Legislated change in rural schools districts may be slow and painful. This paper describes the ambience of a rural Texas K-12 school through the eyes of a new science teacher with northern and urban education experience and through the observations of an outside researcher. Attitudes that learning is not important, that hard subjects need not be studied, and that extracurricular activities come first in scheduling set the tone. Legislation of academic course requirements and time requirements flies in the face of these predominant attitudes. Numerous classroom interruptions are accepted as the norm during the school day. Supporting these attitudes, the school board resists cooperation with legislative mandates. Citing local control, the board allows sports teams to leave the school frequently during the school day and to schedule games during testing periods, with teachers asked to be aware of the situation. The board elects not to follow the state mandate that students must master 70% of a subject's essential elements. Descriptions of school and board are analyzed from two points of view: the view that state mandates must be implemented versus the inherent view that local beliefs must be respected. The paper raises questions about ethnographic methodology and the effect of the differing observation points of the two researchers (i.e., teacher in the system and research outside the system) on the findings. This paper contains 18 references. (DHP)