BERNE — By joining with other school districts, Berne-Knox-Westerlo has been able to apply for funding that otherwise would have gone to larger urban or suburban districts.

On Jan. 8, BKW Superintendent Timothy Mundell announced to the school board that he had signed off on a grant application that would allow the district to take part in the Early College in the High School program. Mundell said that BKW originally hadn’t been able to apply, but that the rules were later changed to allow regional consortia — groups of school districts from a certain area — to apply as one entity.

BKW applied along with other Schoharie-area school districts — Schoharie, Middleburgh, Cobleskill, Sharon Springs, Jefferson, Mohonasen, and Duanesburg — for the grant.

Mundell said students could graduate with up to two years of college credits through this program, and anticipated working with the State University of New York College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill.

He credited the superintendent of the Capital Region Board of Cooperative Educational Services, Anita Murphy, saying that she had worked with the State Education Department to have the rules pertaining to the grant changed and to extend the deadline.

“I think the state actually needs credit,” Murphy told The Enterprise. She said she appreciated Mundell’s comments all the same. She said that the State Education Department had changed that particular grant to allow regional consortia to apply, as a school like BKW could not have not have applied on its own.

According to a Ben Amey, a public information specialist for BKW, the grant is fairly new and competitive, with funding from the State Education Department. Should the school districts receive the grant, Middleburgh will be the host school district and will coordinate programming with SUNY Cobleskill, he wrote in an email to The Enterprise.

The grant requires that an applicant create a group of 25 ninth-grade students in order to receive funding, he said. The students would be able to earn 24 and 60 credits from SUNY Cobleskill for free and will also be offered a counselor, tutoring services, and summer programs at SUNY Cobleskill.

Schools like BKW usually don’t qualify for grants like these, said Murphy, as they have too small of a population and lack the resources to offer courses that would give the students college credit.

“What the state did for them … ,” said Murphy, “was a decision based on an idea the commissioner has had for months … This is about equity for rural children.”

Allowing consortia to participate in the grant follows the tenets of New York State’s Every Student Succeeds Act plan, she said. The plan was submitted to the federal government as mandated by the ESSA, and includes a portion devoted to ensuring that rural and low-income schools have equal footing to their counterparts.

“Now we just hope they win,” said Murphy. The grant is very competitive, she said, and it is not guaranteed that the schools will receive it.

“Districts need to get together,” said Murphy, adding that, with many rural districts combined, “you’ve got a school the size of South Colonie.”

In rural upstate Washington County, five school districts — Argyle, Fort Ann, Granville, Hartford, and Hudson Falls — formed a consortium that would let them share resources to help them train their staff for such tasks as peer coaching or coordinating curricula. In rural upstate St. Lawrence and Lewis counties, 14 school districts — which later changed to 16 — created a similar consortium and formed a system of principal and teacher “leaders” to help train or improve new or ineffective principals.

Murphy also noted that a consortium could benefit many districts fiscally, and not only among small rural districts, but urban districts as well.

A consortium also provides more opportunities, said Murphy, which she said is something that BOCES is aiming for in its own programming.

When asked if Murphy thought other grants may eventually be changed to allow consortia to apply, she responded, “I hope so, we’ve applied for lots of consortium grants.”