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Since 1998, more than six thousand public schools have closed in rural U.S. counties. Very little research asks how these school closures impact the future growth (or decline) of rural communities. Given that school districts are often the leading employers in rural areas, closures could trigger or reinforce population loss. On the other hand, rural reformers in the past have advocated for school consolidation as a way to transform rural communities into more centralized and sustainable places that retain more residents over the long run. Finally, the configuration of schools may simply be a consequence of population loss and not a cause. This paper tests these three hypotheses using records from the Common Core of Data (CCD) and U.S. Census. I employ an instrumental variable analysis that exploits exogenous variation in school district boundaries and a difference-in-difference design of matched counties.