Roger Hannigan Gilson has an article today in the Times Union that features Hudson: "As youth population declines, schools are repurposed in the Hudson Valley."
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| Photo: Roger Hannigan Gilson | Times Union |
Needless to say, John L. Edwards school and the plans for its reuse as an apartment building for seniors play a central role in the article. Here is the lede:
Vines and other vegetation have crawled over the former John L. Edwards Elementary School since it was closed in 2018 due to declining enrollment. It sits near the center of Hudson, taking up space in a community with limited open real estate while adding nothing to the property tax coffers.
According to the article, at least fifty schools have closed in the Hudson Valley since 1999. The article also shares this information about the populations of Hudson and Columbia County: "The nation's aging population is being felt acutely in the Hudson Valley, where Columbia County is the second oldest county in New York, and the Hudson area is the 30th oldest place in the country."
In other news related to the topic of John L. Edwards and the Pennrose plan for its adaptive reuse, last night the Common Common held a public hearing on the zoning district amendment to allow the school building to be converted into the multifamily dwelling. Only Lloyd Koedding was present in the audience at City Hall, and there were no comments--either in support or opposition--from him or from either of the two people attending the meeting virtually.
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1 - "Only Lloyd Koedding was present..."
ReplyDeleteWhere is the Hudson Catskill HOUSING Coalition?
Paging Claire and Quintin... didn't they also skip the other JLEdwards public meeting? Or are these just not important meetings?
Recently HCHC issued statements on: the
Waterfront issue, their office rent payments to Galvan (complete with math error), a "Make Love Great Again" Christian themed event, a leadership summit for the "melanated", other activities in Albany.... and yet here, a Hudson based _housing_ initiative.... no one attends the zoning and PILOT meetings for JLE.
What could it be about this particular housing project and its target beneficiaries that is different from the others?
Why were so many of HCHC and Promise Neighborhood and even the CC Sanctuary Movement members so very present at the Mill Street meetings (at times screaming and stomping their feet) and the Galvan PILOT meetings, but no one shows up here (and at the previous meeting) for a project to renovate the largest unused building in the City into housing.
Also - has anyone seen HCHC Form 990s for the last 3 years, or know who their fiscal sponsor is?
They do not seem to understand that both need to be made public.
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2 - If 3 dedicated parents with high standards and a small budget bought one of those empty schools (and was allowed by NYS to do a charter school (like "Free Schools in the UK or Voucher Schools in Europe) or some sort of merit-first school that puts student outcomes ahead of administrator / bureaucrat / labor union needs, it would be the best school in the country in under a decade at $20k per student, not $40k and growing (the current HCSD + City of Hudson spend per student).
Instead, many will send their kids to Hawthorne, the Berkshires, or south to the rivertowns or the City... while local kids with fewer options languish.
This is the real systemic failure of Hudson, and the system pushes out truth-speakers like Peter Meyer and others.
Maybe if we get Malcolm Gladwell to do a book or podcast on all this it will change. He might title the book "Hudson’s Law: The More You Spend, the Less You Fix" and the podcast; The Hudson Mystery & The Valley of Broken Dreams.
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*Correction:
Delete"it would be the best school in the COUNTY in under a decade"
A simpler solution would be to make attendance at all public K-12 schools mandatory. Imagine all the problems that would fix, instantly.
DeleteSlow, I agree that would fix many of the problems instantly. I’ve have been had thought before. However, I don’t see how it would be legally or constitutionally possible. Also, unless this policy was implemented state or nationwide, the people who are the most upwardly mobile—who also happen to be the people sending their kids to private schools, would just simply move. And even if we ignore the constitutionality part, any state or nationwide effort to essentially ban private schools would be met with the same fervor as a total gun ban would, probably worse. The problem seems to be how to encourage newcomers to give the public schools consideration up to the tipping point where the schools become considered “good” and then become an attractor for young families, like Red Hook’s school district. But then we eliminate the last thing holding local real estate prices down.
DeleteI'm sorry I can't read Roger's piece, but the title of the piece says it all : "As youth population declines, schools are repurposed in the Hudson Valley." This should be the Hudson QUESTION: Where is our children's education going. This is a time to remember Aristotle's advice: Excellence doesn't happen by accident. --peter meyer
ReplyDeleteI was curious whether this "greying" of Columbia County could be tied to the much discussed trend of the moment, lower fertility rates. According to census data, Columbia County's population, while slightly lower in 2020 than 1990, is still higher than in 1980, when average family size was larger. Demographers can correct me, but this seems to indicate that while families with children are moving out for economic reasons, older individuals and couples are relocating here in numbers significant enough to make up the difference.
ReplyDeleteOne thing to consider when looking at population decline or increase is that the census only counts as residents people who live here more than 50% of the time. There was a time when a great deal of the people wh owned property were weekenders and were not counted here. While more people, particularly since the pandemic, are moving or living here full time. The 2030 census will be very interesting. I believe the headlines will be something like "Upstate reverses population decline".
ReplyDeleteI have since read Hannigan Gilson's story, which appears based on a Patterns for Progress report. What is left out is the question of what this dramatic demographic change -- enough loss of kids to close 50 schools -- does to the quality of education in our remaining schools. The State has to face the problem of school funding based on these terrible losses of students. Will anyone answer that question? --peter meyer
ReplyDeleteThe missing piece in this story -- the missing story -- is what this youth population decline does to NYS "foundation aid" to school districts. Governor Hochul and the Unions can only ignore this local state aid money impact for so long; not only does the population decline close school buildings, it is supposed to cut off funding for education programs and personnel (e.g. teachers, administrators, janitors). Will our board of education be ready for this? --peter meyer
ReplyDelete