In tiny Newcomb school, global summit
International students boost Adirondack economy, teach town about cultures
It’s dinner time at the “Hults Hotel” but it looks more like a mini United Nations. Kristina Khudiakova, who is from Arkhangelsk in northern Russia, passes the potatoes as Ai Shiratori, from Tokyo, digs into his salad.
Laura Gil, from Barcelona, hands a plate of kielbasa sausages to a visiting reporter and at the next table, Munashe Chikukwa, from Zimbabwe, pours another glass of juice.
Toward the end of the meal, Skip Hults and his wife, Dale, call a group meeting. They have to make plans for a trip later in the month to New York City to visit the Statue of Liberty and several museums.
“We’re going to be leaving at the break of dawn, around 8 o’clock,” Hults says, evoking mock groans from the teens.
It takes about five hours to get to New York City from this tiny Adirondack community where these students are spending one of their high school years.
Newcomb, in the middle of the Adirondacks, is as remote as it gets in New York. During a mid-november visit, there was already 6 inches of snow. The nearest mall is in Glens Falls, more than an hour away, and there isn’t even a Stewart’s shop for 15 miles. Year-round population is less than 500 people.
But international students have for more than a decade now been a common sight in Newcomb’s single K-12 school. They started arriving in 2007 when Hults, who is the school superintendent, began recruiting students from overseas as part of a survival strategy.
The entire K-12 student body had shrunk to 55, which was small enough to raise questions about the Newcomb Central School District’s financial and academic viability. Knowing that some rural schools in Australia were successfully bringing in foreign students, Hults started doing the same, working with recruiters and nonprofit organizations.
The school size hasn’t substantially changed — there are 85 students this year — but that includes 16 international students in ninth to 12th grades.
And since starting more than a decade ago, a handful of other North Country school districts have picked up on the idea. Indian Lake, which is 45 minutes away, has six students this year from Russia, South Korea and Japan. “We are hoping for even more host families and international students next year,” said Indian Lake Superintendent Dave Snide.
Queensbury, outside of Glens Falls, has three this year and Minerva, about a half-hour away, has one.
In Newcomb, Hults has looked into building a dormitory for the students but state regulations surrounding such a project put the idea beyond reach, he said.
So Hults and his wife this year rented a large house where they are hosting 10 of the students. There are separate wings for the boys and girls and they all gather for dinner each night, usually prepared by Dale Hults.
“We’re quickly becoming like a family,” Skip Hults said.
The house provides a lesson on why this program even exists. It’s in a small development containing a number of homes that in 1963 were moved from the now-abandoned mining community of Tahawus, 15 miles away.
The homes that were relocated originally sat atop a rich vein of titanium, which provided the area’s economic underpinning for years.
By the late 1980s, though, the mine had closed and the area’s population began to drop. It’s a story repeated throughout the rural Adirondacks and other remote upstate communities as mining, logging, farming or other traditional industries faded and people left in search of other opportunities. The schools, though, face fixed costs, with minimum required staff levels that become ever-harder to justify.
A handful of districts in these towns such as Raquette Lake and Piseco have in recent years closed their doors and sent their students to neighboring districts. But doing that is more complicated than it sounds and there often is resistance. Small town schools are viewed as anchors — and needed sources of jobs — in their communities. “All these rural schools have one thing in common. We are underutilized,” Hults said.
The foreign students here pay $3,500 in tuition and $6,000 for room and board, which is a fraction of the $40,000 or more it would cost for a private boarding school. Hults figures the actual cost of having the student in the school is about $1,200, so the rest goes to their bottom line.
“It’s a win-win,” he said. He also likes the exposure to other cultures the students bring to Newcomb.
Academically, many of the students, especially the Russians, are substantially ahead in subjects like math and physics. This year, one of the students scored a perfect 800 on her math SAT exam.
The foreign students are benefiting from the exposure to English, which they view as increasingly important in the globalized economy.
The students from Spain said that multiple-choice questions on tests were an alien concept before coming to Newcomb. But they were impressed with the degree of citations that teachers want to see in research papers here.
Some of the differences are behavioral as well. If you forget something from a recent lesson in a Zimbabwean school, the teacher will give you a piercing “look of deep disappointment,” Chikukwa said.
The students also bring a variety of viewpoints. When asked where she’s from, Alice Varotnikova said she’s from “near Moscow,” which in terms of Russian travel is a sevenhour drive to the east of her home in Cheboksary. “Near” is a relative term in a country that spans 11 time zones.
Others chafed at the national labels they are given.
Gil considers herself a Catalan more than a Spaniard, since Catalonia, the region in Spain that includes her home city Barcelona, has long sought a degree of autonomy from the rest of the country.
Marina Tselovalnikova is from Yakutsk, near the Arctic circle in eastern Siberia, but she considers herself a Mongolian/yakut more than a Russian. She’s been to China more times than Moscow.
They also chuckle about the misconceptions their U.s.-born classmates have about them. One local student asked if they really drink vodka instead of water and another wondered if they are Soviet spies, Varotnikova said. “They know nothing about us,” she said.
Still, they have found Newcomb welcoming overall. Gil’s brother Pol said, “The people here are more kind” than in Europe. And several hope to attend college and live and work in the U.S. once they finish high school.
To stay, they’ll have to reapply for visas. These students are here on F1 visas, which allow a oneyear stay to attend a public school. International students who attend private schools, though, can stay for more than a year on their F1s, which means that most in the U.S. are in private schools.
“The F1 visa at the high school level has traditionally been known as the private school visa,” said Christopher Page, executive director of the Council on Standards for International Education Travel, a nonprofit group that evaluates and provides a “seal of approval” to programs likes Newcomb’s.
As of 2016 there were 59,000 foreign high school students on F1 visas and 95 percent were in private schools, Page said.
Academically, many of the students, especially the Russians, are substantially ahead in subjects like math and physics. This year, one of the students scored a perfect 800 on her math SAT exam.
Public schools face bureaucratic obstacles since they don’t have admissions departments or testing requirements that exist in private schools. Bringing students to a place like Newcomb requires a certain level of work and commitment, Page said. “There are a few out there that have been doing this for some time and they find that it works for them.”
Has the administration of President Donald Trump, with its tough-onimmigration stance, had an impact on such programs? That’s difficult to say, according to Hults.
He’s had problems over the past few years getting some students approved, although that predates the current administration, Hults said. He has tried repeatedly to bring over a pair of sisters from Afghanistan, but can’t get them visas.
And he’s been trying without success for several years to bring over a student from Rwanda, whose aunt lives in the U.S. and is a survivor of genocide that took place in the 1990s.
“I can only say that over the last two years I have seen more visas denied than over the last 12 years combined,” Hults said.
The U.S. embassies in each country can play a big role, and there are other vagaries.
For instance, a number of Russian students recently began attending Newcomb’s school, which Hults attributes to a recruiter that he works with over there. “They are very Americanized,” he added. “It takes them very little time to feel like they are part of a family.”
China, on the other hand, has become a tough sell. Hults attributes it to strict controls over internet browsing, which is where a number of students learn about Newcomb.
Page said they have heard parents in China are growing fearful of school shootings in the U.S.
Chinese educators also are working to create American-style schools there and rising private school tuitions could be having an impact as well, Page said.
For a few of the students, coming to Newcomb can provide a refuge from trouble at home and a new life.
Zimbabwe has been wracked by civil and economic turmoil, with unemployment at 80 percent and double digit inflation. Chikukwa’s older brother Bryton was at Newcomb before he earned degrees at Skidmore College and then Babson College. He’s working in finance in the Boston area.
Munashe Chikukwa last week spent some time after dinner applying to take an English proficiency language test for college in the U.S. His goals: live in the U.S. or return to his homeland with an education to try and improve things.
That was gratifying to Hults: “I can’t change the world but I can change my little part of the world.”