Support Oneonta Schools - Report on March 21 Workshop

By Sallie Han

The decision to close an elementary school and consolidate K-6 into three buildings starting this September is being made too quickly and without enough information about the consequences for the community and the local economy or enough involvement from the public. That is the message the Board of Education received last night at a workshop on the Oneonta city schools budget held at Center Street School.

About 80 parents and concerned community members participated in the special session, which was announced in response to concerns raised during district superintendent Mike Shea’s budget presentation on Wednesday, March 14, when he formally introduced school closure and consolidation as part of the district’s plan to bridge a $1.4 million “gap” in the district’s budget that has resulted from reductions in New York State aid to public schools. School board president Grace Larkin had invited community members to present their ideas to the district.

Shea, district business manager Lisa Weeks, and all of the board members attended last night’s workshop. During the special session, parents who have been involved in Support Oneonta Schools – a grassroots effort to inform and involve community members on the budgetary concerns facing the district – presented a number of alternative scenarios.

Jeff House, one of the parents who presented, emphasized that the scenarios were devised with the goals of both bridging the$1.4 million gap and keeping Center Street School open for 2012-2013 so that the school board could gather more data on the impacts that a closure and consolidation would have, especially in terms of community development.

He said that closing Center Street School will be an “irreversible” decision. Because it is an older building, it would not meet current standards, so if K-6 is removed from the building this coming year, then it will not be possible to use it as a school again.

House raised questions about what happens as other smaller districts, also facing budgetary problems, might be forced to consolidate with a larger neighboring district like Oneonta, which then will need additional classrooms to accommodate the inflow of students. However, concerns about flood zones in the city of Oneonta raise questions about whether or not it would be possible to build an addition onto Riverside School.

Karl Seeley, a parent and an economist at Hartwick College, said that closing the school itself will generate far less in savings than the district hopes to achieve – only $245,000. He said most of the savings come from consolidating students into larger class sizes and allowing the district to lay off teachers and staff. (See graphic above, provided by Dr. Seeley.)

Carli Ficano, also an economist at Hartwick, called for a formal study that considers a range of impacts, including a comparison of cost savings from school closure with possible property value reductions, not only within the Center City neighborhood, but also in the larger city and town of Oneonta because the public school system is a critical factor in real estate.

Ficano said that it is necessary for long range planning to undertake such a study to make a prudent decision about school closure and consolidation.

The issue of the tax levy received particular attention from community and school board members. Board member Rosalie Higgins expressed her concern that a levy above New York State’s “cap” at 1.8 percent will not be approved. Voters can approve a levy above 1.8 percent with a 60% super-majority. However, Mark Parmerter, a parent and Center Street teacher, called attention to the high rates of voter approval on school budgets. In 2011, a 2.89% increase in the levy passed with 74% “yes” votes.

The alternative scenarios that House and Parmerter presented to board members relied on a combination of modest increases in the levy; drawing from the district’s fund balance, or money not spent this year, which is projected to be $1.2 million; and the “sharing” of resources and staff between schools in order to minimize layoffs.

House and Parmerter noted that none of the scenarios is endorsed by parents or community members in Support Oneonta Schools, and were being presented as examples of short-term solutions that could be pursued for 2012-2013 while formal study and long-term planning could be undertaken for the following year.

All of the community members who spoke during the meeting urged further public discussion and engagement.

At the end of the meeting, board members said they would give serious consideration to the suggestions made during the workshop.

***

Here are some of the alternative scenarios that were presented at the school board’s workshop on Wednesday, March 21 in order to offset the $875,000 in savings that the district hopes to generate with a school closure and consolidation:

5% tax levy increase
Use $400,000 from fund balance
RESULT: no need for Center St School closure or extensive teacher/staff cuts; formation of committee to develop 5-year plan for district fiscal management despite declining state aid

2.85% tax levy increase (less than 2010 increase of 2.89%, which passed by 72%)
Use 600,000 from fund balance
RESULT: no need for Center St School closure or extensive teacher/staff cuts; formation of committee to develop 5-year plan for district fiscal management despite declining state aid

2.85% tax levy increase (less than 2010 increase of 2.89%, which passed by 72%)
Use $300,000 from fund balance
* In the event the BOE allows Center St School to remain open, one strategy for cost savings & enrollment equity throughout the four elementary buildings is to revisit the ‘redistricting’ models that helped with similar issues in the 1980’s.
RESULT: no need for Center St School closure; \if ‘redistricting’ models implemented, shared services would be required & amount of teacher/staff cuts could be reduced from $875,000 to $400,000

Closing a school is a problem - not a solution

In politics, the time to deliver bad news is on Friday afternoon.

On Friday afternoon, our school district’s superintendent delivered bad news to the staff at my daughter’s elementary school.

While the NYS budget is being debated still – with the Board of Education’s initial public presentation of its budget proposal scheduled for Wednesday – he told the teachers assembled after school in no uncertain that Center Street Elementary School will be closed.

There was no notice given to the families – and of course, parents and kids quickly learned about the closing, but with no information about what happens next.

Indeed, the local newspaper’s account reveals that, indeed, there is no plan in place. Only unanswered questions about what happens to our students and our teachers and school staff, not to mention what happens to the building itself.

I think the proposed closure is a mistake and that parents from all over the district, regardless of which school their child or children currently attend, ought to see this as their issue also.

The superintendent has presented closing Center Street School as the solution to a $1 million problem. Last year, the Board of Education undertook a preliminary analysis of the costs and benefits of school “consolidation” – that is, closing one of the four elementary schools and reorganizing them as three. In fact, the BOE’s analysis from last year found that closing a school and consolidating as three elementary schools (allowing for layoffs of “redundant” staff) will generate $920,000 in savings ONLY WHEN CLASS SIZES REACH THE MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE UNDER TEACHERS’ CONTRACTS.

I hope that anyone reading this post understands that “contract maximum” is not the same as what has been proven pedagogically sound.

I am not a “numbers” person, but right now, I want to see numbers to convince me that closing the school is a good idea.

About 200 children attend Center Street, which boasts a proud history as a neighborhood school. Most of the students live within walking distance – I see only about a dozen “bus students” when I get my daughter at the end of the day, along with a crowd of other parents.

To me, it makes no sense now to add the cost of busing 200 children to other schools that already are full and functioning.

Closing Center Street School will not end the budgetary problems in our school district - and it will only deepen the economic crisis for our entire community as qualified and dedicated workers lose their jobs and move from the area. Other businesses will suffer the loss of customers and clients.

This is no solution. We need to stand against it.

Cultivating leaps of faith

Just read this piece, America's Youth Uprising, in the March 5 / 12 issue of The Nation, which reminds me that it does matter that people stand up.

It has made a difference to me: I am willing to stand up, too.

Also, the piece reminded me that anthropology matters in all this:

I could not help recalling on that remarkable night the response of Claude Lévi-Strauss to requests that he identify the “golden age” of human civilization. The father of modern anthropology rejected the question as absurd on its face, and absurdly disempowering in its implications. In Tristes Tropiques, Lévi-Strauss explained that “if men have always been concerned with only one task—how to create a society fit to live in—the forces which inspired our distant ancestors are also present in us. Nothing is settled; everything can still be altered. What was done but turned out wrong, can be done again. ‘The Golden Age,’ which blind superstition had placed behind [or ahead of] us, is in us.” Those are not blandly optimistic words. They are demanding. They suggest that we have fewer excuses than we thought, that this is the place, that now is the time and that there is truth in the maxim that we are the people we’ve been waiting for.

That Levi-Strauss. He is good to think (and act!) with.

Why we need our neighborhood schools

Last Thursday, the superintendent of our city's school district told parents that the district would consider “drastic measures” that could include ending non-mandatory programs (which include Kindergarten and AP courses) as well as the closing of a school.

I wish to defend the importance and necessity of both the programs that now face elimination and all four of our neighborhood elementary schools.

Across the district, at the elementary schools and at the middle school and the high school, we all have withstood cuts in programs and staff already. I worry about the consequences that further "compromises" will have for our children. What opportunities are they being (and will they be) denied?

Although closing a school is discussed as though it were a solution, it is not. Our community-centered elementary schools are critical in terms of the quality educational experiences that they provide to our children in grades K-6, and the present and future sustainability and growth of Oneonta as a community where families live and work.

A school closure by itself would neither close a financial gap nor prevent further cuts, as reported when the Board of Education undertook its district-wide Space Utilization Study last summer. The budget subcommittee found instead that it would erode the quality of our children’s educational experiences as class sizes increased throughout the district.

In addition, the consequences of closing any one of our four neighborhood elementary schools also would reach well beyond the classroom as neighbors lose their jobs, families sell their homes and move from the area, businesses lose their clients and customers, and we lose the talent and energies of people we need in Oneonta. We also will have even more difficulty attracting new blood to build their businesses here (or work at our two colleges, where I know from experience that search committees can have a hard time "selling" qualified candidates on our small upstate city).

When people start to ask how can we afford to keep what we have, there is only one answer: How can we afford not to keep them?

Yet, these are times when our understanding of what is practical, possible, and necessary have become increasingly constrained - I might even venture to say confused.

Why are we selling out to austerity even the things that matter to us?

We should be fighting it, especially when, in fact, the resources do exist:

Mail your hand-written letters to Albany and demand that they release the $250 million from competitive grants and distribute it to the small city and rural schools that have been most severely affected in these times.

Make your voice heard at Board of Education meetings, letting them know that we need and want for our community a long range vision that both provides support for and draws support from strong neighborhood schools.

We should be fighting it b/c in the end, the things that we sell out now will not come back to us later.

We need to stand now for what we value – like programs that clearly are critical to our children’s learning and community-centered schools, which are among our small city’s attractions and assets.

This is not a matter of either / or. We need them both.

What do we want? An agenda

On Thursday evening, I attended a forum (or rally) in support of a neighboring district’s schools – along with more than 600 parents, teachers, students and community members from around the region coming together to stand up and speak up for our schools. For me, a few themes emerged from the event: The first was that it was not just about that district's schools. It was about all of our schools. The second was that the problem facing school districts in upstate New York (like ours) is rooted in the way that state aid is distributed, and that as a consequence, kids in upstate districts are being systematically disadvantaged.

The third was that ordinary people like myself not only are aware (or becoming aware) of the inequities, but we also are willing to stand up and speak up against them.

I have been thinking a lot the last few days about what it means – what it actually means – to “stand up” and “speak up” for our schools. It is one thing to say that we want the unfairness to be addressed, but how does that happen? What do we do? Also, how do we find a way to stand together when there is already division among community members on what the problems are and how to solve them – as I wrote about in my previous post, there are parents and other residents in my district who believe that closing the elementary school that my daughter attends will close the budget gap without any other consequences (which in fact is not true).

Not to mention that there is also a lot of disillusionment about whether or not we can make a difference at all.

What is an agenda that we can all back together?

Here is mine:

1. The goal: Work together are parents, teachers, community members, and citizens to demand that our state legislators take the immediate, short-term action of releasing $250 million from competitive grants, and direct them to districts in need. This will make the difference for districts like ours and our neighbors in Unatego, which have been forced to consider cuts to important programs – Unatego is discussing the elimination of kindergarten, which is not state-mandated – and even school closures for the 2012-2013 academic year. What we can do: Get involved with efforts like Unatego United and Support Oneonta Schools or organize with groups like Parent Teacher Organizations or even just get together neighbors and friends. Get informed by reading and / or asking your neighbors and friends, then with others. Attend meetings of concerned citizens groups and of the Board of Education and Common Council, and ask questions and / or contribute your comments as a parent and community member. Write and send letters and / or sign Web-based petitions. (See my previous posts. Also, see the Facebook pages for Unatego United and Support Oneonta Schools.) One voice along might not be heard, but all of us speaking together will be.

2. The goal: Work together to put pressure our state legislators to reconsider the formula that determines how state aid is distributed to school districts in the first place. The formula disadvantages lower-wealth districts, such as ours in upstate New York. This is not about “saving” any particular school, but about saving all of our schools – that is, defending the right of every child in our state to a sound, basic education. It is a right that is being infringed upon – and, I am afraid, long has been. Our kids ought to be able to have opportunities that we ourselves had in our schools and that even our parents had – like programs in athletics, art and music, Advanced Placement courses, and kindergarten – and that kids in higher wealth districts take for granted. What we can do: Not only get involved and informed, but stay involved and informed. Vote.

3. The goal: Work together within our district and across our neighboring districts to develop a long-range plan to support strong schools and strong communities. I am a transplant to upstate New York, but I know that the schools and communities here have been in a near-chronic state of crisis. We need to take charge of what we can. On the one hand, in a place like where I live, I think it would be smart to recognize the significance of neighborhood schools in building and maintaining community, in the dollars and cents sense and in other senses, too. A school closure and / or layoffs might “save” a school district money, but think about what it will cost the entire community as families move, houses stand vacant, property values diminish, local businesses start to fade, and so on. It seems to me that efforts need to be coordinated to strengthen both the schools and the community. On the other hand, unless there is a sudden, but long-lasting change in demographic trends, schools will be closing: It might be a school within our district (and the criteria for which school is not as clear as some might think). Or it might be an entire central school in a smaller district, which puts pressure on the school or schools that begin receiving the displaced students. So, I think it might be smart to have conversations within districts and across districts. What we can do: Resolve to stay involved and informed for the years to come. Let my local school board and city aldermen and county executives, et al., know that I expect them not to back off, but to develop and act upon an intelligent plan for the next 1, 2, 5, 7, 10 years and so on. B/c I believe better governance comes from a strong opposition (and I believe temperamentally that is where I personally am better suited to be…), be strong in both my support for and criticism of the plans.

So, that is my agenda. What is yours?

Why this is not a foregone conclusion

A friend just forwarded me this link to the report in today's local paper on our city school district's budget gap:

With the state looking to close its budget deficit, the district is facing a $2.4 million cut in state aid for the 2012-13 school year under Gov. Andrew Cuomo's budget plan, business manager Lisa Weeks said.

This decreases state aid to levels below six years ago, she said. The legislature still has to weigh in on the issue before a final state budget is approved. The deadline is April 1.

With this loss of federal funds and other revenue, the district is taking several initiatives. These includes offering retirement incentives to reduce staffing, working as a team to come up with possibilities, writing legislators to help them understand the impact if the cuts are made, and communicating with staff and community.

Interestingly enough, the newspaper did not report a school closure as a possibility. Of course, the rest of us are aware that it probably is.

When I started this blog post, there were only three comments online, but they make clear that there are a number of community members who seem convinced that a school closure is inevitable - and that the school that ought to close is the one that my daughter and her friends currently attend.

What bothers me about the comments are the suggestions that operating four community-centered schools is a "waste" of taxpayer money; that concerning which building, if any, should be closed, "the cut is clear"; and that "even with the school closing doesn't mean children have to be affected. All you are doing is essentially closing down a building and all the costs it incurs."

I understand as well as the commenters that we very well might be forced to close a school, but I think it also ought to be understood that the "savings" themselves come at such a cost that we as a community need to approach a school closure as a careful, deliberate process.

Simply closing a school will not solve the problem by itself. If only it were that simple, then the many communities that already have had to close their schools should be better off, expanding the opportunities for students and restoring the programs that were cut, but this is not necessarily the case. I am afraid that the research that I have been reading about school closures contradicts the comment about children not being affected and closing a building being simple.

This is why I think we cannot treat school closure as the foregone conclusion.

I will be upfront about it being my particular wish to see my neighborhood school open b/c it is unquestionably a vibrant place, where I see my daughter and her friends thriving, and its continued existence is so vital to the place that we call home. I know that other parents must feel the same about their neighborhood schools, and I will not support closing any one of their schools for the sake of saving my own. If any one of our schools closes, then we all will feel it. So, for the moment, can we all just agree not to turn this into a fight among ourselves - and if / when a school closes, can we also agree to try to handle it as sensitively and patiently as such a loss deserves?

I want to reserve my anger for the unfairness with which our entire school district - and our neighboring school districts in NYS - have been treated.

Please print this post, sign it, and send it (See addresses in comments)

FINANCIAL CRISIS
AMONG NEW YORK SCHOOL DISTRICTS
A FORUM ATTENDED BY CONCERNED CITIZENS
Thursday, February 9th, 2012, Unatego High School, Otego NY (13825-2193)

As a tax-paying citizen in a school district in upstate New York, the following issues concern me:

•The state’s “Gap Elimination Adjustment”. It created a gap in our school district budget, which cannot be offset by raising taxes or firing teachers.

•The governor’s proposed budget. Not all of the $805 million increase for 2012-13 is available for equitable distribution. $250 million is allotted for competitive grants, which poorer rural districts will likely not receive.

•The upcoming loss of federal aid. Federal aid over the last two years has saved us from program cuts. That aid will not be renewed.

•The possibility of cutting non-mandated programs including kindergarten, sports, occupational education, AP courses, and cafeteria services. The gap created by the Gap Elimination Adjustment will force Unatego and other districts to cut any or all of these.

•THE POSSIBILITY OF CLOSING A SCHOOL BUILDING OR A SCHOOL DISTRICT. The loss of a school building will undermine communities, and if school districts have to shut their doors, that will affect quality of life of ALL CITIZENS OF NEW YORK STATE.

I, __________________________________ state that the above
(print name, town, and zip code)
issues deeply concern me, and that I plea to your action and leadership to advocate for a more equitable funding formula for state aid to my school district and the removal of the Gap Elimination Adjustment.

Respectfully submitted, __________________________
(sign name)