Parting Company In a Company Town

Corning Free Academy Middle School is under threat, largely because of the company that employs about one-third of all the parents sending their children to the local schools.

By Bess Keller

Corning, N.Y.

Rounding the corner of the 80-year-old school in the heart of his neighborhood, Thomas C. O'Brien peers through a light rain and says, "I love this building."

Love it he might: His two grown sons attended the school, walking from the home O'Brien and his wife still occupy in this picturesque community in south-central New York state. The dark-brick building has won recognition from the nation's most prominent historic-preservation group, partly for features like its Romanesque arches, bell tower, and terra-cotta friezes, partly for anchoring a varied ensemble of houses built from the late-Victorian era to the Jazz Age.

And inside the building, a middle school since the 1960s, the sense of place is palpable. Seventh graders even study the development of the glass industry in this town dominated economically by Corning Incorporated, the glass giant...