New Paltz Central School District (NPCSD) officials plan to share granular details of a consolidation strategy with the board of education later this month. A consolidation proposal, including the closure of Duzine Elementary School, has been in the works for several months.
During a school board meeting held on Wednesday, October 8, district superintendent Stephen Gratto said the framework of a consolidation plan would be ready to share by their next meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, October 22. The details were requested by trustees, who feel they don’t have enough information to make a decision, not only if Duzine should be closed, but if so, when.
Gratto said whatever they decide, it would be ideal for trustees to make a decision sooner rather than later.
Like many school districts, both local and across New York, the NPCSD has seen its student population dwindle over the past two decades. In order to “right-size” the district, the School Board’s Facilities Committee earlier this year recommended closing one of its two elementary schools. The district then engaged former Ulster BOCES Superintendent Charles Khoury to study different scenarios, including maintaining two elementary schools and closing Duzine with a handful of different timetables and configurations, including the subsequent consolidation of the district’s grades pre-K-4 into Lenape Elementary, and grades 5-8 into New Paltz Middle School. Contingency solutions for potential student growth were also factored into Khoury’s calculations.
Khoury studied trends among potentially impacted cohorts, grades K-4 and 5-8. In the former, there has been a 30.9 percent enrollment decline from 2018-19 to 2025-26; there are currently 455 students in the K-4 cohort. Khoury found that the cohort is likely to stabilize over the next five years, at least temporarily ending a precipitous drop in enrollment.
In the grades 5-8 cohort, the past decline between 2018-19 and 2025-26 has been 24.7 percent; the cohort is projected to further decline by 20.2 percent through 2030-31. A middle school that less than a decade ago served 673 students, and currently houses 465 students, could drop to 371 in five years’ time.
Using an average class size of 22 students, New Paltz Middle School’s 22 regular classrooms and specialized subject-specific classrooms could meet the needs of between 23-19 classrooms over the next five years.
At the elementary level, Lenape is even better equipped to handle absorbing Duzine’s students; with 50 total classroom spaces, and a need for between 39-37 over the next five years — including ten special education classes — and the relocation of the central office, Khoury surmised that Lenape would easily handle becoming the district’s sole elementary school.
Though closing the school would save the district around $1 million annually to start, Khoury stressed that closing Duzine would not fully address the district’s estimated $2,354,000 budget gap for 2025-26.
“(Khoury’s) study was at a fairly high level,” Gratto said last week. “But he didn’t get into the nuts and bolts of who would go where and how would this work and how would that work? And the community, rightfully, has asked those questions.”
Gratto said district officials did not favor Khoury’s preference for closing Duzine ahead of the 2026-27 school year as being too rushed. He instead suggested that trustees consider closing Duzine ahead of the 2027-28 school year, but with a tiered approach. That phased consolidation could include moving the fifth grade to New Paltz Middle School next summer.
“If you plan on closing in September 2027, you have to keep the ball rolling,” he said. “You can’t wait a year and then discuss it again.”
The October 22 presentation will include a discussion about the financial impact by assistant superintendent for business Debra Kosinski, as well as the expertise of deputy superintendent Linda Oehler-Marx, who heads the department of educational programs.
“You can’t go into a decision about Duzine without clearly knowing the financial hurdles that we face if you don’t close Duzine,” Gratto said. “You need to have a picture of what the future looks like if you close it and what the picture looks like if you don’t…You also need to know the nuts and bolts of things.”
Gratto said that even if the idea of closing Duzine in the summer of 2027 seems a long way off, the school board should not wait to make that decision.
“I would not encourage you to rush and make this decision because it’s a big decision,” he said. “Having said that, you need to make the decision. I want everybody to realize that you don’t have the luxury of waiting a year unless you decide you’re not doing it. You decide you’re not doing this, fine, you can wait as long as you want.”
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