access to educational resources. Eligibility will be determined on a case-by-case basis.