It’s easy to appreciate the herculean task that Union Free District of the Tarrytowns Superintendent Howard Smith and his staff had in crafting a $63.4 million budget, when confronted with a toxic combination of plunging tax revenues and sharply lower state aid.
But when it came to executing that task and finalizing a spending plan that included $3.6 million in cuts, Smith and the Board of Education have fallen woefully short. No doubt they were tough choices, but they were also the wrong ones.
Smith wielded his budget ax hardest at the elementary schools, most glaringly with the proposal to shutter Tappan Hill School, which houses pre-K and kindergarten. It’s a proposal the school board unanimously rubber-stamped on March 20 with barely a whisper of discussion.
In a way this was preordained. A School Building Consolidation Committee report in February, while it considered several options, was heavily tilted toward closing Tappan Hill. So, it came as no surprise that Smith advocated Tappan Hill’s demise in his budget. In turn, it was hardly a shock that the board, so hellbent on consensus that it accepted Smith’s spending plan virtually as gospel, so willingly acquiesced.
Given that my son will start kindergarten in September, I have more than a passing interest in this matter. It’s not that I’m enamored with Tappan Hill as a building. As an edifice, it has zero appeal. I’m more concerned about what happens next. If Tappan Hill is closed, the next sound you will hear is the clanging of dominoes as the quality of education takes a precipitous fall.
By shunting kindergarteners to John Paulding School, that means first graders are relegated to the anachronism that is W.L. Morse School, while third-graders move to Washington Irving School.
Board members and parents at two recent board meetings praised Morse, and the education their children received. All well and good, but there’s a big difference between first grade and second grade. Serious questions have been raised about Morse, a one-time high school, being a suitable venue for six-year-olds. Smith tacitly acknowledged that by restoring two first-grade teaching assistant positions he had originally cut. But a few extra line items in the budget don’t hide an aging building’s deficiencies. Cue the dominoes.
Smith avers that closing Tappan Hill would save $670,000 and that several parties have expressed “potential interest” in renting the school’s 10 classrooms that could reap the district $200,000 annually.
But that number is based on the $20,000 the district gets from BOCES for one special education classroom at Paulding. You can’t extrapolate that number for an entire building, especially in a glutted commercial real estate market, as Smith has tried to do. If the district really thinks it can lease classrooms, rent out half of Morse instead so first-graders can stay at Paulding and not be sent to a building ill-equipped to serve them.
Putting that fuzzy math aside, let’s reflect on the costs to quality education, namely increasing class sizes in grades K-2 from 20 to 22. Hundreds of studies have shown a positive relationship between student achievement and a lower student-teacher ratio. And yet the board and Smith still find cutting teachers is a palatable solution to cut the budget so they can limit tax increases. My son isn’t even in the school system yet, and he’s already getting shortchanged. How sad.
Board member Vincent Nadile said he supported the closure with a “deep level of regret.” He was in the minority, however. Most of the board appeared eager to be rid of Tappan Hill. It’s what happens when you have a board lacking in members with young children. They’re not directly affected by the changes they vote for, so they’re less likely to care about the fallout.
True, the board also needs to be concerned about tax increases. But diminishing the quality of the school system in the process is extremely un-wise and very pound-foolish. In times like these, everyone must sacrifice, not just five-year-olds starting kindergarten.
Steve Gosset is a member of the Hudson Independent’s Editorial Board.