The Pine Plains Board of Education voted unanimously to close Cold Spring Early Learning Center at its Oct. 6 meeting.
Beginning in the 2027-28 school year, the roughly 150 students attending pre-K through first grade at Cold Spring will move to Seymour Smith Intermediate Learning Center.
The decision came after the Building Utilization Advisory Committee submitted an educational impact statement to the board on Aug. 4, recommending consolidation and citing declining student enrollment, uncertain state funding and escalating costs.
Superintendent Brian Timm presented two sets of estimated savings from consolidation at the Oct. 6 meeting.
Reducing positions such as paraprofessionals, teacher aides, custodial workers and food service workers would save about $682,336, including $200,000 in transportation savings. Additionally, eliminating typist and classroom teacher positions would increase the estimated savings to $1,135,265, including the same $200,000 in transportation savings.
The board will discuss further “right-sizing” efforts during the budget development process, Timm said.
Board member James Griffin pushed back on the term “right-sizing,” saying it reflects budget calculations more than what might be right for the district.
“That version of right sizing is going to harm the educational experiences of our students here,” Griffin said. “I don’t think anybody realizes that being a rural school as small as we are, our kids are being underserved educationally than if we were in a place like, say, Arlington, where you get a ton of course options. It is our responsibility as a district to put on the best education we can for the dollars we can get.”
Timm said the estimates could change based on ongoing negotiations with the teachers union and the school-related professionals union. He also noted that the district is scheduled to receive $300,000 per year in building aid for 10 years, as long as it owns the Cold Spring building.
At its Sept. 15 meeting, the board said it would rather keep the building and potentially lease it to other educational institutions, such as the Anderson Center for Autism, than sell it.
Without consolidation, Timm said, “a significant programmatic impact is likely.”
In May, voters rejected a budget proposal that called for a 5.34% increase in school taxes, above the state tax cap. At the Oct. 6 meeting, board member Fred “Chip” Couse said delaying consolidation would likely lead to another budget that exceeds the tax cap.
“It’s pretty clear how the public reacted to that last year with a negative vote. And so negative vote times two creates a contingency budget environment where we’re stuck with last year’s revenue stream,” Couse said. “I think no action or kicking this down the road for another year is fiscally irresponsible. Given the option of doing nothing or doing this, this is the one that comes the closest to maintaining the educational impact.”
During public comment, Stanford resident Caroline Blackburn, an attorney with two children in the district, said the right-sizing estimates do not include the approximately $290,000 to $330,000 needed to prepare Seymour Smith for the additional staff and students.
“Of course, the closure is necessitated by financial considerations, so it seems more probable that you would be leaning toward option two,” Blackburn said. “As you consider the plan, I just wondered if there was perhaps a middle ground position [by] achieving savings over more than one school district fiscal year. See the savings over perhaps two years or maybe three, attrition rather than layoff. I don’t know if that’s true for any of these positions or expected retirements, but in consideration of the people who work here I would take this very seriously, so maybe that’s an option for you.”
The board also reviewed a draft year-end fund balance. The district’s business official, Laura Rafferty, said the fund balance was $20,538,693 as of June 30, 2025, and stood at $11,760,071 as of June 30, 2026. That includes $7,847,563 in reserves and $1.6 million assigned to the tax levy to close the gap between revenue and expenses.
Rafferty said the draft is still undergoing an independent audit and will be uploaded to the district’s website upon completion.
The board accepted bids to sell six surplus buses for a total of $28,775. It also approved a $109,000 agreement with the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office for the placement of a school resource officer and an agreement with Flourishing Minds Applied Behavioral Analysts to provide behavior intervention plans at a rate of $85 per hour for the 2026-27 school year.