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Although educational leaders have been coping with declining enrollment for almost a decade, educational researchers have begun to focus on the topic only recently. The first part of this introduction to a special issue of the Peabody Journal of Education briefly summarizes the contents of the subsequent essays, which are intended to bridge the gap between researchers and practitioners. The introduction's second part provides a conceptual framework for the essays, discussing the problem of adjusting to declining enrollment as one of determining not only what actions to take, but also how to make unpleasant decisions. The first aspect of the problem, that of "substantive retrenchment policies," concerns revenue-generating policies, cost-cutting policies, and degrees of political divisiveness likely to result from such policies. The second dimension of the problem, that of "process retrenchment policies," involves the management tasks of planning for and obtaining acceptance of a board's decisions, including policies that vary in being of a technical or political nature and in being divisive to differing degrees. Educational leaders' decisions in times of enrollment decline must be based on both efficiency (making cuts for the benefit of the organization as a whole) and equity (distributing cuts across the entire organization). (JBM)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert