Sarah Kingzack raises grass-fed beef near Westport. She also teaches high school English. “I’ve always had an off-farm job,” she said. “I don’t know anyone who has a small farm who doesn’t also have another job.”

Kingzack knows firsthand how hard it is to make ends meet as a small farmer. Market complexities, economies of scale and conventional food systems don’t support farmers like Kingzack, who raises 20 head of cattle per year and sells halves, quarters and cuts.

“The price of fuel went up, so the price of hay goes up,” she said. “Our butchering fees have essentially gone up every year for the past four years.”

Inflation makes life harder for her neighbors in the region who already grapple with poverty. And climate change intensifies those challenges by bringing persistent heat, drought and intermittent flooding to Westport. “There is a squeeze from all sides,” Kingzack said.

With Essex Food Hub, Kingzack’s KZ Farm has found a partner that is building out food systems that work for small and medium-sized farms.

“For me, the hub is this critical organization that is trying to cushion the really negative impacts of all of these things so that farms can still be viable,” she said.

Federal investment has been a valuable tool in North Country food system build-outs, but sudden funding cuts destabilize markets and undermine efforts. “It feels like a lot of the systems in our country that we need to survive are not being invested in enough,” Kingzack said. “Once a farm field is lost, or once a farm goes out of business, it’s hard to reverse that trend, unless we have a very serious investment in organizations like the hub that enable local farms or a diversified region of farms to survive.”

For Kingzack, the hub offers wholesale aggregation and distribution through New York’s North Country and as far as New York City.

“It’s huge because we are a very small farm,” Kingzack said. “We wouldn’t be able to wholesale otherwise.”

Through Essex Food Hub, schools, restaurants, grocery stores and hospitals can order online from more than 50 local producers. “They are able to market our products alongside a bunch of other products, they aggregate my products along with other local farm products and then they deliver,” Kingzack said.

Through federal Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA), the hub also purchased more than half a million dollars of local food for distribution. LFPA has now been eliminated, part of more than a billion dollars in federal funding cuts to local food purchasing in schools and pantries. This loss had the biggest impact on producers, but it also affected the hub’s capacity.

The Essex Food Hub started out as the Hub on the Hill in Essex before converting to a nonprofit and building out a permanent home with a larger retail space in neighboring Westport. Now, they’re building out a commercial kitchen, production space and cold and dry storage to support start-up caterers, bakers and cheesemakers.

Kingzack understands the value of this project: KZ Farm stored meat in the hub’s small commercial freezer until she could build out her own on-farm storage.

Essex Food Hub’s build-out is supported by an $860,000 Resilient Food System Infrastructure (RFSI) award from the federal government and a half-million-dollar grant from the Northern Border Regional Commission, a federal-state partnership serving the most distressed counties of New York, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

The commission has been defunded, though the grant is still proceeding. The RFSI funding had been frozen but was released in June.

“The program is proceeding in New York, but also feels uncertain,” said Essex Food Hub director of outreach Kim La Reau.

The delay shortened the timeline for construction by a year—a year in which building material prices increased and tariffs jostled markets for food production equipment. RFSI grantees are scrambling to catch up and meet project budgets in a new reality.

Kingzack said some long-time farmers are wondering if it’s time to get out. But she holds tight to a vision in which she’s a small but vital component in a rich local and regional food network that benefits all her neighbors.

“What I envision for this 50 acres of land is that we fit into a much bigger tapestry of farms in our region,” she said. “That we just add in the few thousand pounds of meat that we produce every year to the pot of what our region is producing, adding to the overall resilience of this place.”

With Kingzack’s beef as one of many ingredients, these regional food producers are starting to cook up a pretty tasty—and resilient—recipe.

On Feb. 3, a large section of ice pack covering Lake Champlain began to drift north, resulting in groups of skaters needing to be rescued. Below is an account from Evan Perkins and Jess Stevens, skaters who witnessed the incident and sent messages to ensure all parties were accounted for.

‘We were uniquely positioned’

At around 10:45 a.m. on Feb. 3, a couple miles north of the bouquet river on the New York side of Lake Champlain, we noticed an open lead forming in front of us that looked like it was going to become lake wide. At that point, I immediately texted someone who was in another large group that I knew was on the ice. We then proceeded to skate directly to shore, having to go a little bit south to get around some patches of 2-inch ice that I thought was a greater risk of peeling off the main sheet that we were on which was 5 inches thick.

When we arrived near shore, we noticed a small open crack, which we were able to cross easily, but we could see was widening. Once we got to shore and turned around, we could see that the whole bay was just starting to move northward. It was moving very slowly at that point but picked up speed in the next couple of minutes. There was still plenty of ice that was firmly attached to the shore, but it was clear that the whole ice sheet was moving.

At this point, I put a notification on Listserve and then also made phone calls to a couple different folks who I knew to be on the ice and let them know what was occurring. Jesse and I proceeded to then skate south on shoreline ice. We estimated that this ice sheet was moving for probably about 20-30 minutes before it stopped.

The whole time we had been skating, we’d been searching for a place where it was possible to cross off of the main ice sheet for the group that was out there. When we found a spot, we called them. We could also see the group out on the ice and directed them toward our location.

When they got off the ice, we had thought that all groups were accounted for because we had received a text from a member of the party that they had gotten rescued and were about to get off the ice and hadn’t heard anything since. They had also been fully informed that they were on a moving plate.

The plate had stopped moving right about the time we called the group that was out on the ice and directed them toward our location, which turned a dynamic situation into a static one which was far safer and easier to manage in terms of crossing from the main ice sheet onto shoreline ice. From there, we all proceeded back to Essex. Since my group had all parked on the Vermont side and had no idea that a rescue was occurring at this point, we proceeded south following the shoreline on safe ice, crossing the old, thick rubble ice near Split Rock to the Vermont side. Our plan from there was to head up the Vermont shore, only skating shoreline ice, obviously not getting back on the main sheet, and calling an Uber if we got stopped at any point.

There, we stopped for a break and checked our texts where we realized that a rescue was going on, and so we headed back over to Essex where the fire chief was waiting because our names had been given by somebody in the rescue party as people who have been out on the ice and they needed to account for us. 

Much thanks to all the rescue services involved and all the people who went out of their way to make sure those skaters got safely back to shore.

Reading, writing and rutabagas aren’t part of the classic curriculum that most educators signed up for, but teachers who have added food to their coursework have seen results that are both surprising and rewarding. And sometimes more than a little eye-opening.

Melissa Niquette is a second grade teacher at Boquet Valley Central School’s Lakeview Campus whose students participate in the Rooted in Learning Farm to School program. She noticed that children tend to be familiar with locally grown apples and pumpkins due to parents’ autumnal traditions. But beyond that, there is scant knowledge of where food comes from, or what goes into a healthy diet.

And that matters, for both their short and long-term health.

“Most children are not exposed to whole foods, or foods their parents dislike, and that leaves an imprint on them,” Niquette said. “As an adult, I tend to go to the foods I had as a child. Giving kids healthy, locally grown foods now will hopefully help them make better choices later.”

Local roots, lifelong habits

Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County helps teachers introduce a world of fresh foods to kids through the Rooted in Learning Farm to School program that promotes food-related activities throughout the 2025-2026 school year. Rooted in Learning is funded through a Cornell Cooperative Extension Harvest NY grant, and is being taught in elementary schools in AuSable Forks, Boquet Valley and Ticonderoga.

Changing the taste of a generation

While children are famously pegged as vegetable-haters, intolerant of any unprocessed whole food that wasn’t raised in the supermarket freezer aisle, teachers say this may be less an issue of taste than it is an issue of exposure.

READ MORE: Agriculture in the classroom grows roots in Essex County

Kids eat what their parents eat, and processed foods have become generational, having exploded in popularity in the 1970s and ’80s. Massive advertising campaigns focused on children, and parents—often tired from a hard day at work—found it easy to oblige with microwave-ready fish sticks and tater tots.

These processed foods are, as Niquette says, being imprinted on young palates with health implications both today and down the road. But that pattern can be changed with education.

Rooted in Learning provides classroom instruction and facilitates farm visits where kids see foods in their natural state. That makes them curious and more likely to try fresh foods that were previously unfamiliar to them.

From reluctant eaters to food adventurers

Michelle Eggleston, a fourth grade teacher at Ticonderoga Elementary School, said she’s noticed a change in children’s eating behavior since agricultural instruction has entered the classroom. She’s noticed kids are not only (voluntarily) eating more vegetables, but having a better understanding of whole foods and nutrition in general.

“I see them get excited when they are learning about and preparing new foods,” she said.

Along with nourishment, Eggleston said children are, at a young age, receptive to the message that wholesome foods will make you grow stronger, think more clearly and have (parents, avert your eyes) more energy.

“I enjoy teaching food because it helps to shape lifelong eating habits in my students,” she said. “I’m helping to influence how students feel about their bodies, whether they fear or enjoy trying new foods, and how confident they feel making food choices later in life.”

Lessons that nourish the whole child

Teachers have also discovered that bringing agriculture into the classroom can impart lessons that go beyond nutrition and health. There are few parts of daily and academic life that can’t in some way be linked to food production. 

Food is a natural for, say, teaching science. “We use food in STEM activities when we can fit it into the schedule,” Niquette said. “I bring enough to use for the lesson and then to eat fresh.”

Growing connections between food, culture and community

“I’m always looking for ways to connect our learning to our community,” said Ines Chapela, a third grade teacher at Boquet Valley Central School’s Lakeview campus. “I love that the AITC lessons teach students about local food and use maps to show the students where the food is being grown. It’s important for kids to feel connected to their food systems and for them to understand the bigger picture of agriculture.”

Chapela believes food is a natural way to teach about other cultures as well, and plans to add those lessons in as time allows.

Food can be exciting for children, particularly when it’s something new—and what gets children excited gets teachers excited too. “Agriculture in the Classroom has been an empowering and rewarding experience for the students and the teachers,” Niquette said.

This story was originally published by Adirondack Harvest.

Despite temperatures of just 17 degrees, more than one-third of the Red Hook High School student body walked out of school at 1 p.m. Friday, joining a nationwide day of protest in response to two killings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis.

The students said their participation was important on a national day of protest. “We want to make sure that Red Hook says its piece, that we are not okay with ICE in our neighborhoods, we are not okay with a fascist country that will hurt our friends, that will kill our family,” said Leopold Pflaum, a senior who was credited with being the brainchild of the protests. 

“We want to make sure that our school knows that and that we have ways to warn kids if they’re in danger of being kidnapped by ICE,” he added.

The students passed out a flier with two demands of the Red Hook Central School District. One is that ICE officers not be permitted on school property and that Red Hook Police not cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

“For the safety of the students and staff, we demand an affirmative declaration from the administration and school board of non-cooperation. Ban DHS,” the flier states.

A second demand is that an early-warning system be installed inside the high school if school personnel learn that DHS or ICE agents are within the vicinity of the building. Red Hook High enrolls 567 students. 

District spokesman Mike Benischek responded to the students’ demand note and the protest action Friday. “We appreciate the passion our students showed today, exercising their rights to assemble and be heard,” he said. “As is always the case within our buildings when students raise concerns, we will engage in constructive, reflective conversation directly with the student body.” He also noted the district’s January 2025 statement that outlines District and State of New York policies and guidance related to student privacy in light of actions by the Federal government.

The students issued other demands to elected leaders, local Congressman Josh Riley (NY-19) and New York’s two senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both Democrats. Among those demands is no funding for ICE, accountability and transparency by all federal agents, and the cutting of personal and political ties with Palantir Technologies (PLTR), a data analytics firm used by ICE.

“We are hoping to create a good relationship between our school and the organizations that protect immigrants in our community, and we are hoping to encourage our school [will] … make an additional statement that ICE will never be allowed on school premises,“ said senior Cairo, 17, who asked that her last name not be used.

Another of the lead organizers said it’s critical for students to support their classmates, some of whom are immigrants or whose parents may be undocumented. “I know people who have not wanted to come to practice, who haven’t wanted to go places because their parents don’t want to leave their homes,” said Danny Cashen, 18. “We need to establish that there is support for them, that we will be doing what they’re doing in Minneapolis.”

Another student, Illa DeFraites Scott, 18, said it was time to speak out. “For a lot of us, it’s just felt like our voice isn’t being heard at all, and this was a way for us to be heard,” said Illa, a senior and one of 15 students who helped organize the protest. 

She said the idea surfaced about a week about by Leopold, who helped start a group chat after a recent “No Kings” protest. That group then invited others to the message thread and students began making posters.

Danny said students would also be protesting outside of local businesses and taking other actions. “We’re going to be driving them to their games,” he said of classmates whose parents don’t want to leave home. “That is sad to say that that needs to happen, but without that, where are we?”

Several students remarked on their gratitude that bitter temperatures didn’t suppress attendance. “I didn’t expect that we would have such a turnout, especially because it’s so cold,” said Illa. “We were shuffling through the snow at one point, and I even heard whispers like, ‘Why don’t we just sit in the lobby?’ But that doesn’t do much. We might be warm, but it’s not doing anything.”

The students left from a side entrance of the high school just after the 1 p.m. bell, marched around to the back of the Linden Avenue Middle School, then down a path that meets up with Phillips Street at Market Street. They then headed along Market Street on sidewalks on both sides of the street and into the Four Corners. 

There were no speeches. Instead, students held signs aloft and chanted, “No Justice, No Peace,” “ICE Out for Good,” “What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now,” and “Immigrants are welcome here. No hate. No fear.” As they walked into the Four Corners, the students loudly sang the 1940 Woodie Guthrie folk song, “This Land is Your Land.” Students also held aloft signs, “We prefer crushed ICE,” said one. “All lCE melts,” said another.

At one point, the students walked to Red Hook Village Hall before returning to the Four Corners. They did not disrupt traffic.

Late Friday morning, Red Hook High Principal Dr. Kyle Roddey alerted parents to the walkout, of which district officials were informed by several of the student organizers on Thursday. Stacie Fenn Smith, principal of the Linden Avenue Middle School, did as well. Both largely used the same verbiage in their communications.

Roddey noted that it is a violation of district policy, as stated in the district’s Student Handbook and the Code of Conduct, for students to leave campus during the school day. But he also noted the value of protest, and Fenn Smith did the same.

“While the school does not encourage students to miss instructional time, we want to be clear that we respect student voices and are often impressed by those who feel strongly enough about an issue to advocate for their beliefs,” Roddey wrote. “Civic engagement and thoughtful advocacy are important elements of personal growth and democratic participation.”

He also noted that students retain certain First Amendment rights and protections during the school day, including the right to assemble and express their views, provided, he said, “this occurs in a manner that does not substantially disrupt the educational environment.”

Several parents whose students participated said they were pleased. “I love it. Kids should learn about what’s going on in our world and how they can step up and make a difference. Best classroom is in the field,” said Amy Kotler of Red Hook, whose ninth-grade daughter, Jess, participated with her mom’s blessing.

The walkout began just after the bell rang at 1 p.m., Kotler said. Students exited the front entrance of the high school, dropped their backpacks on the ground, and proceeded to walk down the sidewalks along Market Street on both sides of the street. They gathered on all four corners of the Village, holding signs aloft and chanting.

District officials said disciplinary action may be levied on the students. “The level of discipline would be impacted by the amount of disruption,” said spokesman Mike Benischek. However, details of any discipline would not be announced by the school as students are covered by federal privacy statutes, Benischek said.

The student-led effort stems from a national shutdown campaign calling for “no work, no school, no shopping” to protest immigration enforcement and the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, with organizers earlier this week urging coordinated walkouts and after-school protests nationwide.

The Red Hook action follows a student protest in Rhinebeck on Tuesday, Jan. 20 in which more than 100 students participated. Also, the Red Hook Village protest project that has occurred at the Four Corners intersection for multiple Saturdays since Pres. Donald Trump took office a year ago focused on ICE actions at its Jan. 11 event. It was one of the most widely attended weekend protest events.

Note: Claire Greenburger contributed reporting.

The post In Biting Cold, More than 150 Red Hook Students Walk Out of School to Protest ICE Actions first appeared on The Daily Catch.

For two decades, Rhinebeck resident Eric Spiegel, president of Rhinebeck at Home, served as caregiver for three loved ones—his father, his stepmother, and his close friend, Henry—as each experienced cognitive decline. “Coming to terms with the needs of my loved ones meant putting large parts of my life on hold,” he said, “dropping my own needs and interests for others.” 

Each situation demanded constant vigilance, as both of his parents were deteriorating at the same time. They insisted they were fine and needed no help. But his father, he said, “kept doing things that had to be undone when and if you found out about them.” His stepmother, meanwhile, “stopped doing anything, including basic self-care. Everything, that is, except buying and consuming alcohol.” Living 125 miles away, Spiegel created a small bedroom in their home so he could stay several nights a week, and petitioned the courts to declare his parents legally incapacitated so he could serve as their guardian, while managing finances, medical care, and basic safety.

“Most of the time, I would just toughen up and take care of what I needed to,” Spiegel said. “Every now and then, though, I allowed myself to break down. A few times, I left my parents’ house for a few days, feeling like I might never go back.” But after three or four days, duty called, and he would return. 

With Henry, the warning signs surfaced as a medley of missed medical appointments, burnt food left on the stove, unchecked spending, skipped medications, growing disorientation, and an insistence on driving when it was no longer safe. Spiegel took over finances, coordinated doctor visits, hired and supervised aides, and eventually moved Henry into a care facility—decisions that were emotionally wrenching and financially daunting.

Henry had limited savings and Social Security, and Spiegel managed every penny. “As time went on, it was always a question of which would go first—him or his money,” he said. By the time Henry died in late 2024 at the age of 79, the timing of his passing spared Spiegel from covering the cost of his care. “If he had lived one month longer, there would have been nothing,” he said. By the end, “whatever sadness existed was by then dwarfed by a sense of great relief.” 

Spiegel’s experience is far from rare. In New York State, roughly 13% of adults aged 65 and older, some 426,500 adults, are living with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Coalition of New York State Alzheimer’s Association Chapters. Nearly 656,000 family members provide care to people with cognitive loss, contributing hundreds of millions of hours of care each year.

“The difficulty of family caregiving cannot be overstated,” Joan Friedman told The Daily Catch. She is the co-founder of The Being Together Project, a nonprofit that supports people caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s and dementia through counseling, education, and peer support. “They are on duty 24/7. Many caregivers feel sad, scared, lonely, resentful, and angry. One person cannot do the job for long without help.” 

Behind the statistics are intimate lives shaped by love, responsibility, and the legacy of deep connection. The Daily Catch identified three couples from Northern Dutchess who are grappling with the challenges of memory loss, each at a different stage of the journey. These case studies examine how memory loss reshapes relationships and daily life and how partners adapt as someone they love begins to slip away.

Adapting with Grace

At their request, the names of Steve and Barbara Cal are pseudonyms used to protect their identities. They agreed to be photographed, provided their faces were not shown.

Winter for Steve Cal means skiing at Belleayre and chopping firewood for the stove. Spring brings the yard and vegetable garden back to life. Every week, there’s a crockpot meal, portioned into leftovers. From the outside, little appears out of order. But Steve notices the small adjustments he is now making to accommodate his wife of 42 years, Barbara, who was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s in 2024.

Both 71, the couple has lived in their Red Hook home since 1986. They raised two children there, retired in 2016, and built a life rich in routine: attending church, volunteering at food pantries, traveling, enjoying music, and pursuing lifelong learning. When Barbara was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment in 2022, those routines remained. “We continue with an emphasis on doing activities that matter most to Barbara and enhance her feelings of wellness and inclusion,” Steve said.

Most mornings, Barbara walks several miles on familiar routes. She takes classes at IXL Health and Fitness and reads library books, sometimes finishing one in a day or two. Together, they attend courses at the Lifetime Learning Institute at Bard College. Music and art, Steve said, are essential—sometimes a summer concert at the Eat n Go in Red Hook, or dancing together in the kitchen. 

Barbara still cooks, though now Steve sets out ingredients in advance and stays nearby. Some days, she bakes cookies on her own. Other days, he watches closely, tracking down misplaced utensils or ingredients. When they shop, he steps in at checkout. He makes sure her phone is charged, her keys are accounted for, and the rhythms of the day stay intact. “There is a new balance,” he said. “It puts additional burdens on me that I can grow into.” 

Steve tries to live in Barbara’s reality, sharing information when she asks for it and sometimes offering small white lies when the truth would only cause distress. When she misplaces an item, Steve tells her that it was he who lost it. “I try my best to protect her,” he said. It’s a lesson he learned years ago, watching Barbara’s mother struggle with Alzheimer’s.

Knowing her family history, Barbara had long worried she might develop the disease. When Steve realized they would need to adapt, he began reading articles and books on the early stages of Alzheimer’s. “The reading gave me insight into the progression and possible accommodations,” he said. They attended a conference on Alzheimer’s, dementia, and memory loss at the Franklin D. Roosevelt estate in Hyde Park. Steve also began attending a twice-monthly care partners’ support group at The Center for Healthy Aging, Nuvance Health Medical Practice, which was recommended to him by an LLI peer. “Many participants are dealing with more advanced cases,” he said, “but I pick up tips and hints.”

After a neurologist told them they had caught the disease early, they decided to join a clinical study in August 2024 at the Alzheimer’s Research Center in Albany to test a new Alzheimer’s drug. The study is demanding: monthly infusions, regular MRIs and PET scans, and ongoing assessments. It requires two participants—one to receive the drug or placebo, and one to observe and report. “I chose to join the clinical study because it offered me hope,” Barbara said, “and a way to be instrumental in helping to find a cure.” 

Barbara’s deepest fear isn’t the disease itself; it’s being abandoned by her life partner. “I fear at some point my husband will have had enough of what I am going through and want to leave,” she said. “I am human, and I would be dishonest if I said I didn’t feel grief, fear, and frustration from time to time.” 

Steve responds to that fear with presence. He manages and attends every medical appointment and estimates he spends about two hours a day on tasks related to Barbara’s memory loss: scheduling, organizing, and observing. “I accept that this is the same person I married,” he said. “Something is causing a problem, but we will deal with it.”

For now, they plan to keep Barbara at home as long as possible. A nurse once told them they were the happiest couple she knew—a comment Steve took as the highest compliment. “We are in a new normal, one that will continue to change,” he said. “I chose my life partner 46 years ago, and I choose her again every day.”

Labor of Love

Betty and Peter Olson still live in the house they constructed together more than four decades ago on a hill in Clinton. They bought the 13 acres of land six months before their wedding in 1978 and moved into the unfinished house in 1980. “Well, he says we built it,” Betty, 82, said, “but the truth is that he pulled out almost every nail I attempted, to put it in straight.” She carried shingles up the ladder while Peter was tied to the chimney for safety. She painted and insulated. He wired the house himself, and an inspector told him it was the best job he’d seen. 

They met in a scuba-diving class at the Poughkeepsie YMCA. Peter assisted the instructor. Betty was a beginner who struggled to stay underwater. “Peter attributes our relationship to the fact that I needed so much help,” she said.

That dynamic—Peter as the capable fixer, Betty asking for help—defined much of their marriage. Peter built radio towers on their property, one rising 110 feet into the air. Radios were both his lifelong hobby and career. He worked for a local radio station while a student at Dutchess Community College, then spent 45 years with New York Communications as the chief designer and trouble-shooter of radio communication systems for many Hudson Valley police and fire departments and commercial enterprises. Every winter, after storms, he plowed their long, steep driveway himself. Now, at 84, Peter is living with Alzheimer’s, and their roles have largely reversed.

Looking back, Betty can see early signs she didn’t recognize. “He’s always had a quirky personality,” she said. “Now I see that many of the times I thought he was joking, he might not have been understanding.”

Peter’s kidney transplant in July 2023 brought everything into sharper focus, she said. After years of polycystic kidney disease and a difficult stretch on dialysis, the transplant proved to be lifesaving, but the five-hour procedure and anesthesia took a toll. “For the first month afterward, I was told his confusion and memory loss would subside,” Betty said. “But it became evident that there were serious continuing deficits.” In 2024, MRI and PET scans confirmed Alzheimer’s. 

Their days are quiet. Peter sleeps late. Betty wakes him to take medications, checks his vital signs, and coaxes him to eat. He spends hours watching old television shows, nodding off, and repeatedly asking if it’s time for his evening medications. His social life has narrowed to doctor’s appointments, occasional visits with an old friend from high school, and their daughter, Ann Elizabeth, 44, who lives in Boston and visits a few times a year.

In some ways, Peter’s memory appears intact. He accurately reminds his wife about practical necessities, like getting gas or buying milk. But cognitive testing tells another story. His most recent score dropped to 20 out of 30, placing him in the moderate stage of decline. More than forgetting, Betty has noticed a growing inability to follow basic instructions.

Peter wears a medication patch that must be changed daily and kept dry. Betty wakes Peter, removes the patch, helps him into the shower, then applies a new one. One morning, she woke at 6:30 a.m. to find Peter showering, patch still on. When she asks him to help fold laundry, he is unsure how to complete the task. Once, after badly cutting her fingers and rushing to an urgent care center, she asked him to zip a bag holding her insurance cards. “He pulled the bag wide open,” she said. “No amount of coaching helped.”

The loss of practical skills has been especially painful. After his transplant, Peter couldn’t operate the FoodSaver vacuum sealer, a machine they’d used for years to preserve vegetables from their garden. Betty eventually figured it out herself. “Peter was always so adept,” she said. “Now even the simplest task baffles him.” They find humor where they can. Peter will call out that his “jacket is acting up again,” meaning he needs help dressing.

Peter has always loved doing a Donald Duck impression, originally to amuse others at the right moments. As his dementia has progressed, the voice now surfaced at unusual times, like during doctor’s appointments, when he slips into Donald Duck talk instead of answering questions. After a recent procedure to relieve his back pain, a nurse stepped into the packed waiting room to explain his aftercare to Betty. Unsure of her name, the nurse called out, “Is there a Daisy Duck here?” Betty stood and replied, “That would be me,” as heads turned across the room. Even then, the two of them found a way to laugh.

As Peter’s sole caregiver, Betty is determined to preserve her own life alongside his. She is discovering what she can do on her own after relying for years on her husband’s help. Recently, Betty, for the first time, put air in her tires. “I felt very proud of myself,” she said. She sings in church and community choirs, attends Vassar Lifelong Learning classes, and participates in book groups. Signs by the stove and sink reminding Peter to turn off the burners and faucets make it possible to leave him home alone for short periods. 

“I am more comfortable leaving him alone for a few hours than I had been,” she said, “because he has become much more inactive, very often still sitting in the same chair in front of the TV as when I left him, or lying in bed, even during the day.” As long as she has provided for his needs, he isn’t likely to leave burners on or water overflowing anymore.

Betty knows the disease will progress. But “for the moment,” she said, “I am comfortable with the life we are living.”

A Partner’s Rebirth

On a flight to California three years ago, Gina Fox, 68, watched as her husband, Michael Katz, 78, stood from his seat. He began walking, normally it seemed, heading to the lavatory. But then he kept walking past it to the plane’s rear galley. The flight attendants were working at the front of the plane. By the time Fox realized something might be wrong, Katz was reaching for the emergency exit door—an action that, at cruising altitude, could have turned deadly in seconds. 

“I lunged and grabbed his arm,” Fox said. She redirected him back toward the lavatory and did not let him out of her sight for the remainder of the flight. “You just don’t know when the dementia is going to make an appearance.” 

Fox and Katz had been together for nearly a decade. They met when Katz, a highly regarded trust and estates lawyer and partner in a small New York City firm, chose Fox as his realtor to sell a family property in Rhinebeck. “We were both single, enjoyed each other’s company, and fell in love,” Fox said. 

They were each other’s second spouses and settled together in Katz’s home in Milan while Fox retained her home in the Village of Rhinebeck. Dementia ran in Katz’s family, but the early signs were subtle. One Thanksgiving, about six years ago, Katz handed off his signature stuffing recipe, clipped from Saveur magazine, and asked Fox to make it instead. “It was a multi-step processing issue,” she said. “If a task had many steps, he couldn’t do it.” 

Soon, even small requests became difficult. If Fox asked him to complete two tasks in succession – say, carry something out to the car and then get the mail — he would forget the second task. A neurologist confirmed a dementia diagnosis in 2019 and warned that the condition would worsen. Physically, Katz remained in excellent shape, a mismatch Fox found difficult to understand. “In one respect, he was super healthy, but the mental functioning part was not,” she said. 

When Fox understood the dementia was progressive, she made a decision. “Do I stay with him, or do I leave him?” she asked herself. She had seen a friend abandoned after a dementia diagnosis. “It was very simple,” Fox said. “I love him. I can’t just leave.” They married soon after, not for romance, but for legal authority. Fox wanted to ensure she could make medical decisions for Katz and care for him as his condition progressed. “If you’re not married, you don’t have any say,” she said.

For seven years, Fox carefully structured Katz’s days. He volunteered at a food pantry, bagging pet food with a friend. He exercised, took pottery classes, hiked, and attended concerts and theaters. “He was super active,” said Fox, formerly an elected member of both the Rhinebeck Town Board and the Village Board. “I think that kept him out of a home for at least two years.” 

She learned to work creatively with his changing mind. She distracted him with long trips to a local dollar store, letting him fill a cart while she quietly returned items to the shelves. “We’d get out for under $20,” she said. “He was always thrilled.”

As his needs increased, Fox hired part-time help, an option she knows many families can’t afford. “People my age have lost their homes,” she said. “It’s outrageous.” Even with help, the strain mounted. Last September, after weeks of travel in the Midwest for her mother’s death and burial, Fox returned home exhausted. That night, after Katz had a severe incontinence accident in bed, he was disoriented and unable to help himself. By morning, Fox knew she had reached her limit. “I thought, ‘This is the end for me,’ ” she said.

That day, Fox called Katz’s three grown children in California. They found a memory care facility in Berkeley and placed him on a waitlist. Two weeks later, a bed opened—the first in almost a year. Fox assembled medical records, arranged tests, packed his belongings, ordered furniture, and, in 14 days, coordinated the moves.

With Fox at his side for the journey west, Katz moved to California last October. He is close to his children now; one rides her bike past his residence on her way to work every day. Katz still remembers Fox, who has returned to her home in Northern Dutchess, though sometimes he calls her by the wrong name when they speak by phone. They are no longer together physically, but they remain married and speak to each other often. He invents elaborate stories—that he went to Yale with Barack Obama and wrote songs with Bob Dylan. “You just go with it,” Fox said.

Three months after Katz’s move, Fox is recouping and reevaluating her life. Friends call this her “rebirth year.” She is reading “Flesh” by David Szalay, watching complex movies, has joined a book club, and is traveling again. “I didn’t realize how physically and emotionally exhausting the last five years have been,” she said. “In this time of great sorrow, I’m learning it’s okay to give myself permission to feel joy.”

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Memory Loss Resources

1. Early warning signs — Doctors and experts note these signs that an evaluation may be in order: repeated forgetfulness, missed appointments, trouble managing bills or medications, confusion in familiar places, changes in judgment, personality, or self-care. Many people experiencing cognitive decline believe they are functioning better than they are. 
2. Diagnosis — Begin with a primary care provider. Patients may be referred to a neurologist, geriatrician, or memory clinic for cognitive testing, medical review, and imaging. Early evaluation helps families plan before safety or legal crises emerge. 
3. Local caregiver support — Caregivers can access support groups, respite care, adult day programs, and benefits navigation through NY Connects (1-800-342-9871), New York State’s aging and disability resource network.
4. The Being Together Project (BTP)— BTP, based at Starr Library in Rhinebeck, was “created as a space for seniors with cognitive loss to share good times with their loved ones,” said co-founder Erika Murphy. Activities include movement classes with Marist College physical therapy students, music programs with Bard Conservatory musicians, and community outings. Reach them at thebeingtogetherproject@gmail.com. 
5. 24/7 dementia helpline — The Alzheimer’s Association Helpline (1-800-272-3900) offers round-the-clock guidance for caregivers and families. 
6. Plan early — Legal authority, finances, driving, and care preferences are far easier to address before memory loss becomes a crisis.

The post What Happens to a Marriage When Memory Goes? Three Local Couples Share Their Stories first appeared on The Daily Catch.

In our region of northern New York, access to local food is often limited by remoteness, transportation costs, a short growing season and other challenges. A new food hub will help bridge that gap between local farms and consumers. The Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA) has been awarded a grant to build a processing and retail facility that will expand local food access.

Led by Cherie and Dan Whitten of Whitten Family Farm in Winthrop and the ADK Food Hub in Tupper Lake, the project will create a NY 20-C–licensed retail store and processing kitchen in Winthrop, called the Real Food Hub. The $520,640 project is supported by a $468,576 grant from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets’ Food Access Expansion Program, with construction slated to begin this spring.

“We are thrilled to be establishing this new food hub with the Whittens, who are an indispensable force in our local food system,” said Jon Ignatowski, ANCA’s manager of food systems business. “The Real Food Hub is going to catalyze the local food economy in the northwest corner of our region, resulting in more market opportunities for small farms and increased food access for residents in four counties. 

Located close to dozens of small farms and businesses, the new facility will reduce transportation costs and allow producers to process and store large quantities of vegetables that can be sold throughout the year. The Real Food Hub will support a variety of raw and value-added local foods to be sold across the region. The goal is to make it easier for North Country residents, including underserved and disadvantaged households, to purchase fresh local foods at an affordable price. 

“By streamlining processing, storage and delivery systems, this facility will expand markets for farmers and increase the availability of local products in stores,” Cherie Whitten said. “It will ultimately make local food more affordable and accessible for all residents, including those who are shopping on a tight budget or through nutrition assistance programs.” 

Founded by the Whittens in 2017, the ADK Food Hub in Tupper Lake is a local food aggregation site, market and eatery that carries products from more than 40 area farms. Whitten Family Farm supplies the Hub and offers vegetable and meat community supported agriculture (CSA) shares that can be picked up at the farm or at locations in Potsdam, Massena, Lake Clear, Saranac Lake, Lake Placid and Tupper Lake. 

A proposed ICE facility in Chester, NY, has raised concerns among immigrant families and community advocates in the mid-Hudson Valley.

Reverend Richard Witt, executive director of Rural and Migrant Ministry, said the proposal has heightened fear among immigrant families.

“They’re already living in great fear of separation from their parents, of their children, and having such a facility just adds to that environment of fear,” he explained.

If built, it would become Orange County’s second immigration detention center, joining the existing facility at the Orange County Jail.

Community members have voiced concerns at local board meetings, highlighting potential impacts on quality of life, local reputation, and the economy. “When they’ve built facilities like this in other communities… people don’t think of Batavia anymore as a beautiful town; they think of it as a repressive detention facility,” Witt said.

The nonprofit has also seen a surge in volunteer efforts to support immigrant families. “We recently had a volunteer donate 15,000 meals that could be delivered to folks,” Witt noted, citing increased need amid fears of raids and reduced social services.

Local leaders, including Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus and Congressmember Pat Ryan, have expressed opposition to the facility, reflecting a broader community concern. Witt emphasized the importance of public engagement: “People need to let their legislators know their feelings… the overwhelming majority of the people don’t want to be living in a community that’s based on oppression and fear, and economic ruin.”

Image: A joint press conference and rally on Sept. 19, 2025, in Fulton, NY, in support of immigrants was held by Rural and Migrant Ministry, Workers Center of CNY, Finger Lakes Rapid Response, Syracuse Immigrant and Refugee Defense Network, New York Immigration Coalition, and Organize Oswego. (RMM)

The post Proposed Orange County ICE Facility Sparks Fear Among Immigrant Families in Hudson Valley appeared first on Radio Catskill.

In the wake of the first time hosting downhill and cross-country mountain bike races, a state authority managing the Olympic facilities is still working out the pros and cons of such an event.

After spending more than $860,000 to put on three days of mountain biking races in fall of 2025, the Olympic Regional Development Authority brought in less than $300,000 in revenue from ticket sales and parking from the downhill and cross-country cycling competitions, records show.

Public records provided by ORDA show the authority collected $272,400 in ticket, lift and gondola sales and $21,501 in parking fees, a total of $293,901 for the 2025 races. The revenues do not include any beverage or food sales.

Data from the authority, (ORDA), provided after a Freedom of Information Law request, show 16,864 tickets were distributed, almost a third of which were free. Most of the free tickets went to children less than 13 and those who went on Friday.

A breakdown of costs

The financial results do not include the cost of ancillary costs or for state employees working to stage the WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series or to file a report required by a sister agency when the racetrack was built in violation of environmental regulations.

The authority contracted to pay at least $420,000 to the organizers in each of the three years for the rights to host the event. The fee could be as high as $500,000 under terms of the contract. ORDA would not say the exact amounts it paid when asked.

Records show it paid a total of $287,421 to two contractors in 2025 to build the first-ever downhill bike racetrack on Whiteface.

The original contractor, Global Action Sports Solutions of Wisconsin, was paid $128,921 but left the job last summer before completing the track. 

The firm was under contract to receive $189,000, $40,000 of it for the track designer —mountain bike racer Aaron Gwin. 

But Global Action Sports’ owner and trail builder Jeremy Witek said he pulled his workers and heavy equipment off the site after disagreements with ORDA, including discomfort with being asked to do work without a state-approved work plan. ORDA was later served a notice of violation from DEC for working without a work plan and cutting trees without authorization. The Adirondack Explorer has asked both DEC and ORDA for the final report, which was due Nov. 7, 2025. DEC said the report is “under review.”

Backslope Trail Building LLC, of Morrisville, Vermont, the contractor that built the Mount Van Hoevenberg cross-country bike racing track, received $162,838 from ORDA for its work plus another $158,500 later last summer to finish the Whiteface racetrack.

Both the Mount Van Hoevenberg and Whiteface bike tracks were temporary and were taken down for the ski season. Another set of temporary tracks are expected to be built for this fall’s ORDA-hosted UCI biking event.

ORDA CEO and President Ashley Walden declined to provide an assessment of the financial results.

Positive impacts from the event

Betty Little, an ORDA board member, said she attended last October’s bike competitions and noticed people from outside the region. Asked to respond to the financial results, she referred to the Warner Brothers Discovery airing of parts of the races.

“I’m not sure it was something people locally would go to, but the TV coverage, that counts. I don’t know how you put a number on that,” she said.

Warner Brothers Discovery aired some of the event on some of its channels. Warner Brothers Discovery and ORDA declined to provide ratings data.

The Olympic authority received some marketing, promotion and sponsorship rights from Warner Brothers Discovery Sports Events Limited through a media promotion package with a listed value of up to $500,000, according to the resolution adopted by the ORDA board in 2023.

ORDA Chairman Joe Martens said he saw more people at Whiteface during the event than he can recall seeing there and heard that hotels booked race-related guests

Martens said he thinks the event was “enormously successful.” Told the data received by the Explorer, he said he awaits a management presentation before interpreting the financials.

Economic impacts

Martens said the authority’s objective is to stimulate the region’s economy and he believes that happened with the bike races. 

A report by the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST) in Lake Placid, using data from the Smith Travel Report, said occupancy was up 3.6% in October in Essex County to 62.1% compared with the same month of 2024. That was the highest occupancy of last fall, although some of that could be attributable to the National Guard taking rooms to help with prison staffing shortages.

Average room rates were up 4% to $222.80, and revenues per average room was at $138 that month, up 7.8%. However, numbers for the full year were weaker.

“We definitely saw an impact from UCI,” said MaryJane Lawrence, ROOST’s chief operating officer. She said ROOST estimates that spending in Essex County rose by $647,000 year-to-year in October based on her organization’s calculations of tourism costs.

Marc Galvin, owner of Bookstore Plus and president of the Lake Placid Business Association, said he is unsure of how much business the races drew although his store saw a “little bump” in sales that weekend. He said there were signs that people other than hikers and leaf-peepers were drawn to Lake Placid.

“Obviously there were a lot more bicycles in town,” he said.

Plans for 2026 and beyond

The UCI World Cup cycling contests, which ORDA presents amid the fall foliage season, are set to return to Mount Van Hoevenberg on the outskirts of Lake Placid and Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington this Oct. 2-4. 

It will mark the third year of the three-year agreement between the event owners and the Olympic authority to present the races. The first year involved only cross-country racing.

Martens said he is unsure if ORDA will attempt to extend the bike series contract beyond 2026 because it is important to see the results of hosting for three years first.

UCI, which has run World Cup bike races for 30 years at Mont-Sainte-Anne, typically in mid-October, dropped the Quebec venue this year from its calendar. That makes Lake Placid/Wilmington the last site on the 14-stop international series in 2026.

ITHACA, N.Y. — Mayor Robert Cantelmo used his State of the City address to emphasize the city’s need to improve transparency and accountability as well as increasing housing affordability.

In addition to housing, he focused his remarks on Jan. 14 on sustainability, the city’s flood risks, economic development and one issue that has continued to embarrass city officials not long after he took office — Ithaca’s years-long backlog of financial audits.

“For some, the state of our city does not feel strong and I understand why,” Cantelmo said.

He said “trust must be rebuilt” but added that “strength is not the absence of problems.”

Cantelmo’s State of the City address comes after a productive but rough two years for Common Council. The city’s 11-member council saw significant turnover after every seat went up for election in 2023.

Then council experienced another big wave of turnover in 2026. On Jan. 7, Cantelmo swore in 5 new members to the council who were voted in during the 2025 elections.

Over the previous two years, the council became known for episodes of disruptive spats and concerns over professional conduct. And just before the turn of the new year,  the council requested former City Manager Deb Mohlenhoff resign.

Deputy City Manager Dominick Recckio stepped in to fill the position in an acting capacity. Cantelmo said Recckio has the council’s “full confidence” during this time.

As the city faces substantial changes in leadership, Cantelmo said that the administration is “not interested in symbolic change. We are interested in durable, measurable progress.”

He called housing the “defining challenge of our time,” doubling down on a commitment to increase the available stock and improving affordability.

One of Cantelmo’s keystone housing policy initiatives is a comprehensive revision of the city’s zoning code. It’s a project he has discussed for years and that planning staff are in the early stages of.

Retooling the city’s land use regulations will be aimed at removing barriers for new development. Cantelmo said he wanted to “modernize” the city’s regulations to allow for more multi-family dwellings, like triplexes and duplexes.

Cantelmo said he would announce the members of a Zoning Advisory Commission soon. It would include residents, housing professionals and community stakeholders to assist in the process. When a zoning draft becomes available, it will surely stoke debate throughout the city’s communities.

Turning to economic development, Cantelmo said advancing the city forward “is not about chasing headlines.”

As the city looks to support business development, particularly along the West Martin Luther King Jr. corridor, Cantelmo said he wants to see a community-drive approach.

He touted a $38 million state grant that will go toward supporting the development of SouthWorks, a community-scale project slated to reshape the city’s South Hill neighborhood and rehabilitate a derelict industrial site.

“As Ithaca grows, we are committed to ensuring that economic opportunity comes with basic standards of fairness, stability and respect for working people,” Cantelmo said.

The Ithaca Green New Deal still remains a major policy focus for Cantelmo.

It is increasingly unlikely that the city will succeed at decarbonizing the local economy by 2030, but Cantelmo said the city will continue “to lead on climate action. Not just in ambition, but in execution.”

The city has a community choice aggregation program that is expected to launch in 2026. When it comes into effect, city residents are expected to be able to buy renewable energy purchased in bulk.

Perhaps flood risks are the biggest intersectional issue the city faces. Housing, economic development and sustainability all come into focus when considering Ithaca’s increased flood risk under new federal flood maps.

“Addressing risks like flooding and being honest about our progress, depends on something  fundamental: strong, transparent governance,” Cantelmo said.

When the Federal Emergency Management Agency evaluated Ithaca’s flood risk, it greatly expanded the number of properties within flood zones. FEMA’s new Ithaca maps took effect in June 2025. Homes with federally-backed mortgages will now be required to carry flood insurance to remain in compliance with their loans, increasing costs for residents and developers in Ithaca.

City officials have planned for years to address the increased risk, but much is left to be done to mitigate the city’s flood risks and execute a plan that will successfully persuade FEMA to revise its map for Ithaca.

As Cantelmo promises transparency, there may be no greater demand for it than when it comes to Ithaca’s backlogged financial audits.

The most recent audit the city completed is for fiscal year 2021. The city began to fall behind on its financial reporting during the pandemic. Officials have said the severe delays remain as a result of staffing issues, inefficient accounting practices that have since been replaced and staff turnover in the controller’s office. Those explanations have done little to assuage public concern.

Cantelmo, whose duties as mayor do not include directly overseeing city operations, has pushed for city officials to complete the audits more quickly. He said city officials will begin regular public briefings on the progress of the city audits.

“The top operational priority of this administration is completing the City’s outstanding audits,” Cantelmo said.

Ithaca often gets praised — and criticized — for being a small city trying to execute big ideas. Cantelmo appears to have committed to the dream big mantra that Ithaca has been known.

As he neared closing his remarks, Cantelmo said, “Too often, we are told that cities like ours must choose between compassion and competence, between ambition and responsibility. I reject that framing.”

The post Cantelmo emphasizes housing, transparency in State of the City appeared first on The Ithaca Voice.

The West Shore school board policy committee meeting came to a halt almost as soon as it began. As a board member started going over the agenda on July 17, local parent Danielle Gross rose to object to a last-minute addition she said hadn’t been on the district’s website the day before.

By posting notice of the proposal so close to the meeting, charged Gross, who is also a partner at a communications and advocacy firm that works on state education policy, the board had violated Pennsylvania’s open meetings law, failing to provide the public at least 24 hours’ notice about a topic “this board knows is of great concern for many community members interested in the rights of our LGBTQ students.” 

The committee chair, relentlessly banging her gavel, adjourned the meeting to a nonpublic “executive session.” When the committee reconvened, the policy was not mentioned again until the meeting’s end, when a lone public commenter, Heather Keller, invoked “Hamlet” to warn that something was rotten in the Harrisburg suburbs. 

The proposed policy, which would bar trans students from using bathrooms and locker rooms aligned with their gender identity, was a nearly verbatim copy of one crafted by a group called the Independence Law Center — a Harrisburg-based Christian right legal advocacy group whose model policies have led to costly lawsuits in districts around the state.

“Being concerned about that, I remembered that we don’t partner with the Independence Law Center,” Keller said. “We haven’t hired them as consultants. And they’re not our district solicitor.” 

To those who’d followed education politics in the state, Keller’s comment would register as wry understatement. Over the past several years, ILC’s growing entanglement with dozens of Pennsylvania school boards has become a high-profile controversy. Through interviews, an extensive review of local reporting and public documents, In These Times and The Hechinger Report found that, of the state’s 500 school districts, at least 21 are known to have consulted with or signed formal contracts accepting ILC’s pro bono legal services — to advise on, draft and defend district policies, free of charge. 

But over the last year, it’s become clear ILC’s influence stretches beyond such formal partnerships, as school districts from Bucks County (outside Philadelphia) to Beaver County (west of Pittsburgh) have proposed or adopted virtually identical anti-LGBTQ and book ban policies that originated with ILC — sometimes without acknowledging any connection to the group or where the policies came from. 

In districts without formal partnerships with ILC, such as West Shore, figuring out what, exactly, their board’s relationship is to the group has been a painfully assembled puzzle, thanks to school board obstruction, blocked open records requests and reports of backdoor dealing. 

Although ILC has existed for nearly 20 years, its recent prominence began around 2021 with a surge of “parents’ rights” complaints about pandemic-era masking, teaching about racism, LGBTQ representation and how library books and curricula are selected. In many districts where such debates raged, calls to hire ILC soon followed. 

In 2024 alone, ILC made inroads of one kind or another with roughly a dozen districts in central Pennsylvania, including West Shore, which proposed contracting ILC that March and invited the group to speak to the board in a closed-door meeting the public couldn’t attend. (ILC did not respond to multiple interview requests or emailed questions.)

On the night of that March meeting, Gross organized a rally outside the school board building, drawing roughly 100 residents to protest, even as it snowed. The board backed down from hiring ILC, but that didn’t stop it from introducing ILC policies. In addition to the proposed bathroom policy, that May the board passed a ban on trans students joining girls’ athletics teams after they’ve started puberty and allowed district officials to request doctors’ notes and birth certificates to enforce it. 

To Gross, it’s an example of how West Shore and other school boards without formal relationships with ILC have still found ways to advance the group’s agenda. “They’re waiting for other school boards to do all the controversial stuff with the ILC,” Gross said, then “taking the policies other districts have, running them through their solicitors, and implementing them that way.” (A spokesperson for West Shore stated that the district had not contracted with ILC and declined further comment.)

“It’s like a hydra effect,” said Kait Linton of the grassroots community group Public Education Advocates of Lancaster. “They’ve planted seeds for a vine, and now the vine’s taking off in all the directions it wants to go.” 

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

ILC was founded in the wake of a Pennsylvania lawsuit that drew nationwide attention and prompted significant local embarrassment. 

In October 2004, the Dover Area School District — situated, like West Shore, in York County, south of Harrisburg — changed its biology curriculum to introduce the quasi-creationist theory of “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution. Eleven families sued, arguing that intelligent design was “fundamentally a religious proposition rather than a scientific one.” In December 2005, a federal court agreed, ruling that public schools teaching the theory violated the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause. 

During the case, an attorney named Randall Wenger unsuccessfully tried to add the creationist Christian think tank he worked for — which published the book Dover sought to teach — to the suit as a defendant, and, failing that, filed an amicus brief instead. When the district lost and was ultimately left with $1 million in legal fees, Wenger found a lesson in it for conservatives moving forward.

Speaking at a 2005 conference hosted by the Pennsylvania Family Institute — part of a national network of state-level “family councils” tied to the heavyweight Christian right organizations Family Research Council and Focus on the Family — Wenger suggested Dover could have avoided or won legal challenges if officials hadn’t mentioned their religious motivations during public school board meetings. 

“Give us a call before you do something controversial like that,” Wenger said, according to LancasterOnline. Then, in a line that’s become infamous among ILC’s critics, Wenger invoked a biblical reference to add, “I think we need to do a better job at being clever as serpents.” (Wenger did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

The following year, in 2006, the Pennsylvania Family Institute launched ILC with Wenger as its chief counsel, a role he remains in today, in addition to serving as chief operating officer. ILC now has three other staff attorneys and has worked directly as plaintiff’s attorneys on two Supreme Court cases: one was part of the larger Hobby Lobby decision, which allows employers to opt out of employee health insurance plans that include contraception coverage; the other expanded religious exemptions for workers.

ILC has financial ties and a history of collaborating with Christian right legal advocacy behemoth Alliance Defending Freedom, including on a 2017 lawsuit against a school district outside Philadelphia that allowed a trans student to use the locker room aligned with their gender. ILC has filed amicus briefs in support of numerous other Christian right causes, including two that led to major Supreme Court victories for the right in 2025: Mahmoud v. Taylor, which limited public schools’ ability to assign books with LGBTQ themes; and United States v. Skrmetti, which affirmed a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for minors. In recent months, the group filed two separate amicus briefs on behalf of Pennsylvania school board members in anti-trans cases in other states. In both cases, which were brought by Alliance Defending Freedom and concern school sports and pronoun usage, ILC urged the Supreme Court to “resolve the issue nationwide.”

In lower courts, ILC has worked on or contributed briefs to lawsuits seeking to start public school board meetings with prayer and to allow religious groups to proselytize public school students, among other issues. More quietly, as the local blog Lancaster Examiner reported — and as one ILC attorney recounted at a conference in 2022 — ILC has defended “conversion therapy,” the broadly discredited theory that homosexuality is a disorder that can be cured.

To critics, all of these efforts have helped systematically chip away at civil rights protections for LGBTQ students at the local level, seeding the policies that President Donald Trump’s administration is now trying to make ubiquitous through executive orders. And while local backlash is building in some areas, activists are hindered by the threat that the ILC’s efforts are ultimately aimed at laying the groundwork for a Supreme Court case that could formalize discrimination against transgender students into law nationwide. 

But ILC’s greatest influence is arguably much closer to its Harrisburg home, in neighboring Lancaster and York counties, where nine districts have contracted ILC and at least three more have adopted its model policies. 

In Lancaster’s Hempfield district, it started with a 2021 controversy over a trans student joining the girls’ track team. School board meetings that had already grown tense over pandemic masking requirements erupted in new fights about LGBTQ rights and visibility. In the middle of one meeting, recalled Hempfield parent and substitute teacher Erin Small, a board member abruptly suggested hiring ILC to write a new district policy. The suddenness of the proposal caused such public outcry, said Small, that the vote to hire ILC had to be postponed.

But within a few months, the district signed a contract with ILC to write what became Pennsylvania’s first school district ban on trans students participating in sports teams aligned with their gender identity. Other ILC policy proposals followed, including a successful 2023 effort to bar the district from using books or materials that include sexual content, which immediately prompted an intensive review of books written by LGBTQ and non-white authors. (The Hempfield district did not respond to requests for comment.)

In nearby Elizabethtown, the path to hiring ILC began with a fraudulent 2021 complaint, when a man claimed, during a school board meeting, that his middle schooler had checked out an inappropriate book from the school library. Although it later emerged that the man had reportedly used a fake name and officials found no evidence he had children attending the school, his claim nonetheless sparked a long debate over book policies, which eventually led to the district contracting ILC as special legal counsel in 2024. Two anti-trans policies were subsequently passed in January 2025, and a ban on “sexually explicit” books, also based on ILC’s models, was discussed this past spring but has not moved forward to date. (The Elizabethtown district did not respond to requests for comment.)

Across the Susquehanna River in York County — where five districts have contracted ILC and two more have considered or passed its policies — the group’s influence has been broad and sometimes confounding. In one instance, as the York Dispatch discovered, ILC not only authored four policy proposals for the Red Lion Area School District, but ILC senior counsel Jeremy Samek, a registered Pennsylvania lobbyist, also drafted a speech for the board president to deliver in support of three anti-trans policies, all of which passed in 2024. (The Red Lion district did not respond to requests for comment.)

The same year, South Western School District, reportedly acting on ILC advice, ordered a high school to cut large windows into the walls of two bathrooms that had been designated as “gender identity restrooms,” allowing passersby in the hallway to see inside, consequently discouraging students from using them. (The district did not respond to requests for comment, but in a statement to local paper the Evening Sun, school board President Matt Gelazela cited student safety and said the windows helped staff monitor for vaping, bullying and other prohibited activities.)

​​In many districts, said Lancaster parent Eric Fisher, ILC’s growing relationships with school boards has been eased by the ubiquitous presence around the state of its sister organizations within the Pennsylvania Family Institute, including the institute’s lobbying arm, voucher group, youth leadership conference and Church Ambassador Network, which brings pastors from across Pennsylvania to lobby lawmakers in the state Capitol. 

As a result, said Fisher, when ILC shows up in a district, board members often are already familiar with them or other institute affiliates, “having met them at church and having their churches put their stamp of endorsement on them. I think it makes it really easy for [board members] to say yes.” 

But in nearly every district that has considered working with ILC, wide-scale pushback has also followed — though often to no avail. In June 2024, in Elizabethtown — where school board fights have been so fractious that they inspired a full-length documentary — members of the public spoke in opposition to hiring ILC at a ratio of roughly 5 to 1 before the board voted unanimously to hire the group anyway. 

In the Upper Adams district in Biglerville, southwest of Harrisburg, the school board voted to contract ILC despite a cacophony of public comments and a 500-signature petition in opposition. 

In Lancaster’s Warwick district, the school board’s vote to hire ILC prompted the resignation of a superintendent who had served in her role for 15 years and who reported that the district’s insurance carrier had warned the district might not be covered in future lawsuits if it adopted ILC’s anti-trans policies. 

Since then, Warwick resident Kayla Cook noted during a public presentation about ILC this past summer, the mood in the district has grown grim. “We do not have any students at the moment trying to participate [in sports] who are trans. However, we have students who simply have a short haircut being profiled as being trans,” Cook said. “It’s tipped far into fear-based behaviors, where we are dipping our toes into checking the student’s body to make sure that they’re identifying as the appropriate gender.” (A district spokesperson directed interview requests to the school board, which did not respond to requests for comment.)

But perhaps nowhere was the fight as fraught as in Lancaster’s Penn Manor School District, which hired ILC to draft new policies about trans students just months after the suicide of a trans youth from Penn Manor — the fifth such suicide in the Lancaster community in less than two years. 

Before the Penn Manor school board publicly proposed retaining ILC, in June 2024 — scheduling a presentation by and a vote on hiring ILC for the same meeting — district Superintendent Phil Gale wrote to the board about his misgivings. In an email obtained by LancasterOnline, Gale warned the board against policies “that will distinguish one group of students from another” and passed along a warning from the district’s insurance carrier that adopting potentially discriminatory policies might affect the district’s coverage if it were sued by students or staff.

In a narrow 5-4 vote, the all-Republican board declined to hire ILC that June. But after one board member reconsidered, the matter was placed back on the agenda for two meetings that August. 

Members of the community publicly presented an open letter, signed by roughly 80 Penn Manor residents, requesting that, if policies about trans students were truly needed, the district establish a task force of local experts to draft them rather than outsource policymaking to ILC. One of the letter’s organizers, Mark Clatterbuck, a religious studies professor at New Jersey’s Montclair State University, said the district never acknowledged it or responded. (Maddie Long, a spokesperson for Penn Manor, said the district could not comment because of the litigation.) 

That February, Clatterbuck’s son, Ash — a college junior and transgender man who’d grown up in Penn Manor — had died by suicide, shortly after the nationally publicized death of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary 16-year-old in Oklahoma who died by suicide the day after being beaten unconscious in a high school girls’ bathroom.

In the first August meeting to reconsider hiring ILC, Clatterbuck told the Penn Manor board, through tears, how “living in a hostile political environment that dehumanizes them at school, at home, at church and in the halls of Congress” was making “life unlivable for far too many of our trans children.”

Two weeks later, at the second meeting, Ash’s mother, Malinda Harnish Clatterbuck, pleaded for board members talking about student safety to consider the children these policies actively harm. 

“ILC does not even recognize trans and gender-nonconforming children as existing,” said Harnish Clatterbuck, a pastor whose family has lived in Lancaster for 10 generations. “That fact alone should preclude them from even being considered by the board.”

Her husband spoke again as well, telling the board how Ash had frequently warned about the spread of policies that stoke “irrational hysteria around” trans youth — “the kind of policies,” Mark Clatterbuck noted, “that the Pennsylvania-based Independence Law Center loves to draft.” 

Reminding the board that five trans youth in the area had died by suicide within just 18 months, he continued, “Do not try to tell me that there is no connection between the kind of dehumanizing policies that the ILC drafts and the deaths of our trans children.” 

But the board voted to hire ILC anyway, 5-4, and in the following months adopted two of ILC’s anti-trans policies.

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In anticipation of such public outcry, some school boards around Pennsylvania have taken steps to obscure their interest in ILC’s agenda. 

Kristina Moon, a senior attorney at the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania, a legal services nonprofit that advocates for public school students’ rights, has watched a progression in how school boards interact with ILC. 

When her group first began receiving calls related to ILC, around 2021, alarmed parents told similar stories of boards proposing book bans targeting queer or trans students’ perspectives, or identical packages of policies that included restrictions about bathrooms, sports and pronouns. 

“At first, we would see boards openly talking about their interest in contracting with ILC,” said Moon. But as local opposition began to grow, “board members stopped sharing so publicly.” 

Instead, Moon said, reports began to emerge of school boards discussing or meeting with ILC in secret.

In Hempfield, in 2022, the board moved some policy discussions into committee sessions less likely to be attended by the public, and held a vote on an anti-trans sports policy without announcing it publicly, possibly in violation of Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act, as Mother Jones reported.

In Warwick, in 2024, several board members admitted meeting privately with ILC’s Randall Wenger, according to LancasterOnline. 

Across the state, in Bucks County, one Central Bucks school board member recounted in an op-ed for the Bucks County Beacon how her conservative colleagues had stonewalled her when she asked about the origins of a new book ban policy in 2022, only to have the board later admit ILC had performed a legal review of it “pro bono,” as PhillyBurbs reported.

Subsequent reporting by the York Daily Record and Reuters revealed the board’s relationship with ILC was more involved and included discussions about other policies related to trans student athletes and pronoun policy. (Both Central Bucks’ books and anti-LGBTQ policies were later cited in an ACLU federal complaint that cost the district $1.75 million in legal fees, as well as in a related Education Department investigation into whether the district had created a hostile learning environment for LGBTQ students.)

But the sense of backroom dealing reached an almost cartoonish level in York County, where, in March 2024, conservative board members from 12 county school districts were invited to a secret meeting hosted by a right-wing political action committee, along with specific instructions about how to keep their participation off the public radar. According to the York Dispatch, the invitation came from former Central York school board member Veronica Gemma, who (after losing her seat) was hired as education director for PA Economic Growth, a PAC that had helped elect 48 conservatives to York school boards the previous fall. (Gemma did not respond to interview requests.)

Gemma’s invitation was accompanied by an agenda sent by the PAC, which included a discussion about ILC and how board members could “build a network of support” and “advance our shared goals more effectively countywide.” The invitation also included the admonition that “confidentiality is paramount” and that each district should only send four board members or fewer — to avoid the legal threshold for a quorum that would make the meeting a matter of public record. 

“Remember, no more than 4 — sunshine laws,” Gemma wrote. 

In the wake of stories like these, Wenger’s 2005 suggestion that conservatives “become as clever as serpents” in concealing their intentions became ubiquitous in coverage of and advocacy against ILC — showing up in newspaper articles, in editorials and even on a T-shirt for sale online. 

“I think it’s very obvious,” reflected Moon, “but if something has to be taking place in secrecy, I’m not sure it can be good for our students.” 

But the lack of transparency shows up in subtler ways too, in the spreading phenomenon of districts adopting ILC policies without admitting where the policies come from. That was the case in Eastern York in 2025, where board members who had previously lobbied for an ILC pronoun policy later directed their in-house attorney to write an original policy instead, following the same principles but avoiding the baggage an ILC connection would bring.

In Elizabethtown (which did contract ILC), one policy was even introduced erroneously referencing clauses from another district’s code, in an indication of how directly districts are copy-pasting from one another.

In 2025, ILC attorney Jeremy Samek even seemed to acknowledge the trend, predicting that fewer districts might contract ILC going forward, since the combination of Trump’s executive orders on trans students and the general spread of policies similar to ILC’s meant “it’s going to be a lot easier for other schools to do that without even talking to us.” 

Related: Probes into racism in schools stall under Trump 

In the face of what appears like a deliberate strategy of concealment, members of the public have increasingly turned to official channels to compel boards to disclose their dealings with ILC. Mark Clatterbuck did so in 2024 and 2025, filing 10 Right-to-Know requests with Penn Manor for all school board and administration communications with or about ILC and policies ILC consulted on and any records related to a set of specific keywords.

Thirty miles north, three Elizabethtown parents sued their school board in the spring of 2025, alleging it deliberately met and conferred with ILC in nonpublic meetings and private communications to “circumvent the requirements of the Sunshine Act.”

In both cases, and more broadly in the region, ILC critics are keenly aware that, by bringing complaints or lawsuits against the group or the school boards it works with, they might be doing exactly what ILC wants: furthering its chances to land another case before the Supreme Court, where a favorable ruling could set a dangerous national precedent, such as ruling that Title IX protections don’t cover trans students. 

“They’re itching for a case,” said Clatterbuck. To that end, he added, his pro bono attorneys — at the law firm Gibbel Kraybill & Hess LLC, which also represents the Elizabethtown plaintiffs pro bono — have been careful not to do ILC’s work for it. 

Largely, that has meant keeping the cases narrowly focused on Sunshine Act violations.

But in both cases, there are also hints of the larger issue at hand — of whether, in a repeat of the old Dover “intelligent design” case, ILC’s policies represent school boards imposing inherently religious viewpoints on public schools. After all, ILC’s parent group, the Pennsylvania Family Institute, clearly states its mission is to make Pennsylvania “a place where God is honored” and to “strengthen families by restoring to public life the traditional, foundational principles and values essential for the well-being of society.” And in 2024, the institute’s president, Michael Geer, told a Christian TV audience that much of ILC’s work involves working with school boards “on the transgender issue, fighting that ideology that is pervasive in our society.” 

In the Elizabethtown complaint, the plaintiffs argue that district residents must “have the opportunity to observe Board deliberations regarding policies that will affect their children in order to understand the Board members’ true motivation and rationale for adopting policies — particularly when policies are prepared by an outside organization seeking to advance a  particular religious viewpoint and agenda.” 

The public has ample cause to suspect as much. Five current and former members of Elizabethtown’s school board are connected to a far-right church in town, where the pastor joined 150 other locals in traveling to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. Among them were current board members Stephen Lindemuth — who once preached a sermon at the church arguing that “gender identity confusion” doesn’t “line up with what God desires” — and his wife, Danielle Lindemuth, who helped organize the caravan of buses that went to Washington. (Stephen Lindemuth replied by email, “I have no recollection of making any judgmental comments concerning LGBTQ in my most recent preaching the past few years.” Neither he nor his wife were accused of any unlawful acts on Jan. 6.)

Another board member until this past December, James Emery, went through the church’s pastoral training program and in 2022 served as a member of the security detail of far-right Christian nationalist gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. 

School board meetings in Elizabethtown have also frequently devolved into religious battles, with one local mother, Amy Karr, board chair of Elizabethtown’s Church of the Brethren, recalling how local right-wing activists accused ILC’s opponents of being possessed by demonic spirits or a “vehicle of Satan.” 

In Penn Manor, Clatterbuck similarly hoped to lay bare the “overtly religious nature” of the board’s motivation by including in his Right-to-Know requests a demand for all school board communications about ILC policies containing keywords like “God,” “Christian,” “Jesus,” “faith” and “biblical.” 

For nearly a year, the district sought to avoid fulfilling the requests, with questionable invocations of attorney-client privilege (including one board member’s claim that she had “personally” retained ILC as counsel), sending back obviously incomplete records and protestations that Clatterbuck’s keyword request turned up so many results that it was too burdensome to fulfill. Ultimately, Clatterbuck appealed to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records to compel the board to honor the request. 

This fall, Clatterbuck received a 457-page document from the board containing dozens of messages that suggest his suspicions were correct. 

In response to local constituents writing in support of ILC — decrying pronoun policies as a violation of religious liberty, claiming “the whole LGBTQ spectrum is rooted in the brokenness of sin” and calling for board members to rebuke teachers unions in “the precious blood of Jesus” — at least three board members wrote back with encouragement and thanks. In one example, board member Anthony Lombardo told a constituent who had written a 12-page message arguing that queer theory is “inherently atheistic” that “I completely agree with your analysis and conclusions.” 

When another community member sent the board an article from an evangelical website arguing that using “transgendered pronouns … falsifies the gospel” and “tramples on the blood of Christ,” board member Donna Wert responded, “Please know that I firmly agree with the beliefs held in [this article]. And please know that heightened movement is finally being made concerning this, as you will see.” 

To Clatterbuck, such messages demonstrate the school board’s religious sympathies, as well as how Christian nationalism plays out at the local level. While national examples of Christian right dominance, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Crusader tattoos or Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s “Appeal to Heaven” flag, get the most attention, Clatterbuck said, “this is what it looks like when you’re controlling local school boards and passing policies that affect people directly in their local community.” 

But the local level might also be the place where advocates have the best chance of fighting back, said Kait Linton of Public Education Advocates of Lancaster.

Speaking ahead of a panel discussion on ILC at Elizabethtown’s Church of the Brethren last June — one of several panels PEAL hosted around Lancaster in the run-up to November’s school board elections — Linton emphasized the importance of focusing on the “hyperlocal.”

“With everything that’s happening at the national level,” Linton said, “we find a lot of folks get caught up in that, when really we have far less opportunity to make a difference up there than we do right here.”

PEAL’s efforts have been matched by other groups at the district level, like Elizabethtown’s Etown Common Sense 2.0, which local parent and former president Alisha Runkle said advocates against the sort of policies ILC drafts and also seeks to support teachers “being beaten down and needing support” in an environment of relentless hostility and demands to police their lesson plans, libraries and language. 

They’re also reflected in the work of statewide coalitions like Pennsylvanians for Welcoming and Inclusive Schools, which helps districts share information about ILC policies — including a searchable map of ILC’s presence around the state — and resources like the Education Law Center, which has sent detailed demand or advocacy letters to numerous school districts considering adopting ILC-inspired policies. 

This past November, that local-level work resulted in some signs for cautious hope. In Lancaster County’s Hempfield School District — one of the first districts in the state to hire ILC — the school board flipped to Democratic control. Among the new board members are Kait Linton and fellow PEAL activist Erin Small. 

Across the river, in West Shore, the departure of three right-wing board members — one who resigned and two who lost their elections — left the board with a new 5-4 majority of Democratic and centrist Republican members. After the election, the board promptly moved to table three contentious policy proposals, including the anti-trans bathroom policy the board had copied from ILC and a book ban policy that drew heavily on ILC’s work. 

While in other Lancaster districts — including Elizabethtown, Warwick and Penn Manor — school boards remained firmly in conservative control, there are also signs of growing pushback, as in Elizabethtown, where Runkle noted the teachers union has recently begun challenging the board during public meetings and local students have gotten active protesting book bans.

Similar trends have happened statewide, said the Education Law Center’s Kristina Moon, who noted that voters “were so concerned about the extremist action they saw on the boards that it was kind of a wake-up call: that we can’t sleep on school board elections, and we need to have boards that reflect a commitment to all of the students in our schools.” 

While reports of ILC’s direct involvement with school boards seem to have waned in recent months, said Moon, that “does not mean the threat to our public schools is over. We see continued use of those discriminatory policies by school boards just copying the policy exactly as it was adopted elsewhere. And it causes the same harm in a district, whether the district is publicly meeting with ILC or not.” 

Plus there are now Trump’s anti-trans executive orders, which have spread confusion statewide. And just this December, a legal challenge brought by another Christian right law firm, the Thomas More Society, is challenging the authority of Pennsylvania’s civil rights commission to apply anti-discrimination protections to trans students in public schools. 

As a consequence, the Education Law Center has spent much of the past year trying to educate school and community leaders that executive orders are not the law itself, and they cannot supersede case law supporting the rights of LGBTQ students. 

“We’re trying to cut through the noise,” Moon said, “to ensure that schools remain clear about their legal obligations to provide safe environments for all students … so they can focus on learning and not worrying about identity-based attacks.”

Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org. 

This story about Independence Law Center was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in partnership with In These Times. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. Sign up for the In These Times weekly newsletter.

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