To save money, the New Paltz School District is considering temporarily closing one of New Paltz’s public schools. Photos by Lucia O’Corozine.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s speeches are a big reason why the school board and superintendent’s office is so worried. New York’s state executive has said his budget proposal will likely include a tax cap for school and require state workers to take a pay freeze.
For the New Paltz schools, the proposed 2 percent tax cap would lock the district into a $49.08 million budget and would equate to a $4.12 million budget shortfall. If the state pay freezes extend to teachers, that would only save the local schools $1.19 million. That leaves a shortfall of $2.93 million.
If that pay freeze doesn’t apply to teachers, the district would end up needing to make up about $4.08 million. So far, 29 non-union school employees fall under a pay freeze for 2011-2012 -- including Superintendent Rice and the assistant superintendents. That would give back $40,700, making that “non-pay freeze” number a touch smaller.
Any option involving consolidation would overuse spaces and create scheduling nightmares to classes booking rooms like gyms, the cafeterias and science labs. Also, if either Duzine or the middle school were to be closed, nobody from the wider community would be allowed to use that space.
Class sizes would go up for all the elementary grades. Kindergarten to second grade now has 19-21 kids per class, post-consolidation that’d be 22-24. Third grade would go from 20-22 kids per class to 23-25. Fourth and fifth grade would go from 22-24 kids per class to 25-28. Seventh and eighth grade would go from 23-25 to 26-30.
But on the plus side, “we’d save anything from $200,000 to $400,000” and the district would have fewer buildings to actively maintain for a few years. Also if the middle school is the one closed, work crews could pull off the needed $1.5 million roof repair without impacting students, the superintendent said.
People in the New Paltz School District probably have one question on their mind: How could the school board go from asking for a $50 million renovation on the middle school to talking about closing a building?
Rice said there is absolutely no connection between the middle school vote and the current discussion. School board members asked her to look everywhere for savings, and that’s what she and her staff did.
“It was to look under every rock,” she said. “That was just simply to find money.”
Because of the dire situation the district finds itself in this year, they’re also investigating studying how New Paltz’s administration stacks up to other school systems in Ulster County, the temporary consolidations, alternative funding measures, asking for mandate relief, energy conservation to cut costs, online classes and possibly sharing advanced placement courses with Highland and surrounding districts.
What the teachers think about consolidation
During Jan. 27’s meeting, about 50 people sat in the high school auditorium to hear Superintendent Rice deliver the bad news. A good deal of them were teachers and faculty.
New Paltz United Teachers President urged the school board to not to compromise the quality of education students were receiving through the cuts.
“We know our students only go through these years once,” she said. “These proposals will set our students back in time.”
Rebecca Burdett, who teaches kindergarten and first grade at Duzine, asked that the school board try to preserve class sizes. For younger students, consolidation would bring a double whammy of overstimulation and larger class sizes.
Not only do educational studies point out the benefit of smaller class sizes, but larger class sizes would also reverse the current educational philosophy set up under Rice’s tenure.
“I’ve been so incredibly proud of this district’s commitment to lower class sizes,” Burdett said.
If all the elementary school kids get stuffed into one building with the consolidation, that would mean that more than 930 children would be in one place at the same time. For the youngest of kids, that would mean they would be mostly around older kids, the teacher added.
Other teachers asked the school board to rethink how grades would be split up if a consolidation occurred.
School board responds to
the superintendent’s plan
While the school board is considering some pretty heavy options for next year, not one of them is happy about it.
“No one who’s here is here because they want to be doing this,” board President Don Kerr said. He added that in a normal year, the school board’s job is to protect students and teachers from the fiscal insanity of Albany. “I don’t know if we can do that this year.”
Not many of the school board members liked the idea of how little money would come back from consolidating the students.
“What I was really disappointed in was the amount of money that we would save,” Trustee Bob Rich said. “There’s got to be a better way to save $200,000.” This year, especially, the Board of Education discussion is centered around bricks and machines versus staff. “Every dollar we can save is somebody we don’t have to fire.”
Another kink in the idea of temporarily closing down a building is the fact that by not buying new buses again in ’11-’12, the district would save $500,000. That’s roughly equal to six buses that won’t be bought.
Board member Steve Greenfield said he felt like all of the forces of the universe were stacked against the school board this year in building a budget. Federal stimulus money has dried up, the state government is disinvesting in the school systems and there is a laundry list of mandates the schools have to follow which disallow them from trying novel things -- like four-day school weeks.
“I’ve got to point out that we’re in this trap,” Greenfield said.
Like most of the school board, he also was nonplused by the consolidation options. “I’m not too impressed by the $400,000 that could be saved by combining the lower schools,” he said.
Trustee Edgar Rodriguez also did not like the idea of consolidations. He said he felt it would disrupt the children’s lives too much to only get back $400,000.
Vice President KT Tobin Flusser said consolidation was “pretty much off the table for me.”
She added: “$200,000 is not enough money to me to make it worthwhile.”
President Kerr said he didn’t think the school district had much choice, and asked the superintendent to keep investigating consolidation options.
“We have to consider consolidation. We have to. I hate it -- hate it -- for all the reasons we’ve said,” he said.
Board member Patrick Rausch asked the superintendent to look for other ways to save money, including calling on the unions for givebacks. “It’s a matter of do we spread it around to all of us, or do we give it to some,” he said.
Rausch added that he felt if the unions didn’t give something back next year that everyone would suffer.
Because the governor’s two-percent cap seems so likely, one budget the school board members want to see is one based on a two-percent tax levy increase.
But that’s not all the superintendent’s office is crafting.
One of the proposals for creating a budget calls on the superintendent to draft a budget that has a tax levy increase of 5.25 percent -- which would be above Gov. Cuomo’s two-percent cap. However, from what the governor has said, if a supermajority of voters -- more than 60 percent -- agree to a budget above the two percent, it will be allowed.
For school board members, the option of giving voters a choice to exceed that cap and pay more taxes on schools seemed like an attractive option.
New Paltz has traditionally also been a community that votes to support school budgets -- despite that, it means taxes will go up. By voting no, people would be sending a strong message.
“From my standpoint, the part of that that’s attractive is I don’t want to dismantle the jewel of the Hudson Valley,” Kerr said. “Make me do it.”
In the end, board members asked Rice to work up a two percent, a 3.5 percent and a 5.25 percent budget for the first meeting in March.
All of those proposals would cut out the buses, the superintendent said.
Read more: New Paltz Times - Building cuts Closing a New Paltz school would save 400K tops superintendent says
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