Page 16 - North Star Magazine 2022

everywhere else. We have a south side of town and a fair amount of poverty in this little city of 19,841 people (census.gov). According to the United States Census Bureau’s official website, the percentage of people in Plattsburgh living in poverty in 2020 was 19.1%, the mean household income (in 2020 dollars) is $51,588, and the
per capita income (in 2020 dollars) is $27,246. Both the average household income and per capita income of Plattsburgh are lower than the New York state averages, and the poverty rate is 6.4% higher than the state average (census.gov). The effects of living in a poor community unavoidably trickled into the schools, resulting in a very significant number of poor students in the Plattsburgh City School District’s P-12 population. According to the New York State Education Department’s official website, during the financial year of 2020-2021, the PCSD enrolled 1,778 students in P-12 and 48%
of these students were “economically disadvantaged”, categorizing the district as high need (NYSED.gov) Though per pupil spending is fairly average and each school is small enough for a good class size of about 15-20 kids, this alone cannot guarantee the success of the lower-income students. The great need of Plattsburgh students would make them susceptible to not participating in extracurriculars that would require a long-term financial commitment, and from
my own experience, the music department was not always allotted funds to continuously invest in new instruments for students. A lot of students in the orchestra were encouraged to rent their own instruments if they could, and the prices could easily become overwhelming to any poor or working-class family.
The closest music shop for PCSD to rent from is Vermont Violins, located in Burlington, VT. There is a ferry to cross Lake Champlain, taking an hour and fifteen minutes by car, and a bridge to the north in Rouses Point, which takes an hour and thirty minutes. The ferry is $11.25 each way for a driver and vehicle, and prices for passengers vary (ferries.com). This could pose a problem to a lot of families because travel is not always an option when the expense is taken into consideration. The instrument pricing at Vermont Violins is on a 3, 6, or 12-month rental basis, and the prices get increasingly more expensive depending on the instrument a student would play. As stated on the official Vermont Violins website, the cheapest violin rental for 3 months is $70, and with the damage waiver, it would be $90 for 3 months. A student would need this instrument for the 9 months that they are in school, so the cheapest violin rental plan at $206 for 12 months would be the best deal, yet this could easily be