Funding the Future Community Presentation

The public is cordially invited to attend our Funding the Future Community Presentation,  October 17th 2019, Thursday,  at 6 pm in the Large Group Room at Baker HS. 

These are interesting times for school districts in the State of New York:  Continuing increases in mandates from state and federal governments; the fiscal limitation of the tax cap; the changing demographics of all upstate NY school districts.   There are challenges unique to each individual District.  At Baldwinsville CSD we have been looking at the future and recognized we need a plan.  We have older buildings. We have buildings that are at capacity. We have a changing student population.  We are providing special education services in hallways.    A year ago we decided to start planning. We call this effort Funding the Future. 

The Board of Education asked broad range of volunteers to form a Community Committee to study the future of Baldwinsville Central School District. These members included students, parents, retirees, teachers; all are District residents. We hired a consultant, Dr. Paul Seversky of SES Study Team to organize and conduct this effort.  District administrators and Board of Education purposefully did not participate in the Committee.  We did not want to influence the discussion. The goal was to have the committee generate some options the Board might consider for planning purposes going forward.  

For the past year there has been a Community Committee working on an analysis of the District’s  data with an eye for the future. We call this effort Funding the Future. The Committee wrestled with the question:  are there options that might provide program effective and cost-0effective ways or patterns to organize how the K-12 program is implemented /delivered for the next five years?  They looked at these types of things: should we re-district; should we build new buildings; should we change grade configurations?

The Committee looked at a lot of data

• Housing e.g. sales of homes, type of homes, location of homes. 
• Student population trends e.g. demographics and census estimates, Free and Reduced lunch data; special education data; enrollment histories of each school; an Enrollment Projection Study; a K12 Pupil capacity analysis
• Economic trends – e.g. assessed property values; current District Capital Debt.
• Use of current District facilities including tours of buildings. 
• Staffing including shared staffing.
• Bus runs data including distances between buildings

The Committee then developed some scenarios or options that the Board of Education might consider. At the October 17, 2019 presentation Dr. Seversky will go thru the Committee’s report.  

We value the Community’s opinion. We urge community members to come and hear this presentation.  

Thank you!