So well-chronicled are the challenges faced by schools in large urban and metropolitan areas that a lay person may perceive the nation's rural and small-city schools as bucolic settings where educators do not have a care in the world other than keeping the occasional cow from wandering onto the playground during recess. The reality, of course, is that each community has its own challenges. Although some call upon a few of the larger urban school systems to simply trim their bloated bureaucracies as a cure-all for what ails them, what would those same critics have the smaller cities do? In many cases, those systems have little fat to trim and fewer places from which to draw resources because of their limited tax bases, lack of corporate support, or state funding formulas. Still, rural and small-city schools must often face many of the same challenges as their larger brethren, such as poverty; low education levels; large English language learner, transient, and special education student populations; and substance abuse among students. Logan Middle School in La Crosse, Wisconsin, is in many ways a typical small-city school facing some of these challenges. What sets it apart is the extent to which the school has developed programs to build relationships between students and teachers, between students and their learning, and between school and home. These relationships are vital to personalizing the school environment.