Forum participants discuss school cost-saving measures
NORFOLK – Regionalization was the answer for most of the participants in Norwood-Norfolk Central School’s third and final community forum Thursday night when they were to choose an alternative to relieve the local tax burden and save program.
But, for Assemblyman Kenneth D. Blankenbush, R-Black River, some of the answer lies in ensuring equitable state aid funding to all schools, including those in the north country.
“That’s the one problem the state has. It’s not the money we have, it’s how we distribute it. The school aid formula is messed up,” said Mr. Blankenbush, who attended Thursday’s forum with his new chief of staff, Brian Peck.
Richard Ashlaw, representing Sen. Joseph A. Griffo, R-Rome, was also on hand for the session. He, Mr. Blankenbush and Mr. Peck listened in at each table to hear the concerns and comments from participants, who spent 40 minutes discussing alternatives to alleviate the problem when revenues and expenditures don’t match up. The three they were asked to discuss at their individual tables were sharing, merger/centralization, merger/annexation and regionalization.
Sharing is already taking place, according to Molly Gushea, the communications specialist from the St. Lawrence-Lewis Board of Cooperative Educational Services, who facilitating the session. She said among the shared services between districts were a food service director, fuel depot, special education service, print shop, health care coordination and the Massena Alternative School.
Still, she said, other services such as facilities director, central business office, maintenance specialists, transportation and records management could be shared between districts.
Merger/centralization would create a new school by encompassing the entire area of the school districts to be merged. The school would have a new name and a new board of education, Ms. Gushea said, but the move would require a lengthy outside study, a public referendum in which all communities agreed to the move and a final referendum that would need to be passed by all communities.
“Merger does not happen to you. You have to agree to merge,” she said.
Merger/annexation would dissolve a district and annex it into another school district. That would require two public referenda and a lengthy study, and the facilities in the annexed district would not necessary close, but could become property of the larger district.
Regionalization, the concept most embraced by forum participants, would allow existing school districts to remain intact. Some students would report to a larger BOCES-run school for classes as part of a regional high school or magnet schools.
Ms. Gushea said 44 percent of the juniors and seniors in St. Lawrence County are already attending a BOCES Career and Technical Education programs, which would serve as the model for regionalized programs.
While those were the options for participants to debate, Mr. Blankenbush said schools also need to receive equitable state funding no matter where they’re located, and there must also be mandate relief not just for school districts, but also for municipalities.
“The mandate relief team is supposed to be working on this right now,” he said, noting it has been promised as a priority, but hasn’t yet happened. “We need mandate relief not only to the school system, but also to municipalities. We need it right now.”
Mr. Blankenbush said the “bottom line” is that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has been stressing the need for mergers. However, he said, that would be problematic in his districts in part because of the amount of time students would be required to ride a bus to reach another school.
Like the participants at the forum, “I like the idea of regionalization,” he said, because school districts would remain the same while still allowing students to attend other schools to receive courses their home school might not be able to offer.
One way or another, changes will need to be made, according to Mr. Blankenbush.
“We really have to take a close look at how we operate,” he said.
