Ossining Middle School Students Learned Why the Census Counts

As the federal government geared up to send out millions of Census 2020 forms last month, Anne M. Dorner Middle School students learned about the challenges of reapportionment and determining how funding flows to state and local communities.

On March 10, sixth-grade English and social studies teacher Natasha Javed divided her class into four groups. Each had one city – Juneau, Alaska; Montgomery, Alabama; Santa Fe, New Mexico; or Boston. The students did some calculations based on population to find out how many tokens, or “money,” they had for government facilities, parks and businesses. A police station cost 10 tokens; a library, five; a hospital, 10; and a gas station, four, for example.

They had two tokens for every 1,000 people. Juneau, the smallest city of the four, only had 32,094 people, so those students had just 64 tokens to work with. The city only got one of everything, and everything was a necessity. There was nothing left over for a candy store, zoo or a fast food restaurant.

“This is kind of a depressing place to be,” student Robert Kang said.

Ms. Javed and the other AMD teachers who were teaching census lessons were impressing upon students how vital it is that populations be counted accurately. Missing large swaths of people could mean fewer representatives in Congress or “tokens” to fund public programs and services.

“The end goal is that every student realizes that we need to be counted so that everybody gets the resources they need,” said Assistant Principal Craig Dreves.

The Ossining School District is part of the “Ossining Counts” campaign to encourage everyone to respond to the questionnaires the U.S. Census Bureau is mailing. This is the first year that households can provide their demographic data online or by phone, and not just through paper surveys or face-to-face meetings with census-takers.

Millions of dollars in federal funding, grants and support for Ossining schools is based on census counts, so having less than 100% participation would hurt the community.

As of April 15, two weeks after Census Day, the self-response rate was 45% in the village of Ossining and 50.4% in the town, compared with 43.3% statewide and 49.4% nationwide. For Briarcliff Manor, the self-response rate was 64.2%.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Census Bureau suspended its field data collections in March. The agency is taking steps to resume field data collection as soon as possible after June 1 for those who do not respond to questionnaires. Census workers who interact with the public will take precautions, including wearing personal protective equipment and adhering to social distancing practices, according to the agency. The bureau has extended the original Aug. 15 deadline for collecting all census data to Oct. 31.

AMD seventh-grade social studies teacher Frank Candullo asked his students why the government conducts the census every 10 years. Their responses included to determine state and federal funding and space needs for schools and hospitals, and to be able to respond to health concerns and natural disasters. One boy suggested it was to track people.

“Interesting thing – the census doesn’t track people,” Mr. Candullo said. “The census is purely informational. It’s not for finding people or punishing people.”

The middle-schoolers also learned that all residents of the United States are counted in the census, regardless of whether they are citizens or not.

Several classes watched a Census Bureau video on reapportionment. Each state gets at least one representative; and an additional representative for every 647,000 people beyond that, on average. Students saw that while New York’s population increased between 2000 and 2010, the number of representatives decreased from 29 to 27 because surges were greater in other parts of the country.

In Ms. Javed’s class, Benjamin Haynes took the lead in the Santa Fe group. “Let’s do the things we need to, then the things we want,” he suggested as they considered how to spend 168 tokens.

He suggested 10 gas stations, but another student only wanted five, so they compromised at five.

Benjamin urged his teammates to build multiple fire stations. “There’s a lot of fires and it would take a long time to go through the city,” he said.

The Boston group had the opposite experience of students at the Juneau table, with 1,370 tokens to spend. Students agreed on 12 gas stations. There was a debate over how many candy stores they should have. One student suggested buying a zoo instead. The table ended the assignment with hundreds of tokens left over.

“We need to supply people with enough resources that they will survive with,” student Jason Bottone said.

For more information on the census, visit https://ossiningufsd.org/district/census-2020/.