When Glens Falls Taught the World

December 17, 2024

By MAURY THOMPSON

The Glens Falls City School District was ahead of its time in the 1960s in terms of global understanding, under the superintendency of William Bitner, who died Nov. 24 at age 93.

“The community and the board have permitted me to do a lot of things beyond the limits of Glens Falls,” Bitner said in 1972, when he left the school district to become New York’s Associate Commissioner of Education.

As superintendent, Bitner spearheaded Glens Falls becoming a “sister school” with the American Cooperative School of Tunis, a private, parent-run school for children of diplomats, American and European business executives and non-profit business leaders working in the mostly Muslim capital city of Tunisia.

The 3,500-mile distance between the schools, as well as the language and cultural differences, were not barriers to collaboration.

The program was more than just a cultural exchange, although that was an aspect. The Glens Falls School district shared mentoring, educational expertise, and, in at least one case, temporary staff with the school in Tunis.

In the words of Bitner, the goal was to produce “a model of American education in foreign countries.”

The U.S. State Department had provided a $21,600 grant – the equivalent of $216,435 in 2024 dollars – to renovate the Tunis school building, a converted cow barn with eight rudimentary classrooms.

Concurrently, the Glens Falls district was selected to partner with the Tunis school through the State Department’s “School to School” program, which paired 25 U.S. schools with schools abroad for American students.

The State Department provided an initial $10,000 grant – the equivalent $100,210 in 2024 dollars – to the Glens Falls school district.

Glens Falls was selected, in part, because of its long-standing “Improving the Teaching of World Affairs” global studies curriculum that Harold Long, of the district, had established in 1957.

Bitner first traveled to Tunis in 1965 for four weeks, meeting with school and government officials and Peace Corps volunteers to explore what role the Glens Falls district could play.

“The areas of cooperation between the two schools are countless and restricted only by the limitations of our imaginations,” Butner wrote in a nine-page paper, when he returned from Tunis.

Bitner arranged for a delegation of local teachers to travel to Tunis during the school’s next spring break, and the program was off and running.

Over several years, teachers, administrators and school board members from Glens Falls visited Tunis, and Tunis educators visited Glens Falls.

Among other expertise, Glens Falls teachers instructed their African counterparts on methods of standardized testing and curriculum development.

In 1967, Philip Mosier, a sixth-grade teacher at Kensington Road Elementary School, took a leave of absence to become principal of the Tunis school.

At Glens Falls, Mosier had supervised student teachers enrolled in education degree programs at SUNY Plattsburgh. Bitner convinced SUNY Plattsburgh to allow Mosier to continue supervising student teachers assigned to the Tunis school, in collaboration with the Glens Falls district.

In 1967, Crandall Library exhibited a display of photographs and artifacts that Tunis government officials had collected as examples of local culture.

Glens Falls government officials collected local items for public display in Tunis.

Glens Falls hosted its first Tunis exchange student in 1968.

Bitner’s role in the Tunis sister school project led to his being elected founding president in 1967 of the Association for the Advancement of International Education, an organization still active today.

In 1967, the Glens Falls school district and six other school districts in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan and North Carolina, established the nonprofit organization to promote global understanding.

By 1972, Bitner had visited Tunis at least a half-dozen times, and visited schools in Algiers, Mexico, Guatemala and Europe.

In 1966, the Glens Falls City School District received a $49,243 foundation grant, the equivalent of $479,760 in 2024 dollars, to plan a regional program of education in international understanding for schools in Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Warren, Washington, Saratoga and Hamilton counties, along with SUNY Plattsburgh.

The planning led to establishing an education resource center at 485 Glen St., which operated for two years until funding ran out.

Harold Long took a leave of absence from the local school district to manage the center.

Also, during Bitner’s superintendency, the district introduced in the 1966-67 school year a new specialized semester-long humanities curriculum for selected high school students.

Four department heads spent multiple years researching and developing the curriculum, which became a model for other school districts.

Bitner achieved a goal of establishing libraries, staffed with trained librarians, at each school in the district.

Vocational education was another passion, including establishing a licensed practical nurse training program in collaboration with Glens Falls Hospital.

During his superintendency, Bitner spearheaded the expansion of the junior high and senior high school buildings.

Sources:

The Post Star — Jan. 17, June 24, Aug. 31, and Nov. 29, 1966; Jan. 11, Oct. 30, 1967; Feb. 29, 1969; Oct. 21, 1972; Nov. 14, 1977

The Glens Falls Times — Sept. 9, 1965; Jan. 27, 1967; March 14, 1968