Community committee wraps up meetings, files report
After three meetings and a hefty amount of analysis, an informal think tank of residents, parents, teachers and administrators in the Bethlehem Central School District have come to the conclusion the district’s fiscal future largely hinges on its management of its facilities.
That’s what a straw vote of the group’s members showed at its final meeting on Monday, Nov. 22, when options like selling the district offices, closing an elementary school and splitting at least two elementary schools into K-2 and 3-5 groups to better utilize faculty garnered the most support.
The group’s final report will be presented to the Board of Education at a future meeting and is now available for viewing on the district’s Web site. School board liaison to the think tank Diane Giacone-Stever said both the process and results of the group’s meetings were encouraging.
`It gets the community out there and the community involved,` she said.
The district has made cuts to the budget on the order of about $4 million in the past two years. It’s assuming that the coming year will bring another round of reductions in state school aid, perhaps $2.5 to $3.2 million, and with no end to the recession in sight is searching for ways to trim things down in the long term.
Adding to the budget crisis is declining enrollment. The district has lost about 100 students in the last few years and projections show enrollment dropping by another 300 pupils by 2018. Such figures led the committee to investigate closing an elementary school, at a one-time savings of $500,000 to $700,000 and smaller year-to-year savings thereafter.
Selling a building could bring more revenue, and some of the elementary schools are in desirable locations, like Glenmont Elementary. But Superintendent Michael Tebbano warned selling a building could have unintended consequences.
`If you sell a building in your district, you open up a double edged sword of a charter school moving into your community,` he said. `Then you have a leech on your tax base.`
Similarly, the district could stand to realize some revenue by selling the education center on Adams Place, which houses the district’s administrative offices, and moving them to space in one of the schools. The district looked into that possibility in 2009 and appraised the building at $670,000, but renovating office space in the middle school, for example, would cost up to $500,000.
It would also probably necessitate moving sixth grade back to the elementary schools, which could be controversial.
The think tank came up with more than 100 ideas at its first meeting, many of which were disqualified because they offered little or no savings or were illegal.
One popular topic is always transportation, but the district has found there is little saving to be found there in part due to state regulations that require the school to have a space on the bus for every student even if they don’t ever use it.
For the first time, the district in a recent go-home-early drill required all students to take the bus, Tebbano said.
`When we made everybody sit on the bus, it got extremely tight,` he said.
Combining the high school and middle school routes would actually cost far more than its worth, said Transportation Department Director Al Karam, requiring the purchase of new buses and the hiring of more drivers to handle the volume.
`The two-tiered system really works best for a district where the schools are all on one campus,` he said. `When you’re spread out like we are here, it really is a more costly system.`
The committee showed an overall aversion to privatizing the transportation department, citing safety concerns, but wondered if privatizing food service could bring some savings.
Tebbano said it’s possible, but entering into a contract with a private provider would have to be carefully examined based on what they’ve seen happen in other districts.
`The only drawbacks that we find is that we’ve lost control,` he said. `Once you lock into a contract with them, you’re really locked into what they do to the fees and charges every year. … The cost starts to get out of control in five years.`
Tackling the district’s long- and short-term finances will ultimately be up to the administration and the school board, but Tebbano emphasized the think tank was a good exercise that established a good lead in to January’s community budget forums.
`This is what I would expect from community residents,` he said. `They gave us some excellent ideas to talk about.“