Amidst budget problems and declining enrollment, the Niskayuna Central School District is debating if closing one of its two middle schools is a viable option for next school year.
The Niskayuna Board of Education on Tuesday, Oct. 16, held its second re-visioning meeting at the school in question, Van Antwerp Middle School, to discuss three different closure scenarios. District administrators drafted three scenarios, with an option for breakout groups to create another. Community members also weighed keeping the middle school configuration as is.
The district is facing a $3.8 million gap even if it raises taxes by 2 percent next school year. Superintendent Susan Salvaggio said significant reductions were in this year’s budget and the district wouldn’t want to target the same areas again.
The process is a follow up to last year’s report from educational consultants Jack Berckmeyer and Annette Fante, who studied how the middle schools operated for a year.
Neither of the district’s middle schools could house all of combined enrollment of both schools, Salvaggio said, so the options were drafted for the community to start a discussion. All of the reconfiguration options included closing Van Antwerp.
The first proposal has seventh and eighth grade at Iroquois Middle School, with sixth grade being moved down to each of the district’s five elementary schools. The second option keeps the Iroquois configuration, but moves the entire sixth grade to Rosendale Elementary School. The last proposal has Iroquois serving sixth through eighth grades, but not before sixth grade is taught for two years at Van Antwerp as a “small capital project” is completed at Iroquois.
Many community forum attendees had trouble deciding what, if any, of the options would be best, because the district didn’t provide any figures on potential savings.
“We don’t want it to be about money,” Salvaggio said. “We want the best school program we can have for our kids.”
Salvaggio said the district has “some initial ideas” on savings, but wanted people to focus on what configuration is best.
“We wanted people to talk about the concepts and identify what we might be willing to do, or just not do,” she said. “I’m hoping that we could out of this conversation begin the process where we would narrow the options down.”
There was not any clear option supported, though, with concerns and benefits for each option raised. Before attendees broke out into groups to discuss the positives and negatives of each option, more than a dozen people commented on the proposals.
Jay Nish said he resented the report claiming small schools are inefficient, because he felt the learning experience provided is better.
“There is a human factor and a human cost and sometimes that can supersede the dollar amount,” Nish said.
A few residents doubted the Van Antwerp could be rented out, but others thought the facility could be filled without too much effort. Rebecca Davenport said the neighborhood feel of the schools is important and transitioning to the combined schools could mean kids being “lost in the shuffle.”
“Nothing good ever really comes out of closing schools,” Davenport said.
Barbara Burgess, who has three children in the district, said it is important for people to evaluate the options and consider what is best for the district as a whole.
“I hope that we can all to a large extent keep our emotions in check and look at not what is just best for our children in our own family, but overall what is best for all the kids,” Burgess said.
The district will hold another re-visioning meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 6.