Education Revolution in the Adirondacks?

The new Adirondack Park Regional Assessment Project is out — and it’s fascinating. Check out my interview today with Brian Towers, head of the AATV which sponsored the study.

The next few days, I plan to mine information from the study and present some of it here; and hopefully get some conversation going about what this snapshot of the Park tells us.

The first headline for me in the numbers is education and the mounting cost of running small rural school districts. From the Executive Summary:

School enrollments in the park have decreased by 329 students annually throughout the current decade, which is equivalent to the loss of one average size Adirondack school district every 19 months.

And here again:

From 1970 to 2007 the number of teachers in Adirondack school districts increased by 34 percent, while the student population dropped by 31 percent.

According to the survey, our student-teacher ration was 20:1 in 1970; it’s 10:1 now.

“Survey results illustrate that schools in the Adirondack Park serve as the core of local employment and represent the center of community life [but] there is rising pressure for districts with 1,000 students or less to consolidate…”

Only 7 districts wholly or substantially within the Park have more than 1,000 kids in their schools.

With our aging population and the property tax crisis, these numbers suggest that a revolution is coming in the way we look at education in the Adirondacks.

What do you think? Big changes ahead? How will this affect you as a taxpayer? As a teacher? As the parent of a kid in public school?

Tags: adirondacks