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Bloomingdale school committee to be formed

Bloomingdale Elementary School (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — The Saranac Lake Central School District Board of Education will start seeking volunteer members of a committee to discuss the future of Bloomingdale Elementary School after a consulting firm recommended closing the school in the 2027-28 school year.

SLCSD board Chair Mark Farmer said they are looking for a wide range of stakeholders willing to commit significant time to an issue he says is likely to be the biggest one the board works on for the future of the next decade.

This committee won’t make a decision itself, but it will make a recommendation to the board, which will take an eventual vote. The committee will dissect the firm’s report, paired with local information from its members, invited guests and comments from public hearings to craft a recommendation to the board.

There was a bit of debate at a Wednesday meeting over how many people should be on the committee. Board members described a contradiction of wanting as much representation as possible without making the committee too big to be effective.

At one point, board member Justin Garwood joked that the committee roster was starting to look like the size of a football team.

Bloomingdale Elementary School Teaching Assistant Brooke Varner helps kindergartener Major Mbaye put on a bracelet which look like a monarch butterfly caterpillar on the first day of school on Sept. 5 as Bloomingdale Elementary School teacher Hannah Pelkey speaks with another student. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

The board hasn’t set a final number of committee seats yet.

Board members anticipate that many people will want to be on the committee, but there can only be a few appointed. The board will have to make decisions on who to pick. Farmer said the board wants to ensure that the people who aren’t selected for the committee still get lots of opportunity to contribute. He said they’re planning to hold many public hearings on the topic in the coming months and years.

Superintendent Diane Fox said the committee meetings will be open to the public. The board will decide if these meetings will have a public comment period.

It’s a complicated topic with tons of details to consider and Farmer said they want to do the right thing. That means it is likely nobody will get everything they want, he said. There isn’t a real timeline to make a decision, but board members said they don’t want it to draw out too long.

Farmer has repeatedly said the board wants a fully-vetted plan with lots of public input and consideration.

“Everyone on this particular board of education has, at one point or another, really been concerned with how decisions are made in our district. That’s what spurned many of them to run for the board,” Farmer said.

Big decision

Last year, the district commissioned a building enrollment feasibility study from the educational consulting firm Alliance Education Associates. That report is finalized now.

The consultants suggested that the district could reconfigure in the 2027-28 school year to close Bloomingdale Elementary and move the students going there to Petrova Elementary to save on costs. At that time, Petrova’s enrollment is projected to be small enough to accommodate the additional students.

The consultants say the closure would come with cost reductions estimated at $1.4 million because of less building maintenance, and less staff salaries and benefits. The district still has $1.1 million in debt on past building projects there, so the study projects a $300,000 net potential cost savings.

Bloomingdale leaders and parents have been concerned about the possible closure of the school since the first part of the report was released.

Discussion of the possibility this spring led three Bloomingdale residents to run for the school board, though they were not able to beat out the three incumbent candidates for the seats.

Davina Thurston, the town supervisor for St. Armand, which holds the hamlet of Bloomingdale, attended several school board meetings to advocate for the school. She said it’s a reason people move to Bloomingdale, a resource for families living in the largest geographic school district in the state and an employer for the growing hamlet.

Farmer said it is premature to say the board will choose to close Bloomingdale because it was recommended.

“One of the things this committee is going to have to do is see if the suggestions in there are valid and acceptable to us,” he said.

Board members have indicated they want a second opinion on the accuracy of the demographic forecast the consultants made. This is key information for the eventual decision.

“When the school moves to some sort of transition — I think we all recognize something’s going to happen, right? What that’s going to look like in its final form has yet to be determined,” Farmer said on Wednesday. “It will be a process in which everybody’s had their opportunity to speak and have input.”

Application process

Fox suggested the board solicit letters of intent and have applicants for the committee fill out a questionnaire, similar to when the board has a vacant board seat. The board can discuss applicant’s answers as a guide to making a decision on who to put on the committee.

Fox said she is compiling these questions for the board to discuss and potentially approve at its next meeting on Sept. 25. After the questionnaire is set, the board will put out a public request for applicants.

Farmer said they’ll need people who can make the large time commitment. The committee will likely meet once or twice a month for several years, he said.

Board members agreed Fox should be on the committee because she is a central hub for information about the district. She had no choice but to agree.

“They’re my bosses,” Fox said of the board members.

Bloomingdale Elementary Principal Katie Laba volunteered to be on the committee.

Farmer also volunteered to be on the committee.

He said they’ll want two more board members, administrators from all of the schools, building facilities and grounds staff, and community and parent representatives.

The board plans to reserve spots for people from each locale in the district. Farmer said they will definitely want representation from Bloomingdale, since that community is impacted most by the consultant’s recommendation, but that their actions will impacts everybody in the district.

Other closures

Farmer said the district has consolidated in the past as its population declined and standards for public education changed.

The district closed and sold its Lake Colby Elementary School in 2011, its Lake Clear School in 2009, its Broadway Elementary School Broadway in 1974 and its River Street School in 1967.

Farmer said when the Lake Clear closure happened, people were also concerned about it, but after seeing the information the school board had, they understood why the closure happened.

The district is seeing lower and lower numbers of incoming students. When classes started last week, the district had 1,044 students enrolled, 26 fewer than last year. There are around 103 students at Bloomingdale Elementary and 296 at Petrova Elementary. The consultants predict the enrollment will continue to decline for several years before stabilizing at a lower level.

Farmer said when he graduated SLCSD in 1979, his senior class had 150 students. Last June, the district graduated 89 students.

To learn more about the details of the report, go to tinyurl.com/54ne8yh3.

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