You’ve heard the struggles facing the Enlarged City School District of Troy. Enrollment is down, expenses are up and there’s a budget shortfall. An old problem has come back again: Declining population leading to declining enrollment. Our efforts to Revitalize Uptown Troy include saving the only public school serving children living north of Hoosick Street. We’ve seen this before in both the Troy and Lansingburgh School Districts. I attended 4 different elementary schools as a child: 2 in Troy, 2 in Lansingburgh. Not one of those school buildings is operating as a public school today.
PS#14 (the original building) was sold to RPI in exchange for our new PS#14. School #1 now serves as the offices for Troy’s Board of Education and Superintendent of Schools. Lansingburgh Elementary is now office space as well. And then, there’s Haskell School. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this wonderful old school building is sitting vacant and unused. Hopes were to convert the old school into apartments, similar to what TAP achieved with the former School 10 in South Troy. Unfortunately, financing couldn’t be secured and the building has languished ever since. Hoodlums and graffiti artists have assaulted its structure.
Haskell sits on Sixth Avenue between 102nd and 103rd in South Lansingburgh on the boulevards. It is sometimes confusing for out-of-towners given Troy has two Sixth Avenues. Sometimes I wish they had just kept the name Vail for the Sixth Avenue in North Central.
Please continue supporting The Uptown Initiative’s efforts and those of our CDC Partners: Albany Jewish Community Center, Project Hope/Fort Edward, WSW Art Farm, Encore Theater, Palace Performing Arts Center and Hannah’s Hope. We are also pleased to welcome new CDC partner project Hope Heals.
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