The Onteora school district is presenting two proposals for capital projects to its voters on May 20, one for $54.2 million and the other for $15.5 million.
The $54.2-million proposed capital project includes expansion work to bring Onteora toward the goal of a central campus for grades K-12.
The Bennett Elementary School would add a new wing with ten additional classrooms, an expanded library, office spaces and bathrooms. Other changes would create a new gym, a renovated student entrance, an additional music room, replacement windows, renovated art space, a reconfigured cafeteria and outdoor space.
The proposal includes middle/high school improvements to the science classrooms, a counseling suite, renovation of the main office, a nurses’ suite, an auditorium and parking near the tennis courts.
The $15.5-million supplemental proposition for the middle/high school includes artificial turf, a track upgrade, field lights, field drainage, student commons, solar panels, geothermal work and a parking upgrade.
If both propositions pass, taxpayers would be shouldered with about $55 million in debt after state aid, surplus funds from the budget and projected savings from consolidation.
For a home assessed at $400,000, the tax impact would be an additional $100 to $140 per year.
Assistant business superintendent Monica LaClair said savings of about $2.3 million can be realized by 2028-29 through the closure of Woodstock Elementary School and the recent closing of Phoenicia Elementary.
At least one trustee is worried that the capital project will be a hard sell.
“I think it can be very confusing for Woodstock voters to have to choose between improving the middle school/high school where they’ll end up … and closing Woodstock,” trustee Emily Mitchell-Morell said. “I think when I saw it, I felt like the amount we’re saving was more negligible than I thought it would be, especially when you’re talking about a town’s school closing.”
Superintendent Victoria McLaren doesn’t see it that way.
“Actually, I don’t believe that it is a choice between these things depending on our enrollment,” she said. “We may end up at a central campus regardless, so this allows us to thoughtfully prepare for that and make this campus the best experience it could be for all of our students. If we end up in a place with enrollment and budgetary constraints where we have to come to a central campus because we can’t afford to maintain more than one campus, we won’t have prepared, and then I feel like we would not have honored our students,”
Trustee Caroline Jerome wants more information aside from the efficiency aspects.
“We have a lot of information how it’s operationally efficient,” Jerome said. “Again, when we look at disrupting the educational experience, the fact that Woodstock is really well-attended, doing well, I’d like that piece looked at a little bit more. I don’t like to see my taxes go up, but I would do it for our district, but how does it break down between what’s Bennett and what’s middle school, high school — because we want to optimize, and I want to understand how that breaks down. Is it just about the elementary schools, or how is that really affecting the middle school, high school? So I would love to see that number.”
District officials see centralization as necessary to deal with steadily declining enrollments. Phoenicia Elementary was closed as part of that plan, and Woodstock Elementary could be closed by 2028. That plan requires expanding Bennett to accommodate grades K-8.
The group Onteora Parents Engaged Now, or OPEN, which was formed in opposition to school closures, is concerned about the bundling of other improvements to make the bond more palatable.
“Such improvements should be generally quite popular with voters, and, on their own, would likely pass overwhelmingly. And with good reason. The district centralization project, on the other hand, is quite controversial and divisive,” it said in a statement. “Bundling those together would be a political calculation that grouping popular initiatives with a controversial one would make the whole package more likely to pass.”
The controversial component might drag down the popular one, said OPEN.
“Unfortunately, doing so would put at risk much-needed improvements to the existing campus and its programs. Asking voters to choose all or none would be a great disservice to the students if the effort were to fail. Why put their present at risk for an uncertain, and in many cases unwanted, centralized campus future?”
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