In rural parts of the nation, such as McCool Junction, Nebraska, schools are taking creative steps to lure new students to local schools in their quests to keep those schools open and their communities intact. Elsewhere, towns and school districts in Kansas are giving away plots of land for home sites. Districts in Kansas are drawing new students to their rural communities using a venerable strategy that recalls frontier days: homesteading. Darlington, Wisconsin, though, has found out how complicated bringing in new students can be. When rising taxes and streams of visitors began to burden them, an influx of Amish families moved to Wisconsin. The superintendent of the Darlington Community Schools said he developed a relationship with an Amish family when one of his sons started raising chickens in a 4-H Club project. That contact blossomed into conversations between the adults about how the Darlington schools might serve the Amish families, who operate their own one-room schools in the neighboring Belmont school district. The Amish at first were interested in help with school bus transportation, but talks soon led to a plan to hire a licensed teacher to help with instruction. Under such a plan, the Darlington district could tap state aid for each student it served, and could invite older Amish students-- who usually do not attend high school--into its agriculture or other vocational programs, if deemed appropriate by the Amish families. The 340-student Belmont district blocked the move, even though that district would have received some state revenue for the students who attended school outside the district after the first couple of years. This article describes efforts of rural school districts to stay open and creative marketing strategies used to survive.