Roger Catania’s mission to enhance educational opportunities in rural New York schools
By Sara Foss
As superintendent at the Lake Placid Central School District, Roger Catania focused on closing the “opportunity gap”—the unequal distribution of resources that makes smaller, rural districts hard-pressed to provide the same quality of education as more affluent, suburban peers.
He helped found the Educational Opportunity Fund, a non-profit that raises money for field trips, college visits and reading programs for Lake Placid students. He made sure students had access to advanced placement courses and programs for career and technical education. Most of all, he prepared graduating seniors to succeed.
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“The gap in opportunities in school correlates highly with outcomes in life,” Catania said, during a wide-ranging interview. “Poverty and inequality are at the root. But it doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do. Schools need to provide opportunities students won’t get otherwise.”
Catania retired three years ago, but his work to ensure all children have access to enriching academic programs and extracurricular activities continues.
In 2022, Catania became the North Country’s representative on the State Board of Regents, where he helps shape education policy statewide. On a board dominated by members from downstate, he has emerged as an effective advocate for small and rural schools while also keeping watch on the needs of students from big districts.

Advocating at a state level
“Regent Catania knows more about the North Country and its small, rural schools than anyone else I know, and he regularly shares that knowledge and expertise with his colleagues on the Board of Regents and with the staff of the Education Department,” said New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa in a statement. “At the same time, however, he understands that, as a regent, he is responsible for establishing education policy for the entire state of New York and for all of its students.”
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With 17 board members elected by the state Legislature to five-year terms, four serve at large. The rest hail from each of the state’s 13 judicial districts.
Catania, 62, represents New York’s fourth judicial district, a vast swath of territory stretching from Schenectady County to the Canadian border.
The board oversees all educational activities in New York, including private and public elementary and secondary schools, public and private colleges and universities, libraries and museums. As a regent, Catania is involved with two of the state Education Department’s most ambitious projects, both of which address his longtime concern: the opportunity gap.
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One is a five-year effort to overhaul New York’s graduation requirements. Called NY Inspires, it would replace New York’s three diplomas with a single diploma and create multiple pathways to graduation.
Students could still take regents exams to earn a diploma, but the tests would not be required. At a meeting discussing these changes, Catania said, “My old school counselor hat appreciates the simplification from three diploma types to one.”
The other big project is a regionalization initiative asking districts throughout the state to work with their local Boards of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES) to identify solutions to academic and operational challenges. Solutions might include sharing resources such as staff, extracurricular programs and support services. Driving this initiative is the fact that many New York schools have been forced to narrow their curriculum due to declining enrollment and increasing financial strain.
Setting a foundation for education in Lake Placid
Most Adirondack school districts have experienced significant drops in attendance over the past two decades, a trend Catania has seen unfold firsthand. In 2013-2014, his Lake Placid district counted 657 students, according to state data; by 2022-2023, that number had dropped 18% to 538.
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Regionalization is an attempt “to better understand what opportunities kids have and what opportunities they don’t,” Catania said. He said the process will empower school districts to develop plans that suit their needs. “It’s their planning,” he said. “It’s not the (Education Department’s) planning.”
When Mary Dietrich first met Catania, she was a Lake Placid teacher, and he was the guidance counselor. Later, she served on the school board and was part of the team that hired him as superintendent in 2012 following a period of upheaval within the district. She is now a member of the Educational Opportunity Fund for the Lake Placid School District’s board of directors; Catania is the board’s president.
As superintendent, Catania emphasized that “sometimes there are roadblocks” that prevent students from taking full advantage of all the classes and programs available, Dietrich said. “That impacts their academic progress and creates an academic gap.”
The college visits funded by the Educational Opportunity Fund target students who might be on the fence about higher education. “Some students have come back from that trip and said, ‘You know, I never thought it was possible. I never thought it was something I wanted to do. But this is exciting,’” Dietrich said. “Some of those students have gone on to apply to college.”
Cali Brooks got to know Catania when her daughter was a Lake Placid student. “He was our amazing school superintendent for many years, always standing outside welcoming the kids as they arrived at school and being friendly and engaging,” she said.
A champion for rural schools
Brooks is president of the Adirondack Foundation, where the Educational Opportunity Fund is based. She said she reaches out to Catania regularly for information on what’s happening in education at the state level.
Right now, New York is reevaluating its Foundation Aid formula, which determines the majority of state education funding to schools. Any formula changes “could impact our communities in profound ways,” Brooks said. “And (Catania) is there every day thinking about that on our behalf.”
Catania will sometimes remind his regents and Education Department colleagues that new mandates can be difficult for small schools to implement due to their limited staffing.
He recalled a meeting where the regents approved a new rule requiring schools to certify that every high school senior completes the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or signs a waiver saying they or their parents have opted out. While a good rule, it is also a burden for small schools, Catania said.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it,” Catania said. “I’m saying we continue to pile on, and at some point, these schools can’t do it all. Some districts have one superintendent, one principal, a couple of administrative assistants, and they have to do everything.”
A long career in education
Catania lives in Saranac Lake with his wife, Amy, the executive director of Historic Saranac Lake. The couple has two sons, ages 21 and 24.
Catania replaced Regent Beverly Ouderkirk, a longtime North Country educator who died with three years left on her term. He is up for re-election next year and wants another term.
Catania grew up in Scarsdale, a well-to-do suburb in Westchester County, and started his career downstate as a teaching assistant at Sleepy Hollow High School and a half-year position teaching social studies at a Catholic school in New York City.
In 1986, Catania accepted a job as a social studies teacher and basketball coach in the central Oregon community of Gilchrist. The school had been built in the late 1930s by a timber company, and when Catania arrived, Gilchrist was still a company-owned town.
“It was incredibly remote,” Catania said.
His next teaching post was in Hillsboro, Oregon, a big district, with a large population of immigrant families from Mexico and Central America. Catania enjoyed working there. But when Gilchrist called Catania and asked him to return as a guidance counselor, he jumped at the chance to return to rural America.
“I could help a kid if they had problems with their family,” Catania said. “I could also work with them on what they wanted their life to become, whether that had to do with careers or future schooling. One of the biggest barriers kids face is they don’t believe in themselves. Partially, that’s because they haven’t had a chance to see what’s out there.”
A move to the Adirondacks
In 1997, Catania moved to Lake Placid to be the guidance counselor for middle and high school students. He had never been to Lake Placid before, but he knew he wanted to be at a rural district where he could be involved in all aspects of a school.
“We lose sight of the fact that we have this big country with small communities all over the place,” he said. “Rural America has a lot of challenges. I was drawn to the fact that our kids have to make it in the modern world, but they are coming out of a not-so-modern experience.”
In Gilchrist and Lake Placid, Catania coached basketball and developed his mentoring philosophy. His coaching career began when he was recruited while on leave from college, sick with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer.
His high school coach brought him on as a volunteer assistant and later persuaded him to take over the freshmen boys’ team. “I said, ‘I can’t do that. I’m on crutches,’” Catania said. “‘I gave him all the reasons I couldn’t do it and he just convinced me that I could. That’s the kind of role model we all ought to be.”
“Going through something like cancer is a wakeup call,” Catania said. “It helped me gain a new perspective on life and the world. Getting involved in education became more meaningful to me, because it wasn’t just about a job. It was about helping others and helping others change their lives.”
Photo at top: Roger Catania visits Newcomb Central School students. Photo courtesy of NYS Department of Education
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This article first appeared in a recent issue of Adirondack Explorer magazine.
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