Tonglin Elementary School

Tonglin Elementary opened as a branch school in 1950 and became independent in 1960, serving a small mountain community in Wufeng's forested hills. As the district's rural population thinned out over the following decades, Tonglin's enrollment shrank along with it, and the school came close to being shut down entirely. Rather than closing, Tonglin's teachers and community reinvented the school around its mountain setting — turning a shrinking "forest school" into one of Taiwan's most celebrated examples of rural education innovation, recognized in the "2019 Education Innovation 100." Today it remains a small but fully operating public elementary school, proof that a rural campus can turn depopulation into a distinct identity rather than an ending.

桐林國小於民國39年（1950年）以分校形式設立，民國49年（1960年）獨立設校，服務霧峰森林山區中的一處小型社區。隨著鄉村人口在其後數十年間逐漸外流，桐林的學生人數也隨之減少，學校一度面臨廢校危機。桐林的教師與社區並未選擇關閉學校，而是圍繞著山林環境重新打造教育特色——將一所逐漸凋零的「森林小學」轉型為台灣鄉村教育創新的典範之一，並入選「2019教育創新100」。如今，這所學校依然是一所規模雖小、卻持續正常營運的公立國小，證明鄉村校園能夠將人口外流轉化為獨特的辦學特色，而非邁向終結。