Town of Greenburgh School District Enrollment Disparities

The New York State Education Department has finally released all of its 2019-2020 school year enrollment stats for public, nonpublic and even home schooling.  (See http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/IRSReports.html.)   This data was collected from every school district in the state last fall, before the closures.   Among much fascinating data, we can calculate the total number of school age children within each school district and observe trends.  And trends there are:  by adding the total of public school, nonpublic school (parochial and private) and home schooled kids, we can get the total of school age (K-12) children in each school district.  Yes, a few kids will be undercounted who are somehow "off the grid" or are schooled in residential programs or out of state, but that won't be many.   Looking at a three year window from the 2016-17 school year to the present 2019-2020, we see that the number of K-12 kids in the Town of Greenburgh has remained basically the same, dropping by only 52 students from 17,721 to 17,669.    But within that total, we see major variations among the school districts.

A. TOTAL K-12 CHILDREN PER SCHOOL DISTRICT 
(PUBLIC +PRIVATE/PAROCHIAL + HOME SCHOOLED)

DISTRICT	16-17	19-20	% change
GC	2313	2085	-10%
Elmsford	1161	1170	1%
Ardsley	2152	2380	11%
Edgemont	2030	2077	2%
Tarrytown*	3017	2937	-3%
Irvington	1878	1912	2%
Dobbs Ferry	1590	1637	3%
Hastings	1672	1704	2%
Pocantico*	331	293	-11%
Valhalla*	1577	1471	-7%
TOTAL	17721	17669	0%

NOTES: Pocantico, Tarrytown and Valhalla school districts include children from outside of the Town Greenburgh.    Pocantico is also only a K-8 school district.  Also, I'm not including pre-K children in these numbers as only three of the 10 Greenburgh school districts enroll pre-K kids and only in limited numbers.

Now, let's break down the totals in A above into public v. nonpublic.

B. TOTAL K-12 CHILDREN PER SCHOOL DISTRICT 
PUBLIC SCHOOL ONLY

DISTRICT	16-17	19-20	% change
GC	1736	1583	-9%
Elmsford	949	967	2%
Ardsley	2096	2326	11%
Edgemont	1965	2050	4%
Tarrytown*	2718	2685	-1%
Irvington	1746	1781	2%
Dobbs Ferry	1491	1517	2%
Hastings	1598	1654	4%
Pocantico*	309	285	-8%
Valhalla*	1455	1387	-5%
TOTAL	16063	16235	1%

What jumps out above is the decrease in school age kids that cover the north half of Greenburgh:  GC, Tarrytown, Elmsford, Valhalla and Pocantico Hills.   Admittedly, Tarrytown, Valhalla and PHSD cover areas outside of Greenburgh, so we can't be sure what part of those declines are within Greenburgh.  It is puzzling that GC has such a steep drop while adjacent Elmsford has a small increase.   It's no surprise that Hastings and Edgemont have solid increase but Ardsley's big leap is remarkable. 

C.  TOTAL K-12 CHILDREN PER SCHOOL DISTRICT

PRIVATE/PAROCHIAL/HOME SCHOOLED

DISTRICT	16-17	19-20	% change
GC	577	502	-13%
Elmsford	212	203	-4%
Ardsley	56	54	-4%
Edgemont	65	27	-58%
Tarrytown*	299	252	-16%
Irvington	132	131	-1%
Dobbs Ferry	99	120	21%
Hastings	74	50	-32%
Pocantico*	22	8	-64%
Valhalla*	122	87	-29%
TOTAL	1658	1434	-14%

What explains the nearly across-the-board steep drop in non-public school educated kids, while public school enrollment has slightly increased?  Why is Dobbs Ferry the exception?  Have property taxes reached a breaking point in Greenburgh where young families no longer contemplate moving here with the expectation of sending kids to nonpublic schools (i.e., mostly Catholic parochial schools)?

Which districts most attract young families?  We can get a sense of this from looking at school age kids as a % of the district population.  Using A above and district pop numbers from https://censusreporter.org, we can get the following and find huge disparities.    

D. SCHOOL AGE (K-12) KIDS AS % OF DISTRICT POPULATION

DISTRICT	K-12 KIDS	District Pop	% SCHOOL KIDS
GC	2085	21609	10%
Elmsford	1170	9157	13%
Ardsley	2380	9214	26%
Edgemont	2077	7606	27%
Tarrytown*	2937	19859	15%
Irvington	1912	9448	20%
Dobbs Ferry	1637	10199	16%
Hastings	1704	8659	20%
Pocantico*	293	4879	6%
Valhalla*	1474	10425	14%
TOTAL	17669	111055	16%

Again we see a north v. south Greenburgh divide, with the north-end districts all at 15% or lower for school-age children as a % of their population.


Summary:  Greenburgh demographics are fascinating to examine because there are ten different school districts.  Greenburgh's overall population is steady (in contrast to upstate New York which is shrinking) including school enrollment.  There however are discrepancies and they vary geographically: the town's Southside districts are on a multi-year upward trend in attracting families with school age kids while the Northside districts are falling.  Anyone want to suggests reasons for this?