REGIONAL – A new report from the Benjamin Center at SUNY New Paltz examines the possibilities of establishing "quasi-magnet" schools in Ulster County: high schools that develop a special strength in one or other subject areas to offer deeper course work and advanced placement courses to students in surrounding districts. This could be, the report surmises, a way to expand regional course offerings and enable gifted students to thrive while making do with a fairly grim fiscal future for education in our area.

Ulster County is experiencing the same demographic decline as other Hudson Valley counties. The 25,578 students in public schools in 2009 fell to 22,577 in 2015-16, a year when 45 percent qualified for free or reduced lunches, a key marker of economic challenge. Plus three percent of those students were learning English for the first time.

Declining student numbers, a relentless use of the state's two percent tax cap and continuing reliance on property taxes for much of the cost of public education, many have said, combine to pare back what our high schools can provide. That has meant the loss of foreign language learning, a loss of specialty teachers at the elementary level, and many other possibilities for advancing local students on to what's become a national and even global forum.

To arrest this decline and reverse it, the Benjamin Center report suggests creating "quasi-magnet high schools..." that use the "quasi" qualifier because students would remain in their own high schools for "core academic requirements" and then travel to another school for its specialty, if they chose to do so, which is different from traditional magnet schools.

In large urban areas, schools with distinct specialties have become part of a new system. Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, for instance, has always had a strong medical education aspect. Hartford CT, with 21,000 students, allows their students a choice between schools that focus on various career possibilities, from engineering to the culinary arts. Even Albany is moving with the magnet school idea of late.

Of course, cities are considerably smaller in area than Ulster County. Moving students from Ellenville to Saugerties would impose too much bus time. What to do?

The Benjamin Center Report examined the transportation issue in some detail. If the county was split east-west, it would put Wallkill High and Onteora too far apart, with travel time of 57 minutes between them, while splitting the county on a north-south axis reduced some travel times considerably. Thus travel from Highland to New Paltz is just 10 minutes, and Wallkill is only 17 minutes from New Paltz. However, Ellenville students would still be burdened in this configuration with journeys of 46 and 40 minutes to the schools furthest away. Indeed, Ellenville's location imposes a travel burden in any configuration that might be chosen.

This is something that Ellenville's athletes have long had to deal with, of course, so it isn't unheard of. But team sports is after school and outside the academic time frame.

For greatest efficiency, the report suggests that Ulster BOCES could coordinate this aspect of a quasi-magnet high school program.

Staffing would also be a difficult issue. Districts all work within complex contracts hammered out over decades with teachers and administrators and are all different as a result. The report suggests that employing the teachers for quasi-Magnet school courses through Ulster BOCES could unlock this puzzle, allowing districts to join together to hire a teacher and sharing the cost with BOCES aid, which can cover as much as 60 percent of such services.

So, how might it work in our area? One high school that already has a degree of specialty is Rondout Valley, where agriculture has been a focus. This jibes with the growing realization that the region has a revived future supplying New York City with specialty agricultural products from craft beer and cider to artisanal cheeses, honey and salad greens grown year round in temperature-controlled structures. Rondout Valley High could become an agriculture-oriented quasi-magnet school with travel times from Kingston, Onteora and Saugerties at the upper end, as well as New Paltz and Wallkill from the south, longer than those from Ellenville... which in turn could find its own specialties. These are our changing futures.

The report suggests specialties in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), arts, humanities, business, performing arts and agricultural science.

Taking this approach would turn Ulster County into a kind of "high school campus" albeit one with bus trips between classes. But the report notes that school districts would be able to develop deep expertise in a certain specialization, offering Ulster students the same level of educational opportunity that might only be available in much larger, more tightly knit communities. And, the problem of distance can also be addressed by "distance learning" via the internet. In such a scenario, one familiar to many college students around the world, travel to a class or lecture is undertaken two or three times a week and the rest of the time students communicate with teachers/professors via email.

The report adds that another benefit of the Quasi-Magnet school approach is that it would leave current school districts secure in their own local identities and history, which is important for their communities. Expansion of educational opportunity in the face of relentless fiscal austerity would seem to be a perfect example of making "shared services" work for our communities.