Jeanette Wolfberg is reporting for The Columbia Paper public school enrollment in Columbia County has fallen to its lowest level in more than 40 years. But the decline is in line with the reduction in the total county population under the age of 18. THE county’s six school districts counted 6,267 enrolled students for the 2020-21 school year, 3.9 percent lower than the enrollment of 6,521 during the previous year. The overall enrollment countywide is 44.5 percent less than the 12,127 students enrolled during the 1976-77 school year, the first school year included in the state Education Department’s current public data set. Enrollment in the Columbia County schools declined every year since 1997-98. Between 2010 and 2020, the county population under age 18 dropped by 16.3 percent. That’s almost as much as the loss of enrollment between 2009-10 and 2019-20 of 17.4 percent. The state defines school enrollment for a year as the number of students counted in October. Read the full story in The Columbia Paper.