PEACHAM, Vt. — Early on a chilly fall morning in this small Vermont town, Principal Lydia Cochrane watched a gaggle of kids chase one another and a soccer ball around their school recess yard. Between drop-off and first bell, they were free, loud and constantly moving. 

With only about 60 students in prekindergarten through sixth grade, Peacham Elementary is the sort of school where all the kids know one another and locals regularly respond to calls for supplies and volunteers for field trips and other school activities. Cochrane gestured at the freshly raked wood chips around the swings and climbing structures, one of many tasks Peacham families completed at a recent community workday.

“With a small school, the families know how crucial it is to support it and ensure it succeeds, and so they show up for it,” said Cochrane. 

Peacham is also a type of school that’s disappearing nationwide, as education systems grapple with plunging enrollments and rising costs. Amid declining birth rates and growing competition from private-school voucher programs, the number of students in U.S. public schools dropped about 2.5 percent between 2019 and 2023, according to the most recent federal data. Fewer students leads to higher per-pupil spending, because district staffing and other expenses largely remain in place despite enrollment drops, and states are increasingly trying to escape the education budget crunch via school consolidation: In the past three years alone, at least 10 states have considered measures to mandate or incentivize district mergers. 

These pressures are especially keen in rural areas where the smallest schools predominate and play an outsized role in community life. Vermont, the nation’s most rural state, has lost about 20 percent of its K-12 public school student population in the past two decades. That’s helped push per-pupil costs and property taxes to the breaking point. Early in 2025, the state’s governor and education secretary released a plan to overhaul Vermont education, proposing massive district consolidation as the foundation for sweeping changes in school funding, curricula and academic standards. 

The Legislature responded with its own comprehensive plan, which passed last summer as Act 73, calling for a minimum of 4,000 students per district, a threshold now met by only 1 of the state’s 119 districts. 

District mergers are not the same as school closures, but one invariably leads to the other, as they have in Vermont’s other recent waves of district consolidations. The scope of Act 73’s proposals have ignited intense pushback from people fearing the loss of local control over education, even from a majority of the task force created to map options for bigger districts. 

This month, the state Legislature will consider whether to push forward or completely rethink the process, a debate that will be closely watched by rural education advocates nationwide. Backers of school consolidation maintain that the crises of declining enrollment, falling test scores and tight education budgets demand a bold response and that consolidating schools is necessary to control costs and more equitably distribute resources and opportunities. 

Opponents say the evidence that widespread school consolidation saves money — or helps students — is mixed at best, and that success depends highly on local context. They want any mergers and closings to be voluntary and done with a clear-eyed accounting of what’s to be gained and lost. 

Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

Vermont’s student-teacher ratio of 11 to 1 is the lowest in the nation, and the state now spends nearly $27,000 per student, second only to New York State. That has triggered spikes in local taxes: In 2024, Vermonters facing double-digit property tax increases subsequently rejected nearly one-third of school budgets when they next went to the polls.

The school budget revolts led Republican Gov. Phil Scott and his recently appointed education secretary, Zoie Saunders, to propose an education overhaul in January 2025 that would have divided the state into five regional districts serving at least 10,000 kids each. That plan was then superseded by Act 73, which created a redistricting task force of lawmakers and education leaders to map options for the Legislature to consider when it returns to work this month. 

Saunders argues that school consolidation is key to the broader education transformation that Vermont needs in order to tackle several interconnected challenges, including rising student mental health issues, falling test scores and stubborn achievement gaps. “Many of these issues are hard to solve unless we address our issues around scale and funding,” she said in an interview. “We had to think about reform in a way that was going to focus on funding, quality and governance, because they’re all connected.”

The state has consolidated schools several times before. Most notably, in 2015, Act 46 triggered several years of mergers — first voluntary, then required — that eliminated dozens of districts and led many small schools to close. 

Jessica Philippe, a Peacham parent who was on the school board at the time, recalled the worry that the district and its elementary school would be swallowed up. Many of Vermont’s smallest districts, including Peacham, operate only an elementary school and cover the higher grades by paying tuition for students to attend public or certain private schools outside the district. 

“It seems like this is a cycle we have to go through,” she said. “Every five or 10 years, we have to fight to keep this place, because people from away think, oh, that’s just a few kids we have to disperse.”

The Peacham school board fended off that threat by showing the state board of education ample data that Peacham Elementary was viable and that there wasn’t much money to be saved from a merger. In fact, the state has never done a full financial analysis of Act 46. At the very least, the mergers failed to stem the spending and tax hikes that triggered Act 73.  

The only comprehensive accounting of Act 46 was done by a Vermont native, Grace Miller, for her 2024 undergraduate thesis at Yale University where she studied economics and education. In her analysis of 109 districts between 2017 and 2020, she found that mergers did yield some savings, but it was soaked up by new spending such as higher salaries in newly combined districts and higher costs to bus students to and from schools farther away.

Meanwhile, some of the fastest-growing educational costs in Vermont are arguably outside school and district control, such as skyrocketing health care premiums, which account for about 15 percent of district spending. According to data from KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation), Vermonters pay the highest “benchmark” health care premiums of any state, nearly $1,300 a month, almost double what they paid just five years ago. The state has also shifted other financial burdens onto districts, such as capital construction costs for schools, which the state hasn’t funded in nearly two decades.

“We need to be focused on those core cost drivers,” said Rebecca Holcombe, a Vermont state representative and member of the redistricting task force, “not because there aren’t small schools that are inefficient and might not make it, but because even if we addressed them, we’d barely touch the real problem.” 

Holcombe, who was the state’s education secretary when Act 46 passed, believes some school consolidation makes sense for Vermont, but not mandated mergers, especially at the scale proposed by Act 73. She was among the eight of 11 task force members who voted not to include maps of new, bigger district options in their final report in early December.  

Instead they proposed a 10-year plan to create five regional “cooperative education service areas” where districts would pool resources to coordinate services — such as transportation, special education and professional development — and generate savings through scale. It also proposed that the state offer financial incentives to districts that voluntarily merge, centered on creating or strengthening high schools to serve students from combined districts and beyond. 

Speaking to reporters, Gov. Scott admonished the task force a few days after its members voted to forward only the shared services plan to the state Legislature without mapping options for consolidating districts. “They didn’t redraw the lines,” he said. “They failed.” 

When lawmakers reconvene on Jan. 6, it’s unclear how they’ll handle recommendations from a task force that arguably rebuked its founding legislation. They could ignore the task force and create their own maps of 4,000-student districts. They might amend Act 73 to fit the task force’s proposal. 

Or they might start fresh. 

Related: A school closure cliff is coming. Black and Hispanic students are likely to bear the brunt

Seated in her office at Doty Memorial School in Worcester, a small Vermont town north of Montpelier, Principal Gillian Fuqua choked up when explaining her change of heart — from opposing to supporting a plan to close the school she’s overseen since 2019. Doty has about 60 K-6 students this year, and Fuqua slides a paper across her desk showing projections based on town birth records that enrollment could drop to 40 by the fall of 2028. 

“It’s absolutely heartbreaking to me,” she said. “But we have to think about what we want for our kids, and we’re not in a good place right now.”

Worcester is one of five towns merged into a single district by Act 46 in 2019. For two years in a row, the district has considered closing Doty, which would require voter approval. Last year, the plan was shelved without a vote after residents protested. But now a vote has been scheduled for February 10. 

This past fall, when the district restarted consolidation discussions, Fuqua joined the “configuration committee” and dropped her previous opposition to closing the school. It already must combine two grades in classrooms to meet state minimums for class size. Fuqua worried that if classes shrink further, teachers might struggle to foster soft skills such as teamwork, collaborative problem solving and navigating a diversity of opinions. A larger school, she continued, could also support a full-time instrumental music teacher instead of the one-day-a-week instructor that Doty kids get, as well as a full-time librarian. 

Indeed, there is ample evidence from Vermont and other states that merged schools can expose students to more and varied learning opportunities. A report released in 2024 by the Vermont Agency of Education, based on surveys and superintendent interviews from seven districts that merged early in the Act 46 era, highlighted merged districts saving, adding or restarting school offerings such as literacy intervention services, world languages and after-school extracurricular activities. 

Nevertheless, education researchers stress that sending students to a bigger school with more resources doesn’t necessarily mean improved academic achievement or well-being. “These students are often experiencing an enormous transition, and there are a whole bunch of factors that can affect that,” said Mara Tieken, an education professor at Bates College who studies school consolidation. 

School closings tend to be in more disadvantaged areas, for instance, and students there now take longer bus rides that cut into time for studying, sleep and after-school programs. Another variable is whether students from a closed school all transfer to the same new school, or are “starburst” out because no single school can accommodate them all. Tieken said it takes serious planning “to smooth that transition for new students, to create a culture that’s welcoming.”

Research on student outcomes following school mergers reflects this tangle of factors. Some studies indicate that consolidation improves test scores, especially when students move to higher-performing schools. Others find little academic impact or lower performance in the first years after merging, more missed school days and behavioral issues and longer-term disadvantages in college graduation, employment and earnings as young adults. 

“The answer to virtually every question about school consolidation is: It depends,” said Jerry Johnson, director of the Rural Education Institute and professor of educational leadership at East Carolina University, who has researched school consolidation for decades. 

Related: Merger madness? When schools close — forever 

Whatever might be gained from a merger, many Doty parents (and students) remain opposed. In interviews, several said their tiny school provides something incredibly valuable and increasingly rare: human connection and community. In places like Worcester, a local school is one of the few spaces that regularly brings folks together and serves as a magnet for the young families that sustain small-town life.

Rosie Close, a fifth grader at Doty, described a tradition of students making and serving  soup at the town’s free “community lunch” held every Wednesday at the town hall. “If they closed Doty,” she said, “that would kind of take away part of the town, too.”

While some Doty families had deep roots in the area, others moved to town more recently, including Caitlin Howansky, mother of a third grader. Howansky grew up in New York City, where she went to an elementary school with more than 30 kids per class.

“Nobody outside of that classroom necessarily knew my name or knew me as a whole person. I was just one of the crowd,” she said. 

By contrast, Howansky said, the teachers at Doty “know every kid’s strengths and weaknesses across the whole building.”

That doesn’t mean that she and her neighbors are blind to demographic or economic realities, especially when housing, health care and so much else is getting more expensive. Early in December, for instance, Vermonters learned that property taxes would likely be spiking again next year, by nearly 12 percent on average.

“A lot of people are saying, if we fight this again, are they just going to come back and try again next year?” Howansky said. “And is it fair to the children to live under this constant threat and this constant stress of not knowing?”

She still thinks the fight against a merger is worth it, but said, “Everyone has to figure out where to draw their individual line.”

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

This story about rural school closures was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Schools are closing across rural America. Here’s how a battle over small districts is playing out in one state appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

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Editor’s Note: Bucking national trends, Red Hook has become a rare place where women lead six of eight Christian congregations. In this six-part series, The Daily Catch explores not only how that happened but who these women are, tracing the life experiences, doubts, sacrifices, and moments of courage that brought them to ministry. Today, we examine the reasons for the shift. Subsequent stories will introduce each of the women ministers.

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Four years ago, Pastor Alisha Riepma-Hosier was immersed in a training fellowship in the Catskills when a friend mentioned an intriguing job opening. The St. John’s Reformed Church in Upper Red Hook was looking for a new leader.

Riepma-Hosier was reluctant. On a map, it looked like Red Hook was in the middle of nowhere, and she did not want to move to an even more secluded location. But her friend convinced her to visit. As she drove around and noticed signs supporting Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ Pride, her opposition softened. In 2021, Riepma-Hosier became the first female pastor to lead St. John’s since its inception nearly 250 years ago.  

Riepma-Hosier is not the only female pastor to run a Red Hook church. Six out of the community’s eight places of worship are led by women, a transition that has occurred only in the past decade. That is almost six times the national average; less than 15% of American churches are led by women. This means that in a profession that remains dominated by men, Red Hook is a rare pocket of America where women rule the pulpits.

“There’s no doubt that this has been a profound change, which has occurred relatively quickly as deep social changes go,” said Dr. Bruce Chilton, Director of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College, as well as the former Bard chaplain for 30 years.

Chilton said this change partly reflects a broader trend: the liberalization of Red Hook and, more broadly, Dutchess County, over the past three decades. For example, Chilton recalled that, when he began as the rector of St. John the Evangelist in Barrytown in 1987, he struggled to convince the church’s board of trustees to approve a female congregant for ordination. Many objected to the appointment solely because of the woman’s gender. Fifteen years later, however, the board unanimously accepted another female congregant for ordination. 

The eight churches in Red Hook represent a range of Christian denominations. St. Christopher’s is the only Catholic Church, while three others are Episcopalian, and one each is Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed, and Assembly of God. 

Overall, the number of female clergy has been growing nationally over the last 75 years, and the number of female church leaders in Red Hook echoes that trend. In 1960, for instance, only 2.4% of clergy nationally were female, but today that number is around 20%, according to a 2018 study by the Rev. Eileen Campbell-Reed, a Visiting Associate Professor at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. In part, this growth occurred after many Protestant churches began ordaining women in the latter half of the 20th century. Catholics, Southern Baptists, Mormons, and Orthodox Christians do not allow women to be ordained. And, within the different branches of Protestantism, the share of women ministers varies. According to the same 2018 study, 37% of clergy in the Episcopal and Lutheran churches are women, compared to 29% in the Methodist Church and 23% in the Assembly of God.

At the same time, women who are ordained as priests continue to face barriers to becoming lead pastors of churches. According to a 2024 study by Dr. Young-joo Lee at the University of Indiana, approximately 13% of all Protestant churches in America have female head priests, even though they make up almost 40% of seminary enrollment. This means that many women are delegated to subsidiary positions such as children’s pastor or church music director. 

The Rev. Mary Grace Williams, who has served as rector of St. John’s the Evangelist for nine years, said she believes part of the reason Red Hook has welcomed more female pastors is that sexism is less prevalent in smaller churches like those that populate this community. “If you’re looking at large parishes, many times they’re run by men, and the women are assistants,” Williams said.

The same 2024 study supports Williams’ hypothesis. Comparing churches across the country, Lee found that for every 1% increase in the size of a church’s parishioners, the likelihood that the church has a female pastor decreases by 5%.

The growth in the number of female ministers in Red Hook also comes in the wake of consolidation. Across the country, attendance at religious services has declined by almost 30% over the last 20 years, according to a Gallup study, and Red Hook is no different. A number of churches in Red Hook have either closed or merged in the last 10 years due to dwindling membership. 

For example, in 2015, St. Sylvia’s Catholic Church in Tivoli was consolidated into St. Christopher’s in Red Hook due to declining attendance, and the Tivoli church was shuttered. And in 2024, St. Paul’s & Trinity Parish in Tivoli and Christ Church in Red Hook formed a partnership to share one pastor, who alternates preaching at each church every other week. Pastor Canon K. Jeanne Person currently occupies this role.

This consolidation trend has also inadvertently increased the share of female-led churches in Red Hook. With fewer Catholic churches, the number of male-led churches has, by definition, declined, giving more opportunities to women as a share of the total. In addition, the women pastors already in place in Red Hook or, more broadly, in Dutchess County have taken on additional pastoral duties when smaller churches seek to save money. The Rev. Caroline Berninger, for example, was ministering at two churches, in Elizaville and Pine Plains, when she was asked this year to pick up services at the Red Hook United Methodist Church and the Methodist church in Milan.

“The United Methodist Conference, as well as many other denominations, are really struggling to find clergy to serve local churches,” Berninger said. 

She added that shrinking parish sizes and rising church insurance costs have led to tighter budgets and lower wages. That and the steep costs of post-college education are likely factors in fewer people becoming pastors, Berninger suggests.

Chilton said the increasingly difficult financial situation facing smaller churches has created challenges that women pastors are often better equipped to handle. Because salaries at smaller parishes are frequently insufficient to live on, pastors often need supplemental income or savings from previous careers. Chilton added that, due to longstanding societal barriers that have made women’s paths to ordination less traditional than men’s, many women pastors have already been forced to work in other professions, leaving them better positioned to supplement their income or draw on past earnings.

“Churches that are in a position where they have trouble paying up the full salary of a priest will typically look to see whether there is someone who can take less because there’s some other job they could also do,” Chilton said. ”That kind of multitasking is found more readily among women than it is among men.”

In fact, none of the five women in Red Hook pursued a pastoral career as her first profession. They either did not intend to become a pastor or were rejected when they first tried and initially chose a different career path.

Person, for example, pursued a career in journalism and finance after being turned down by the Episcopal Church when she first put herself forward for ordination. Almost 10 years later, she tried again and was accepted to launch her studies.

Besides changing their careers, four of the five women in Red Hook also made decisions to leave the churches in which they were raised. For example, Williams is a direct descendant of one of the oldest Catholic families in the United States, the De Livers family. However, in her late 20s, Williams decided to leave her Catholic heritage behind and join the Episcopal Church because the Catholic Church would not ordain women.

“I would never have been allowed to do what I felt called to do because I was a woman,” Williams said.

Despite similarities among the five women, including the connection the majority have with the performing arts, each has forged a different path to reach Red Hook.

Tomorrow: Meet Alisha Riepma-Hosier, St. John’s Reformed Church

The post Why Women Now Lead 6 of 8 Pulpits in Red Hook, Defying a Male-Dominated National Trend (Part 1 of 6) first appeared on The Daily Catch.

LUBBOCK, Texas — The meeting of the local NAACP chapter began with a prayer — and then the litany of injustices came pouring out. 

A Black high school football player was called a “b—h-ass” n-word during a game by white players in September with no consequence, his mom said. A Black 12-year-old boy, falsely accused last December of touching a white girl’s breast, was threatened and interrogated by a police officer at school without his parents and sentenced to a disciplinary alternative school for a month, his grandfather recounted. A Black honors student was wrongly accused by a white teacher of having a vape (it was a pencil sharpener) and sentenced to the alternative school for a month this fall, her mom said.  

“They’re breaking people,” said Phyllis Gant, a longtime leader of the NAACP chapter in this northwest Texas city, referring to local schools’ treatment of Black children. “It’s just open season on our students.”

Just last year, there was hope that the racial climate at Lubbock-area schools might improve. The federal government had launched civil rights investigations after several alleged incidents of racial bullying shocked the community and made national headlines. In fall 2024, a resolution seemed to be in sight: An investigator from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights was planning to visit the area, community members said, for what they hoped would be a final round of interviews before the agency put in place a set of protections negotiated with the Lubbock-Cooper school district. 

Then the 2024 presidential election happened — and the visit didn’t. In March, the Trump administration closed seven of the Education Department’s 12 regional civil rights enforcement offices, including the one in Dallas, which had been investigating complaints about Lubbock. Emails from the lawyer representing the families to the federal investigator bounced back — like hundreds of other OCR employees, she had been terminated.

Since then, race relations in school districts in and around Lubbock have taken a turn for the worse, many parents and educators say. Black residents — who make up about 8 percent of Lubbock County — didn’t expect the federal government to bring a halt to racist incidents, but the possibility of an agreement between the government and school districts provided a sense of accountability. Now, parents and students say racial epithets are more common in public, and Black teachers fear drawing attention to themselves. Gant says the NAACP chapter fields frequent calls from parents seeking help in addressing racial incidents they no longer bother to report to the Education Department. 

Since President Donald Trump took office, the agency has not publicly announced a single investigation into racial discrimination against Black students, instead prioritizing investigations into alleged anti-white discrimination, antisemitism complaints and policies regarding  transgender students. 

All told this year, the Education Department under Trump has dismissed thousands of civil rights investigations. During the first six months of this year, OCR required schools to make changes and agree to federal monitoring in just 59 cases, compared with 336 during the same period last year, a Washington Post analysis found.

“In many of our communities where people feel isolated and like they didn’t have anyone to turn to, OCR mattered and gave people a sense of hope,” said Paige Duggins-Clay, a lawyer at the Intercultural Development Research Association, an education policy and legal advocacy group that helped file some of the OCR complaints against Lubbock schools. “And it matters that they’ve essentially destroyed it.”

In an email, Julie Hartman, press secretary for legal affairs for the Department of Education, wrote, “These complaints of racial bullying were filed in 2022 and 2023, meaning that the Biden Administration had more time to investigate this than the Trump Administration has even been in office. The Trump Administration’s OCR will continue vigorously enforcing the law to uphold all Americans’ civil rights.” She did not respond to a question about whether the agency had opened any investigations into discrimination against Black students. 

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

Some white residents have noticed the change too. Lubbock County, located at the bottom of the Panhandle, is home to more than a quarter million people. It is the urban seat for a sprawling county that encompasses several suburban and rural school districts and hosts Texas Tech University at its center.

Tracey Benefield — who has two children in Hutchinson Middle School in the Lubbock Independent School District, which borders the Lubbock-Cooper district — is from a family that has lived in the area for generations. She says her son has witnessed multiple incidents of racial bullying over the past year.

“My son was walking down the hall with his friend who’s Black, and some kid shoulder-checked him and called him the n-word. That’s been one of many,” she said. “Things have absolutely gotten worse. The attitudes have always been there, but people acting on their attitudes is completely different.” Lubbock district officials did not directly respond to questions about Benefield’s assertions.

She thinks OCR’s retreat, among other changes within the federal government, has had an impact. “People are more emboldened,” she said. “People have always had racist ideas, but now there’s no consequences for being racist.” 

Prior to Trump’s election, the concerns of parents and civil rights groups were quite different: Many were frustrated that Office for Civil Rights cases could linger for years as overworked investigators tracked down details and testimonies. Some were starting to advocate for more OCR staff and speedier resolutions. The outcry from residents, along with the media attention, prompted the Lubbock-Cooper and nearby Slaton school districts — where Black students make up about 3 percent and 5 percent of the student bodies, respectively — to adopt policies of mandatory in-school suspension for students caught making racial slurs and spurred training for staff. 

But for many, the changes weren’t coming quickly enough.

Related: Under Trump, protecting students’ civil rights looks very different

In 2022, Tracy Kemp’s eldest son, Brady, then an eighth grader, was one of nine Black students whose pictures were put on an Instagram page called “LBMS Monkeys,” which stood for “Laura Bush Middle School Monkeys.” (Brady is being referred to by his nickname and his last name is being withheld to protect his privacy.) Kemp was part of a group of parents in the Lubbock-Cooper school district who filed OCR complaints that August over what they said was a toxic racial atmosphere that subjected their children to repeated racial bullying. White students would sometimes play whipping noises on their phones when Black students walked through the halls, according to the complaints. Despite a school district investigation that included reaching out to the FBI, those responsible were never caught. 

Lubbock-Cooper officials said via email that they “responded swiftly and appropriately” to the 2022 incident at Laura Bush Middle School. “Efforts of the district to ensure all students feel valued, supported, and a sense of belonging have contributed to the positive, nurturing environment our campuses strive to maintain,” wrote Sadie Alderson, the district’s executive director of public information.

Kemp stayed in the Lubbock-Cooper district for another year, but even though the page was taken down, the taunting and bullying didn’t let up, she says. Her middle son was in sixth grade at LBMS that year and was called racial epithets on the school bus and in the hallways. (His name is being withheld to protect his privacy.) When Brady, who had graduated from the middle school and started at Lubbock-Cooper High School, tried to start a Black Student Union there, she says, a white student ripped the page with signatures from his notebook. Kemp says the principal told her there was nothing he could do. The final straw came one day when the ninth grader didn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. The teacher told him he was a criminal who was breaking the law, Kemp says, and the harassment started up again, this time on Snapchat, with the same language as the “monkeys” Instagram page. 

In July 2023, Kemp moved with her family to New Mexico and commuted 75 miles each way until she found a job closer to her new home. Leaving Lubbock-Cooper, she said, was life-changing for her kids’ mental health.

“In eighth grade, you’re going through puberty, you’re learning about yourself, you’re growing and you have all these different feelings. And now you add into the mix, ‘These people don’t like me because of my color’ — that’s a whole different type of aspect to have to deal with,” said Kemp. “And on the flip side of that, I also have to encourage my child that not every white person feels this way, because I don’t want to teach my child hate either.”

Brady, now a 12th grader, also says he’s happy the family moved. “Honestly, it’s a lot easier,” he said. “There’s no arguments, there’s nothing to worry about, really. I just focus on school more than anything.”

Related: What’s happened since Texas killed in-state tuition for undocumented students

Others who have stayed say they’ve paid a price. Last December, Ja’Maury, a then-12-year-old whose last name is being withheld to protect his privacy, learned of rumors that he’d touched a white girl’s breast during school. He went straight to administrators at the school, Commander William C. McCool Academy, to tell them the truth. But the assistant principal believed the girl’s story and radioed a police officer, who interrogated him and threatened him with jail unless he confessed, according to Ja’Maury and his grandfather, Mike Anzley. Alone in a room of adults, Ja’Maury broke down and admitted to something he says never happened. 

“He was yelling and threatening to send me to juvie if I didn’t say I did it. I was scared,” Ja’Maury recalled in an interview. “It was a white person’s word against a Black person’s word.”

Ja’Maury was assigned 30 days at Priority Intervention Academy, Lubbock Independent School District’s detention school, where children are sent for offenses determined to be too severe for in-school suspension. Constantly anxious, he reverted to sleeping in his grandfather’s bed like he did as a toddler. At the detention school, he said, he was so afraid of defying adults that he twice wet his pants rather than challenge a teacher who said he couldn’t leave class to use the bathroom.  

“He had never been in trouble before,” said Anzley. He’d always taught Ja’Maury to trust adults, and said he was devastated by the adults at McCool betraying that trust. “I had to make him distinguish right from wrong in a whole new way.” 

Anzley filed a formal grievance with the district and, according to a copy of the findings shared with The Hechinger Report, administrators agreed to wipe the incident from his discipline file, issue a formal apology and provide training in discipline and due process to both McCool administrators and the officer who interrogated him. 

McCool administrators did not respond to requests for comment. Amanda Castro-Crist, executive director of communications and community relations for Lubbock ISD, wrote in an email that the district could not discuss individual students because of federal laws protecting student privacy, but that it “is proud to serve a diverse student body.”

Related: More first-generation students in Texas are applying to college 

Gant, the 62-year-old NAACP leader, says that growing up in Lubbock she never experienced the kind of racism she sees now. An accountant who runs her own business, she got involved in community activism about 20 years ago after enduring identity theft and a costly, time-consuming effort to clear her name. “I’m a strong, faith-based woman,” said Gant. “Who else will someone call? Who will go to their meetings for free, come with the facts and the research and not make them feel like they owe anything?” 

Gant noted changes the districts have made in the wake of the OCR investigation and parent activism, including the new suspension policies. Administrators in Lubbock-Cooper sometimes even proactively contact her about a parent concern, she said. In Lubbock ISD, Gant credits the director of student and parent resolution, Brian Ellyson, with listening to parents and helping them resolve conflicts in a principled manner. 

Ellyson was one of two Lubbock school officials at the September NAACP meeting, held in an independent living center on the south side of town equidistant between Laura Bush Middle School and McCool Academy. Parent after parent described their children’s mistreatment. 

Leshai Whitfield said her son was sent to a detention school after a teacher complained that he’d pushed her; she said her son was only trying to leave the classroom because of a fight between two other students. Naquelia Edwards said her son has been repeatedly called the n-word and disciplined for fights while white students went unpunished. Jessika Ogden, mother of the 11th grade honors student who was wrongly accused of having a vape, said she believes her daughter was racially profiled. She filed a grievance against Lubbock Independent School District’s Coronado High School to keep her daughter from being sent to the district’s detention school, which she says she eventually won. But her daughter missed school while the case was being resolved, Ogden said, as she refused to send her to the detention school. “Had I not fought for my daughter, she would have suffered that punishment, missing more class, more credits,” Ogden said.

In interviews, more than a dozen Black high school students in Lubbock said they regularly heard other students use the n-word. “Slurs happen all the time – it don’t matter what time of day it is,” said a 10th grader from Coronado High School, whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy.

Gant says the absence of an actual agreement between the federal government and any of the districts means the environment in schools hasn’t fundamentally changed. Those agreements come with teacher training, data collection and penalties for failing to comply. In-school suspension for racist behavior may keep some of it in check, but the changes are cosmetic, she and parents say.

Emails obtained by The Hechinger Report through public records requests show that Kulsoom Naqvi, the OCR investigator based in the Dallas office, conducted staff surveys, data requests and several rounds of interviews throughout much of 2024, but the work came to a halt that fall. Naqvi, who is not technically separated from the Education Department because of ongoing litigation over the mass firings at the Education Department, said she could not comment on the case.

“Given the pace that things were moving, I felt confident that we were going to get a resolution before the end of the year,” said Duggins-Clay, the lawyer who helped file some of the complaints. “Had the election not happened, we would have gotten to a negotiated resolution.” 

Alderson, the spokesperson for Lubbock-Cooper, said that the investigation is still open, but the current superintendent, hired in June, was not aware of any communication from an OCR investigator. She said the district had sought mediation with OCR in spring 2024, but Naqvi had denied that request and had not given Lubbock-Cooper a timeline for resolving the complaints.  

Related: ‘It was the most unfair thing’: Disobedience, discipline and racial disparity 

Just over 20 miles away from downtown Lubbock, in the neighboring town of Slaton, which had its own series of racist incidents and ensuing complaints to OCR, residents say the racial atmosphere has deteriorated even further this year and the school administration has been completely unresponsive. School officials promised to work with local authorities to paint over part of a mural in the center of town that depicts Black men picking cotton under the watch of a white farmer, teachers say. But that never happened. Parents say the n-word is used regularly by white students without consequence in the district, where just 5 percent of students are Black. 

“I’ve witnessed kids on my campus calling Black kids ‘monkeys,’” said a Slaton teacher who grew up in the town and spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for her job. “I’m sorry to say that it’s gotten worse. I feel like more of the extremists have come out.”

Parents say their children continued to be bullied because of their race even after Slaton administrators pledged in 2022 to discipline students for slurs. One mom said her second grader was called an “African monkey” the next year by other kids in his class at Cathelene Thomas Elementary. She says she told the principal, who said, “‘Would you be offended if they called him a cat or something different?’” the mother recalled. “I got up and left. I didn’t even know what to say.”

After that she started homeschooling her kids. She asked to remain anonymous because her children still participate in community events and she is worried they will face retribution.

Cathelene Thomas Principal Margaret Francis did not respond to requests for comment. Superintendent Shelli Conkin said in an email that federal law prevented the district from discussing student-related matters and did not respond to additional questions. “Since I became superintendent in 2023, Slaton ISD has experienced many positive developments that highlight our commitment to students and staff,” she wrote, including facility upgrades, a district fundraising effort and a four-day school week.

Related: Which schools and colleges are being investigated by the Trump administration?

Anzley, meanwhile, is still fighting for justice for his grandson. After the district declined to discipline the girl for making the accusation, he said, and with OCR no longer seeming like an option for redress, he’s hoping to find a lawyer to file a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of his grandson.

The district’s apology and commitment to better train administrators did not undo the damage to Ja’Maury, he and his grandfather said. “People kept on messing with me about it, saying I was a pedophile, saying I was a pervert,” said the middle schooler. “After that I almost hated life, I didn’t even want to live no more after that. That was horrible.”

Last spring, four months after Ja’Maury had been back at McCool, he got into a fight with a boy who called him the n-word on the school bus, he said. This fall, Anzley decided to transfer Ja’Maury from the top-rated school he once loved — which is 9 percent Black — to Dunbar College Preparatory Academy, which is 45 percent Black and received an F rating this year from the Texas Education Agency. Ja’Maury says he feels safer there; Anzley says the move was necessary for his grandson’s mental health but that he preferred the learning opportunities at McCool.

“None of this is new, because the very name Lubbock is the name of a Confederate soldier,” said Gant. “It’s heartbreaking, but it doesn’t surprise me. The aggression of it has been heightened under the Trump administration.” 

She added, “The districts know that OCR has been dismantled so there’s no urgency to fix these issues. It’s on the community, and it’s on the parents to be factual, vocal and not quit.”

Contact senior investigative reporter Meredith Kolodnerat 212-870-1063 or kolodner@hechingerreport.org or on Signal at merkolodner.04.

This story about federal investigations in schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Probes into racism in schools stall under Trump appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

This story was produced in partnership with Work Shift and reprinted with permission. 

MOBILE, Ala. — Three or four times a week, LaTyra Malone starts her day at Mobile Infirmary hospital at 6:30 a.m. For the next 12 hours, she makes her rounds and visits with patients — asking if they’re in pain, checking vitals, administering fluids. To an outside observer, she appears to be a nurse. 

But Malone, 37, is a registered nurse apprentice. Everything she has learned how to do in her nursing classes at Coastal Alabama Community College, she can do at the hospital under the supervision of registered nurse Ondrea Berry, her journeyworker — a term typically used in the skilled trades. Unlike most nursing students who complete their required clinical hours in groups for no pay, Malone gets paid as an employee with benefits. She also gets much more personalized, hands-on learning time. 

“It’s like having a little kid attached to your leg all day,” Berry joked. 

For Malone, the partnership is invaluable.

“I learn so much more one-on-one,” Malone said. “I might know the basics of disease processes or why we’re giving a certain medicine, but hearing her break it down to me helps a lot.”

The pair work largely as a team, alternating duties to allow Malone a chance to observe and practice. By now, Malone knows the ropes pretty well: In addition to her apprenticeship training and classes, she has 16 years of experience as a certified nursing assistant and a medical assistant. And Berry, who is 25, says she benefits from the working relationship too. “There are teaching moments for both of us,” she said.

Degreed nursing apprenticeships, like the one in Alabama, have emerged nationally as a potential solution to a thorny problem. The national nursing shortage is creeping toward crisis levels, with the demand for RNs like Berry and licensed practical nurses, or LPNs, projected to outstrip the supply for at least the next decade. At the same time, tens of thousands of people like Malone are already working in patient care in hospitals. Many aspire to be nurses — in fact, many certified nursing assistant programs sell the idea that you can start there, quickly land a job and then continue on to become a nurse. 

But in reality, that’s a huge leap that requires an entirely different admissions process and English, math and science prerequisites that many nursing assistants don’t have. It also assumes that someone working an eight- or 12-hour shift for $18 an hour can find the time and the money for more education.

“The sort of ‘we are excellent’ ethos in nursing might be self-defeating in that it is weeding out a lot of people who would be amazing nurses,” said Iris Palmer, director for community colleges with the education policy program at New America.

Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

Several states, including Texas, North Carolina and Wisconsin, have begun growing registered apprenticeships in nursing — which have approval from the U.S. Department of Labor — to help address this problem. But no state has done quite as much as Alabama in scaling the model. 

In 2021, the Alabama Board of Nursing worked with the state legislature to create a nursing apprenticeship license. Normally, nursing students are not licensed until after they graduate and pass a national licensure exam, and therefore they can’t be paid for their supervised clinical hours. The new apprenticeship license allows them to earn while they learn, making nursing school much more accessible for students like Malone and helping to fill critical staffing needs in hospitals.

Since the law passed, 80 employers and 28 colleges and universities in Alabama have jointly created LPN and RN apprenticeship programs for those who are still working toward a degree. Nearly 450 apprentices — the great majority RNs — have completed the program and passed their exam, with more than 500 currently apprenticing. It’s too soon to say whether apprenticeships will solve the nursing shortage in the state, but early data shows benefits for employers and aspiring nurses alike.

Mobile Infirmary has had over 90 nursing apprentices since the hospital’s program began in 2022, first with the LPN apprenticeship and soon after with the RN one. Graduates are required to stay at the hospital for one year after the apprenticeship ends, but most are staying beyond that. Only five have left so far, according to Stefanie Willis-Turner, the director of nursing school partnership and programs at Mobile Infirmary. 

The hospital, like many others, already offered tuition reimbursement for employees who wanted to go back to college and move into nursing or another higher-level position. But such programs have notoriously low uptake, in part because most low-income employees can’t front the cost of tuition and also because many don’t know what steps to take.   

“It amazed me the number of people that wanted to go back to school but didn’t really know where to get started,” Willis-Turner said. “Having a person to help guide them has really been our trigger, and that’s how we run this program.”

Willis-Turner played a crucial role in recruiting Malone for the apprenticeship. Malone has wanted to be a nurse since she was a teenager when she was president of her high school’s chapter of HOSA-Future Health Professionals, a global student-led organization that promotes careers in health care. But her plans to become a registered nurse were delayed when she became a mother. The financial burden plus the rigid schedules of nursing school made it difficult to make room for parenting, working and studying.

With the apprenticeship, Malone doesn’t have to worry about paying for college, and she can provide for her family while improving her nursing skills. Her path stands in stark contrast to that of Berry, who worked at Dairy Queen throughout nursing school to pay for tuition and health insurance. Berry didn’t have kids to take care of, but she also didn’t have financial support from anyone else in her family. Her only on-the-job training in nursing school was the clinical hours, where she joined a group of students who took turns practicing new skills with just one nurse. Berry says she only attempted two IVs in that time. Malone has done so many she can’t count. 

About 75 percent of the apprentices at Mobile Infirmary over the last three years were already working at the hospital. The rest came from surrounding medical facilities. Some even quit their jobs to transfer to Mobile Infirmary for a better chance at getting into the apprenticeship program. In addition to paying students for their work, Mobile Infirmary pays for any tuition that isn’t covered by scholarships or grants. The hospital also provides two uniforms free of charge. And students know they have a guaranteed job after they graduate and pass the nursing exam. 

Related: Nurses are in high demand. Why can’t nursing schools keep up?

This kind of targeted support is what makes the best apprenticeships successful in boosting individual economic mobility, its advocates say. Another key factor is the type of job an apprenticeship prepares people for. Most health care apprenticeships are for entry-level roles like CNAs, patient care technicians and medical assistants — jobs that, on average, pay $18-$20 an hour. 

About half of states offer apprenticeships for LPNs, who make about 50 percent more than that, and half do so for RNs, whose median salaries are close to six figures, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. But far fewer apprentices are in those LPN and RN programs — and the majority of RN apprenticeships are for nurses who already have degrees, not for those who are still learning. That means aspiring nurses must still get all the way through the financial and logistical obstacles of nursing school before they can start to work.

Josh Laney helped set up the different model in Alabama when he was director of the state’s Office of Apprenticeship. For a long time, he said, he bought into the “urban legend” that training more people to be certified nursing assistants, especially when they’re young, would get people onto the path to becoming nurses. 

“The pitch was, ‘We get you the certificate and then you’re going to work at a hospital because it’s a very high-demand occupation. From there you can go on and move into nursing or whatever else you want to do,’” Laney said. “But there was no specified plan for how to do that — just a low-wage, very stressful and strenuous job.”

The data backs that up. A 2018 study of federal Health Profession Opportunity Grants for CNA training showed that only 3 percent of those who completed the training went on to pursue further education to become an LPN or RN. Only 1 percent obtained an associate degree or above. A study in California showed slightly better odds: 22 percent of people who completed certificate programs at community colleges to become CNAs went on to get a higher-level credential in health care, but only 13 percent became registered nurses within six years.

Because of these outcomes, Laney refused to pursue apprenticeships for CNAs in Alabama. One reason apprenticeships for CNAs and medical assistants are common, however, is that they are jobs that don’t require degrees and have fewer regulations when it comes to training. Setting up a registered apprenticeship for nurses who don’t already have a bachelor’s degree is complex and requires the work of many entities — the nursing board, colleges and employers. 

When he went to the state board of nursing to propose LPN and RN apprenticeships, Laney was initially shut down. 

“To their credit, they said, ‘Go away, bureaucrat! You’re not industry, you’re not the employer. You don’t really have anything to do with this,’” he recalled. “What I learned there, and what I’ve recommended to every other state who’s tried this, is let the employers carry your water. If they want it, they’ll get it done.”

Related: How one college is tackling the rural nursing shortage 

Laney then talked to the Alabama Hospital Association and Alabama Nursing Home Association, to reach employers. Given the shortages they had been experiencing, they bought into the idea and approached the nursing board themselves. Next, Laney’s team got community colleges on board, then universities. With the assurance that apprenticeships wouldn’t cut down on any of the required classes and clinical hours, the nursing board agreed to create the new license, following legislative approval.

Other states embarking on nursing apprenticeships have faced similar challenges. 

Apprenticeships aren’t a panacea. They hold promise for creating upward mobility, diversifying the profession and improving the odds a student makes it through to graduation, but they can’t solve all the knotty challenges of the nursing shortage. A lack of instructors in nursing schools — and therefore a lack of available seats for qualified students — is still one of the biggest factors. And in the apprenticeship model, every student needs one-on-one mentorship, meaning hospitals must have enough staff available and willing to work in a mentoring role for up to a year.

Jay Prosser, executive director of the Massachusetts Nursing Council on Workforce Sustainability, knows all that. But he thinks apprenticeships will bring in more “practice-ready” nurses who are more likely to stay in the field long-term, especially those who were already working in patient care in the United States or other countries. Massachusetts is on the cusp of starting a licensed practical nurse apprenticeship with one employer and one academic partner, after working with the state nursing board and colleges for the past year. Unlike in Alabama, the nursing board didn’t need to create a new license, but rather the board judges whether educational programs meet regulations or not. 

The Massachusetts Nursing Council on Workforce Sustainability is also creating a nursing apprenticeship network in the state, to make it easier for different institutions and programs to exchange ideas. 

Prosser said one of the biggest barriers was making sure that the scope of practice for apprentices was clearly defined. He worked with local colleges to make sure of this. Prosser had previously worked as an assistant chief nursing officer in Birmingham, Alabama, and moved to Massachusetts in 2021 with the idea of apprenticeships already in mind. 

Several other states have also created nursing apprenticeships for students who don’t already have a degree, but they’re limited to single institutions. In 2023, Texas began offering nursing apprenticeships for students who hadn’t already earned a degree in a collaboration between South Texas College and the Texas Workforce Commission. 

The University of Wisconsin Health system has created a portfolio of nine registered apprenticeship programs, including an RN program launched in 2023 and a handful of other apprenticeship-style programs. Bridgett Willey, director of allied health education and career pathways, said the hospital started with entry-level apprenticeships, like medical assistants, before proposing degreed programs. 

“There’s still kind of a myth that the colleges are going to do all this on their own,” Willey said. “Well, that’s not true. Employers have to sponsor, because we’re the ones hiring the apprentices and often supporting tuition costs, as well.”

Related: No college degree, no problem? Not so fast

The outcomes from the entry-level apprentice programs helped convince the health system that it was worth investing more. A three-year study showed that staff retention rates for those who participated in the hospital’s apprenticeships were 22% higher than for those who didn’t. In the two-year-old RN program, attrition is less than 10% so far — significantly lower than the attrition rate the hospital has seen with traditional students who participate in clinicals at the hospital. 

UW Health supports efforts to scale their apprenticeship model across the state, but so far they haven’t panned out. Willey said employers are interested, but conversations often stall when questions arise about how to create more clinical capacity and find funding sources to support apprentices.

Even so, Eric Dunker, founding executive director of the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree, which is affiliated with Reach University, predicts that nursing apprenticeships are about to see major growth, as teaching apprenticeships did five years ago. Earlier this year, Reach University received a $1 million grant to expand apprenticeships in behavioral health, and is planning for nursing ones. The strict licensing regulations for nursing make it more complicated than scaling up teaching apprenticeships, but Dunker sees the possibility of expanding them if nursing boards, colleges and employers all come to the table, as they did in Alabama. 

“There’s a lot of entry-level health care apprenticeships,” Dunker said. “But the key is upward mobility, which is nursing and nurse practitioners. There’s typically been a bottleneck in stacking these pathways, but that’s where you’re starting to see more states and systems become a little more creative.”

Tyler Sturdivant, Coastal Alabama Community College’s associate dean of nursing, knows what that looks like. Figuring out the logistics of setting up an apprenticeship program was a challenge, he said, and required hiring an additional staff member to liaise between the college and hospital partners. But three years into the apprenticeship program for LPNs and RNs, the school is seeing higher completion rates than for traditional students.

This means they’re producing more licensed nurses to fill positions and someday mentor, or even teach, other apprentices. 

On a typical Friday morning in September at Mobile Infirmary, Malone and Berry visited a 70-year-old man who came in for a urinary tract infection that then weakened him. That day, the apprentice and journeyworker switched out his bed for one lower to the ground to reduce the fall risk, taught him how to raise the bed so he could sit upright, updated him on a plan for physical therapy and adjusted his socks for him. 

Malone appeared comfortable and confident, taking the lead in the patient’s care while Berry assisted her. Malone says the many hours of practice she’s had through the apprenticeship has made her feel prepared for the job and ready to continue to follow her dreams. One day, she wants to become a nurse practitioner specializing in mental health.

“I won’t feel complete until I actually become a nurse,” Malone says. “I thought I was going to be one sooner, but bumps in the road happened and I ended up having a child. If it wasn’t for the apprenticeship, I probably wouldn’t be here now.”

Contact editor Lawrie Mifflin at 212-678-4078 or on email at mifflin@hechingerreport.org.

This story was produced in partnership with Work Shift and reprinted with permission.

The post Nursing apprenticeships are starting to fix a broken career ladder, amid national shortage  appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

As agricultural educators with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex County (CCE Essex) visit classrooms throughout the county, they’re aware that what may seem commonplace to an adult has the potential to wow a second grader—and get them to think about nutrition, our food supply and the value of local farmers.

So Ellie Hoffman, local food educator, and Kate Graziano, Public Health Corps fellow, are using a Cornell Cooperative Extension Harvest NY grant to spend time with classrooms in AuSable Valley, Boquet Valley and Ticonderoga. Through this “Rooted in Learning” grant, they are engaging elementary students in food-related discussions, tastings, farm visits and fun activities throughout the 2025-2026 school year.

“One of the main ideas behind this program is that there’s a disconnect between the food on your plate and where the food actually comes from,” Hoffman said. “So we’re trying to address that in different sorts of ways.”

The program patches in to national and state initiatives that feature a “harvest of the month,” an opportunity for kids to taste something that might be new to them. “And since CCE is so focused on local foods, we really try to bring those into Essex County schools specifically,” Hoffman said.

For example, taste tests featuring different varieties of apples relied on fruit from Northern Orchards in Peru. That opens up the possibility of a future field trip to the orchard so kids can actually see where those apples came from.

Each kid has a different level of knowledge about farms, food and nutrition. There are a lot of foods many haven’t tried, like tomatoes. Other foods, like apples, they might know more about, so the program introduces kids to new varieties of apples and ways of thinking about their place in the food system. Some activities, such as churning butter, engage kids in preparing their own taste test.

“The butter lesson was a lot of fun, because a lot of the kids knew a little bit about the process of making butter, but they were so excited to see it happen in real time,” Graziano said. “I can tell that the kids are really excited to learn and cook with local food as much as they can. I have found it really interesting to see the different knowledge levels that the kids have going into the program, and I am looking forward to building on what they have learned in the past through similar experiences at home and at school.”

The lessons are 45 minutes once a month, but are designed so that teachers can use the lesson concepts to teach other subjects through the lens of agriculture. This can mean activities such as measuring the circumference of a pumpkin while studying geometry, writing about different parts of an apple during spelling and vocabulary lessons and discussing local fruits and vegetables when learning about the life cycle of a plant.

And while one class a month might not seem like much, it’s surprising how much of an impression even just one lesson can make. Part of that is because it’s so different from other things kids are learning in school. And that imprinting allows educators to build on the lessons in ensuing years. Making butter one year can lead to a discussion of how dairies work the next.

Hoffman says progress is measured by evaluations before and after the instructional year, but also by judging the students’ level of engagement. “When I’m teaching, I really try to tune in to how much the kids are paying attention and participating in the activities,” she said. “If I say something and they ask questions about it, that tells me I’m on the right track.”

Of course, kids being kids, they aren’t always thrilled about trying something new, especially a vegetable. No one forces them to try it, but they are encouraged to use other senses, like touching and smelling, to engage. If they smell it and it’s not too bad, they may end up taking a nibble. Then if they see that same food in the cafeteria, they’re less likely to reject it out of hand.

And what’s really magical is when the kids can grow the food themselves. When they plant microgreens in the classroom, for instance, they learn about a new food, but also about what goes into its production. They’re delighted to see the seeds they plant unveil their stems and leaves—miniature produce that becomes a snack time harvest.

Children gather around desks to look at a paper that outlines different apple varieties.

“I’ve seen the same reaction in an apple orchard,” Hoffman said. “You know that’s where apples come from, but I really think there is a sense of wonder from actually seeing it on the tree and picking it.”

Food, then, becomes not just something to eat, but something to experience and learn from. That makes it valuable, not just from a nutritional standpoint, but from being a part of the economy, a part of society and a part of the neighborhood.

“There’s a connection to the community, to the farmers, to the land, to the place, along with nature and the environment,” Hoffman said. “These connections all come together, and they’re not just theoretical. They’re something you can go out and see, and that’s really cool.”

You might say, revolutionary.

For more information on POP Club and the Farm to School program, please contact Ellie Hoffman at emh257@cornell.edu or 518-962-4810 ext. 405.

This story was originally published on Adirondack Harvest.

In Hamilton County, population 5,100, only 83 people are looking for work — but even that’s a little misleading, and not in a good way. Hamilton, one of only two counties entirely within the Adirondacks, is the third largest in the state by area, meaning that there is only one person who is job hunting for every 22 square miles.

And when one local government hires a new employee, making its own situation slightly better, chances are the worker was plucked from another local jurisdiction, making that town’s situation slightly worse.

“We go after the same group of people, that’s what we do; we steal from the county, the county steals from the town, other towns steal from us, and that’s what happens,” said Morehouse Supervisor Anthony “Butch” Fernandez. “I have 92 people living in my town. So hiring has to be really outside the borders. And then when you’re outside the borders, those towns like Arietta or Poland, they’re also hiring. Lake Pleasant’s hiring. And you’re in a competition of who can pay more, who’s got better benefits.”

As things stand now, come the first of the year, the Morehouse Highway Department will have two people on staff, including the superintendent. Other public services in the county are at risk as well, from volunteer ambulance companies to Hamilton County’s lone Department of Motor Vehicles in Lake Pleasant.

A further complication of a small labor pool is avoiding nepotism, which can run afoul of the county ethics panel — technically the panel is correct, supervisors say, but they wonder which is worse, having a public employee hiring a family member, or having no one to serve the public at all?

Rural roads at risk

At its November meeting, supervisors worried where new employees will come from to perform basic public services that residents depend on, including snow plowing, which is historically the one service by which Adirondack governments are judged.

If current trends continue, officials worry, round-the-clock snow plowing may not be possible. 

“We are extremely unique in this county in the fact that we are not big, and we don’t have big resources where we can bring personnel from other parts of the state to help clear roads and all this kind of stuff,” said Tracy Eldridge, superintendent of the Hamilton County Department of Public Works. “But it’s a conversation that I think we need to have. The state of New York, plus the nine towns and the village (Speculator), are all dealing with the same pool of employees — we’re not getting new people in, because there’s no place to live.” 

Along with the sparse population and lack of worker housing, demographics are not favorable, as more and more residents are reaching retirement age. According to the Cornell Program of Applied Demographics, the number of residents age 65 and over will have grown by 600 by the end of the decade.

Eldridge said his highway division has 27 employees and is fully staffed for the first time in several years. But about half of those are in their 50s and some are pushing 70. “Eventually, some of these people just won’t want to do it any longer,” he said.

State law allows for highway shifts up to 16 hours, but for plow drivers, Eldridge said that’s too much — plowing is stressful business, with poor road conditions, limited visibility and impatient motorists — so he prefers to cap shifts at 12 hours.

To help ease the burden, the county contracts with towns for road work, but with the towns hurting too, some of those contracts may be at risk.

“The county and towns already share services— we’re very, very good at that, and we have been for a long time,” Eldridge said. “But I’m not sure, to be honest, what the answer is. It’s going to take a lot of thought and creative thinking. I believe I can foresee, I don’t know how many years it’ll be, dark hours where you’re not going to see anybody out maintaining the road at certain times, just because people can only work so many hours.”

Fernandez said he can also see a time when highway departments have to consolidate, not just because of a lack of workers, but because of the escalating price of equipment. A new snowplow can cost over $400,000, which is beyond the means of small Adirondack towns.

But with no one to drive a snowplow or an ambulance, the price tag is immaterial. Fernandez said he moved to the Adirondacks to find peace after a career with a New Jersey police force. He was able to find a place to live only because the person who owned the house before him had to move closer to medical professionals. 

Fernandez said the lack of medical professionals is a universal concern in his town.

Ambulances have to come to Morehouse from Poland, which is outside the park, and then backtrack to the closest hospital in Utica, 45 minutes away. In extreme cases, a private car could be driven south to meet the ambulance half way.

“I love the area,” Fernandez said. “But that’s how serious it is.”

A new ROOST study suggests Essex County could support 200 new year-round homes annually over the next five years—homes for teachers, healthcare workers, tradespeople, and hospitality staff who currently earn too much for subsidized housing but too little to afford market-rate prices.

The study also found that more than seven in 10 Essex County households have just one or two people, yet builders continue to favor larger seasonal homes. Meanwhile, entire communities like Lake Placid and Wilmington have watched residents leave because they couldn’t find affordable places to live.

ROOST is now taking this data to developers, hoping to attract investment in year-round housing. But questions remain: Where should this housing go? Should we focus on smaller units in existing hamlets, or moderate-density development in towns? How do we build for year-round residents while the region remains attractive for vacation homes?

We want to hear from you: What types of housing solutions do you think would work best for your community? What concerns do you have about new developments in your county? And what role should local residents play in shaping what gets built and where?

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ITHACA, N.Y. — A week after canceling local U.S. citizen naturalization ceremonies in upstate New York and moving them to federal buildings outside Tompkins County indefinitely, the federal government has reportedly reversed course and reinstated the local ceremonies. 

According to reporting Thursday in the Albany Times-Union and area NPR-affiliate WSKG, U.S. Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican who represents the 22nd Congressional District of New York, announced Thursday evening in a statement that officials from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had agreed to reinstate the ceremonies. 

Tompkins County Executive Deputy Clerk Rachel Graham said her office had seen those reports, but had not heard directly from federal immigration officials as of Friday morning. USCIS officials did not state a reason for their decision to cancel the local ceremonies last week. The government shutdown, which had already ended by the time the announcement was made, was mentioned as a factor. 

The decision to end local citizenship ceremonies drew confusion and condemnation from local officials, including New York State Assemblywoman Anna Kelles and State Senator Lea Webb, both of whose districts include Tompkins County. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, also objected to the new policy in a statement this week. 

Citizenship ceremonies are one of the final steps for someone to become a naturalized citizen. Last week’s announcement stated they would not be held in most communities, so long-running local sites for citizenship ceremonies, like the Tompkins County Courthouse or Cornell University, would no longer be used. Instead, the ceremonies would only be held in federal administrative buildings, of which the closest one to Ithaca is in Syracuse. 

Lawler’s statement only specifically mentions the counties in his district, but he added that the reversal applies to all counties in New York State. At least seven counties had received notices last week that their respective upcoming naturalization ceremonies would be canceled. 

“After raising this issue directly with USCIS and speaking to [USCIS Director Joseph Edlow], I’m pleased to share that the agency will reverse its decision and allow naturalization ceremonies in Rockland and Westchester [Counties] to resume immediately,” Lawler said in a statement, according to the Times-Union. “Our communities are strengthened by the contributions of new citizens every single day.”

The post Local naturalization ceremonies reinstated by federal government after backlash appeared first on The Ithaca Voice.

When Saranac Lake Village Trustee Aurora White proposed a resolution in February, she said it was in response to a concern she had not seen before: immigrants living in her community were suddenly afraid to leave their homes.

She said some residents told her they were being harassed by other locals—sometimes falsely—about their immigration status. Even those with legal status or work visas, she said, feared what might happen if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ever carried out a raid in the village.

“These are members of our community who have lived here for years,” White said. “We’ve never asked them about their citizenship status. We’ve never had cause to. They’re contributing members of our community, and they were afraid to do normal day-to-day activities.”

Those concerns set off months of debate over how the village should handle immigration enforcement—and what role, if any, local police should play.

A proposal meets resistance

White first introduced a resolution called “Safeguarding Our Residents and Our Financial Resources” to the Saranac Lake Village Board in February. The original bill explicitly outlined a set of policies that would have barred the village police department from using officers or money to assist federal immigration enforcement. Since village police do not currently coordinate with ICE, White said the measure was meant to proactively block future cooperation and keep local policing focused on local needs.

“It was not a political ploy,” White said, “but [I was] really just worried about our community and the funds that we allocate to the police force.”

At a village board meeting where White proposed the resolution, it drew immediate pushback. Mayor Jimmy Williams and other critics argued that Saranac Lake should not wade into national political debates.

“While we do have a tumultuous political picture outside Saranac Lake,” Williams said at the meeting, “my responsibility, and everybody on this board, is to Saranac Lake.”

Williams also warned that the legislation could put the village’s federal grant funding at risk. He did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Federal spending records show that Saranac Lake and local institutions have received millions of dollars in federal grants over the past five years, largely for infrastructure projects. Last year, the village secured a $4.5 million federal grant for its proposed emergency services building, a project estimated to cost close to $30 million.

A scaled-back version passes

White’s original proposal failed in a 3-2 vote. Trustees spent the spring and summer negotiating revisions, ultimately settling on a pared-down version that removed all references to limiting cooperation with ICE.

The resolution that passed in September states that the village opposes hate and discrimination and affirms equal access to public safety regardless of immigration status.

White, who voted against the final resolution alongside Mayor Williams, said it no longer resembled what she had set out to do.

“It’s essentially empty words,” she said.

Police: Not our role

Saranac Lake Police Chief Darin Perrotte said the final resolution largely reiterates policies already in place.

“Many people would be surprised to know that there are already policies in place that dictate that we’re going to provide fair and unbiased policing,” Perrotte said. “So this is not a new concept at all.”

Perrotte, who met with White in the early drafting process, said he recognizes the public’s desire for the village to take a stronger stance to reassure immigrant residents, but he also understands why some felt the proposal could paint a target on Saranac Lake with President Donald Trump’s administration.

Perrotte, who has served as police chief since 2022, said immigration enforcement is not part of his department’s responsibilities.

“On an everyday basis, we’re not questioning people about their immigration status,” he said. “It just doesn’t pertain to our enforcement of the penal law.”

ICE is not required to notify local jurisdictions of planned operations. When the agency raided a wood mill in Tupper Lake earlier this year, Perrotte said local police had no role in the operation.

If ICE ever did ask for the village’s assistance, he said, officers would offer the same limited support they provide any outside agency—confirming an address or responding to a report of violence. Perrotte said he does not expect that request to come and wants his department focused on local work.

“We’re tasked with patrolling and serving the citizens of the village of Saranac Lake,” he said. “We’re plenty busy doing that.”

Residents remain uneasy

Without a comprehensive immigration policy on the books, some residents say the scaled-back resolution leaves fears unaddressed for immigrants living in the village. Though immigrants make up less than one percent of Saranac Lake’s population, their work under seasonal federal visas drives the hospitality industry around the region.

Village resident Steve Erman said stepped-up immigration enforcement could disrupt that workforce.

“If people are afraid to show up for jobs, or people are on jobs and they end up being swept up, they’re detained, taken in, possibly for deportation,” he said. “And what pain that can cause for those families, but also the pain that can cause for entrepreneurs.”

Others worry the climate of fear could jeopardize public safety by deterring people from calling for help. Rich Loeber, who supported White’s original proposal, said some immigrants already hesitate to contact emergency services.

“If they had a fire in their house, they would be hesitant to call the fire department,” he said. “If there was a burglary, they would be hesitant to call the police department. That situation exists now in the village, and it shouldn’t be that way.”

For White, the well-being of all residents remains her top-line concern. She said trust between the community and local law enforcement is fragile and that immigrant residents deserve clarity about how the village intends to protect them.

“I think they deserve to know that we’re committed to each other,” she said. “And that the Saranac Lake Village Police Department can be trusted, just like they always have.”

David Escobar is a Report For America Corps Member. He reports on diversity issues in the Adirondacks through a partnership between North Country Public Radio and Adirondack Explorer.