A decision that has been looming over the heads of parents of two area private schools discussing merging is expected to be made this month according to administrators from both Christian Brothers Academy, in Loudonville, and La Salle Institute, in Troy.
The decision on whether or not to merge is expected to be made on Tuesday, Oct. 20.
Discussions about merging date back to over a year ago when the idea of merging originally came up after board directors from both schools met to discuss services that the schools could share, such as cafeteria and lawn services. The services would be shared in an effort to cut costs, as both schools had been seeing a decline in enrollment and loss of revenue from tuition.
This past summer, both schools held several town-hall-style meetings gathering parents, alumni and school officials both together and separately to talk about the details that are being considered during each school board’s discussions relating to a merger.
Aside from the river that divides them, the two schools do have much in common according to school officials, including their all-male enrollment and Lasallian traditions-the traditions on which both school’s foundations were laid.
Tuition currently stands at an average of $10,500 for both schools, and if the schools were to merge, officials say that cost would likely increase.
Other than the cost, parents are upset that if the two schools merge, each school, which many of the fathers had attended themselves, would lose their own traditions and history and that their children would not receive the same quality of education that they had, though school officials promise that the quality of education would remain the same.
Parents are concerned that the schools would be stripped of their individual identities in the event of a merger, but some saw the positive appeal of change during the discussions.
As Jeff Sidoti, a 2007 CBA graduate, told the crowd at one of the meetings, We’re not losing our history-we’re making it.
Some parents were also concerned that they were not involved in the discussions of shared services and merging earlier on in the discussion process, and would have liked to be in the loop a lot sooner than this summer.
But according to Brother Carl Malacalza, the entire discussion process will wrap up on Tuesday, Oct. 20, when both boards will come together separately and make their decision.
`I think at this point, I’m still open to looking at both directions,` said Malacalza. `There are pluses and minuses to each one.`
Malacalza said that, `even though the date is coming up quickly, there are some questions that still have been unanswered,` and that some of these questions should be answered by the parent opinion survey each school sent out to their parents during the discussions.
`Every family has received a questionnaire and all the alumni have also and the results of those questionnaires, that information is going to be a part of the critical information that we’re going to be looking at,` said Malacalza.
CBA Principal James Schlegel said he could not comment on which way CBA was leaning, whether it be toward merging or not, until the results from the questionnaire are all in.
`I think right now we’re waiting to get the results back from our parent and alumni survey,` he said.
Schlegel said the schools would each be holding one more meeting before they make their decision to listen to the thoughts of parents and alumni in person one more time. After that point, a decision is expected to be made.
No formal decisions of which location would be chosen in the event of a merger have been made public yet.
Should one school board decide they do not want to merge while the other does, the merger will not happen, according to Malacalza.
For more on this story, check back at www.spotlightnews.com, or read the Wednesday, Oct. 7, print edition of the Colonie Spotlight.
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