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Members of a committee charged with providing the Remsenburg/Speonk School Board with a plan to expand the district’s elementary school said they were surprised to learn that board members kept them in the dark about another long-range study that was also being formulated.
Several committee members who attended Monday night’s board meeting said they were upset that they were never told in May, when they presented the School Board with their own proposal, that the district had also asked the western Suffolk Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) to complete a separate study. The results of that 68-page long-range study were not released until two weeks ago.
“Having the information contained in the report might have led the focus group to suggest different solutions to the needs of the school,” committee member Dorothy Labowski said before Monday’s meeting. “I regret that the board did not do this study before proposing the $15 million expansion plan, which divided our community.”
The 13-member committee was formed a short time after district taxpayers overwhelmingly rejected the School Board’s $14.9 million expansion project, a plan that would have doubled the size of the Mill Road elementary school and increased school taxes. That plan was rejected in December by more than 80 percent of district voters.
On Monday night, School Board President Thomas Kerr pointed out that although the committee’s findings were delivered months earlier, its conclusions were remarkably similar to those offered in the BOCES study. The results of the BOCES study was not shared with the board until last month.
Mr. Kerr explained that the BOCES report was not ready by the time committee members gave their recommendations to the board in the spring. He also said the BOCES study, if shared with the committee, could have influenced the opinion of its members. A copy of the BOCES study is now available on the district’s website, rsufsd.wordpress.com.
School Superintendent Dr. Katherine Salomone explained Tuesday that a planning study is required any time a school district is planning an expansion project. She said that the BOCES study took several months to complete.
Neither the committee report or the BOCES study stated how much their recommendations would cost the district to complete.
During Monday’s nearly two-and-a-half-hour meeting, School Board member Joel Petersen explained that no formal deadlines for the expansion project have been established. He added that the board is now working toward creating a timeline.
The BOCES study states that the elementary school has limited space for meetings of small groups and needs additional space for teacher preparation. The document also notes that the school might need to add at least one classroom if class size limits are to be reduced in the future. The school currently has 10 general purpose classrooms and classrooms sizes are capped at 30 students.
The BOCES study also calls for the district to address the issue of the school’s gymnasium, which doubles as a cafeteria. The school’s lunch tables are covered with mats during gym periods, which some have said could be potentially dangerous to children.
The recommendations submitted by the committee in a three-page letter in May call for more space for small groups and special education classes, as well as more planning areas for teachers. It also recommends the building of additional storage space and a new library.
In their letter, committee members explained that the current school library is difficult to heat and that it was originally intended as a temporary structure. Additionally, the letter states that there is no immediate need for the construction of additional general purpose classrooms.
The $14.9 million proposal rejected by taxpayers last December would have doubled the size of the elementary school to 60,000 square feet. The project, which would have been completed before the start of the 2011-12 school year, would have added five new classrooms, a cafeteria, a library/media center, a language lab and a music area.
If the renovations had been completed, the school would have been able to accommodate up to 400 students. About 185 students now take classes at the elementary school.
The BOCES study explains that the Remsenburg/Speonk School District has grown from 126 students in 1990 to 194 students in 2007, before decreasing to 186 students in 2008. The study said it expects school district enrollment to increase by only 10 students over the next decade—as long as there are no sharp spikes in residential construction projects in the hamlets of Speonk and Remsenburg.
However, the study noted that there is a potential for up to 300 new homes to be built in Remsenburg and Speonk and if all those lots were developed, it could result in an additional 250 students attending the school district. The study said that most of those subdivisions would be developed once the economy recovers.
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