At a recent Greenburgh Town Board meeting discussion of the Comprehensive Plan, one attendee observed that in unincorporated Greenburgh, population growth was far exceeding projections assumed in the plan. I was very surprised by this comment and my curiosity led me to look into this issue. The demographic changes in the Town of Greenburgh, its various sub-components and, especially the school districts are fascinating, surprising and raise questions about the representativeness of Greenburgh democracy.
First sources; census.gov is an amazing fount of information. I've relied on the 2000 and 2010 censuses. The census does provide intra-census projections - the latest is for 2014 - but my conclusion after examining school district reports is that these projections are not especially reliable for Greenburgh I've found usboundary.com, an amazing resource for understanding Greenburgh's byzantine conglomeration of villages and school district, none of which precisely align. Even more interesting are the numbers provided by the NY State Dept. of Education at data.nysed.gov, which allow investigation into school district enrollment numbers, as late as the 2014-2015 school years.
Before we drill down, some basics:
Greenburgh according to the 2010 census has 88,400 residents, which is an 1.8% increase from 2000's total of 86,764.
These 88,400 residents are broken down as follows:
A. More than half (45,537) live in incorporated villages:
1, Irvington Village: 6,420
2. Ardsley Village: 4,452
3. Dobbs Ferry Vill: 10,874
4. Hastings Vill: 7,849
5. Tarrytown Vill: 11,277
6. Elmsford Vill: 4,664
B. The remaining 42,863 live in Unincorporated parts of Greenburgh (referred to as Town Outside Villages, or "TOV").
The TOV population is best understood by examining it by school district:
1. Greenburgh Central SD: 21,801
2. Edgemont SD: 7,454
3. TOV in Ardsley SD, but not living in village: c. 5,150
4. TOV in Elmsford SD, but not living the village : c. 3,050
5. c. 5,400 mostly in Valhalla SD and Pocantico Hills SD, with remainder in various Greenburgh SDs.
In Greenburgh, residents identify themselves by school district more than by any other political category. This leads to great confusion. For example, as shown above, more Ardsley School District residents live in TOV than actually live in Ardsley Village. None of the village school districts precisely align with the villages that share their names. To make matters more complicated, in addition to 7 school districts located entirely within Greenburgh (Ardsley, Edgemont, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, Elmsford, Greenburgh and Hastings), three additional school districts share Greenburgh population with neighboring towns. Tarrytown SD has about 11,000 of its residents in the Greenburgh village of Tarrytown with another 10,000 living in the neighboring, non-Greenburgh village of Sleepy Hollow. Portions of the Valhalla and Pocantico Hill SD borders lie within Greenburgh, but most residents of those districts reside outside of Greenburgh. As we will later see, all of this makes analysis complicated.
C. So in addition to the above political breakdown, let's look at Greenburgh's 2010 population of 88,400 by school district, again using the 2010 census numbers as filtered through usboundary.com:
1. Irvington SD: 9,125
2. Ardsley SD: 9,616
3. Dobbs Ferry SD: 9,499
4. Hastings SD: 8,514
5. Tarrytown SD: 11,277 (with an additional 9,870 residing in Sleepy Hollow)
6. Elmsford SD: 7,734
7. Edgemont SD: 7,454
8. Greenburgh CSD: 21,801
9. Other: 3,380 (mostly Valhalla and Pocantico Hils)
Next: demographic changes in the Town of Greenburgh and School Districts
