Columbia County news

This excerpted story is provided courtesy of the latest issue of The Columbia Paper, which can be seen online at www.columbiapaper.com.

School enrollments have large drop since 2000

Public school enrollment in Columbia County has been dropping steadily since no later than 2000, according to the latest state Education Department enrollment data.

The latest data considered final are through October 2016.

In round numbers the total enrollment for the county’s six districts fell from 9,600 students in the 2000-01 school year to 6,800 in the 2016-17 year, a drop of 29 percent.

For individual districts, the drop in enrollment during that time frame ranged between 27 and 38 percent.

For all schools, enrollment has steadily dropped from each year to the next, with a few exceptions.

Two of those exceptions occurred in 2016, when both Hudson and Taconic Hills had slightly more students than in the year before.

Here’s the change from 2000 to 2016 for the individual school districts:

■ Chatham, down 32 percent;

■ Germantown, down 35 percent;

■ Hudson, down 27 percent; ■ Kinderhook, down 27 percent;

■ New Lebanon, down 38 percent;

■ Taconic Hills, down 29 percent.

— Jeanette Wolf berg