The “good news for everyone, just announced here hot off the presses,” according to superintendent Stephen Gratto is that the New Paltz Central School District (NPCSD) was approved for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a meal service option for schools to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without having to collect household eligibility applications. The grant gives all students in the NPCSD a free breakfast and lunch for the next four school years.
According to the New York State Education Department (SED), the CEP can both cut administrative costs related to the National School Lunch Program and Breakfast Program which help fund the state-level grant, while also increasing student participation by eliminating the need for families to qualify for and fill out the applications.
To be eligible for the CEP, a school district or individual school must have an Identified Student Percentage (ISP) of a student poverty rate of at least 25 percent based on families providing paperwork.
“So that means free breakfast and lunch for all students in the district in the next four years,” said Gratto during the Wednesday, July 10 meeting of the Board of Education. “We are one of the last school (districts) in the area to qualify.”
Gratto said he didn’t believe the NPSCD was eligible because its poverty rate met the criteria, only that among those submitting paperwork, it crossed the 25 percent threshold.
“I think that’s outstanding news in every way,” he said, adding that parents would receive more information about how the CEP will work ahead of the start of the 2024-25 school year.
In an email interview with Hudson Valley One, Gratto explained how the program can benefit student achievement.
“It is hard to learn when you are hungry,” he said. “Feeding students will not only help keep them healthy, it will help them concentrate. This is a great benefit for the community because parents will save money on the cost of breakfast and lunch.”
Gratto added that he’s already had a positive experience with the CEP in the Schroon Lake Central School District, where prior to coming to New Paltz he was not only superintendent but also a parent.
“The number of students eating breakfast and lunch greatly increased when we got the grant,” Gratto said. “From my perspective as a parent who had children in the district, it was the best deal going. I did not need to make breakfast or lunch for my children the whole time they attended school under CEP. It is exciting that New Paltz parents will have the same opportunity and I encourage them and their children to take full advantage of the program.”
Long-term planning includes the possibility of closing Duzine
With the good news taken care of, Gratto moved on to a more complicated issue. Tasked months ago by the school board to study long-term financial planning, district officials reviewed recent trends in the district’s expenses and revenues, as well as a myriad of factors that have the potential to impact them. The prognosis isn’t grim, but it could be if the district is forced to further tap into its fund balance reserve, which it’s had to do in recent years to balance the budget while avoiding catastrophic cuts. For the 2023-24 school year, the NPCSD used $1.9 million of its fund balance to pass the budget. For the recently passed 2024-25 budget, it used $2.2 million.
“That was okay, that’s what we have a fund balance for,” Gratto said. “But among other things, we’re going to have to replenish our fund balance, get it back up to a more comfortable level.
So, you probably aren’t going to be able to continue the habit that we’ve developed of using 1.9 million or 2.2 million to balance the budget.”
One option under early consideration is to close Duzine Elementary School, leaving the district with one elementary school, Lenape.
“We’ve begun preliminary discussions on is it possible for students in Duzine to move to Lenape,” Gratto said. “We’ve looked at some numbers and some thoughts on what we would save if we were to go down this road. But we didn’t put a dollar number on it. That’s premature.”
Gratto said the district’s declining student enrollment over the past decade has yet to plateau. The NPCSD saw a modest decline in enrollment between 2000-01 and 2010-11 from 2,391 to 2,245. But the drop accelerated over the next decade, falling to 1,773 in the 2022-23 school year, and around 1,750 last year. He said that a more thorough review would be necessary to confirm, but noted that current enrollment in K-2 is around 100 students in each.
“If that trend continues, you can see that by 2028-2029, we’ll be down to around 1,500 in student enrollment,” Gratto said. Such numbers might make it difficult to justify operating two elementary schools.
The superintendent added that certain costs go beyond what the district pays up front. Even with grant funding and state building aid, if the NPCSD proposes a capital project, it has to pay for that project, and then some.
“If we do certain things, we’ll have increased maintenance, and we’ll have to consider that,” he said. “For example, an aquatic center would create maintenance costs.”
He added that like other school districts, the NPCSD is facing a mandate to transition its school bus fleet to fully electric by 2035.
Offsetting rising expenses isn’t easy, particularly when the district’s revenues aren’t rising at a commensurate rate. Offsetting expenses can come from teacher and other staff retirement. “That will help a little bit,” Gratto said — and the possibility of a school closure — “that will help a lot.”
Trustees and district officials are expected to meet once a month to continue discussing long-term financial planning.
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