Sunday, June 7, 2020

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
16-1719-20% change
GC23132085-10%
Elmsford116111701%
Ardsley2152238011%
Edgemont203020772%
Tarrytown*30172937-3%
Irvington187819122%
Dobbs Ferry159016373%
Hastings167217042%
Pocantico*331293-11%
Valhalla*15771471-7%
TOTAL17721176690%

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


DISTRICT16-1719-20   % change
GC17361583-9%
Elmsford9499672%
Ardsley2096232611%
Edgemont196520504%
Tarrytown*27182685-1%
Irvington174617812%
Dobbs Ferry149115172%
Hastings159816544%
Pocantico*309285-8%
Valhalla*14551387-5%
TOTAL16063162351%

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

DISTRICT16-1719-20% change
GC577502-13%
Elmsford212203-4%
Ardsley5654-4%
Edgemont6527-58%
Tarrytown*299252-16%
Irvington132131-1%
Dobbs Ferry9912021%
Hastings7450-32%
Pocantico*228-64%
Valhalla*12287-29%
TOTAL16581434-14%

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


DISTRICTK-12 KIDSDistrict Pop% SCHOOL KIDS
GC20852160910%
Elmsford1170915713%
Ardsley2380921426%
Edgemont2077760627%
Tarrytown*29371985915%
Irvington1912944820%
Dobbs Ferry16371019916%
Hastings1704865920%
Pocantico*29348796%
Valhalla*14741042514%
TOTAL1766911105516%

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?



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