The nearly 100-year-old Seymour Smith Intermediate Learning Center could accommodate the roughly 150 students who currently attend pre-K through first grade at Cold Spring Early Learning Center if the district moves ahead with a possible consolidation plan, Seymour’s principal said April 30.
Julie Roberts, principal of Seymour Smith, made the assessment during a meeting of the Pine Plains Central School District Building Utilization Advisory Committee, whose members toured the Academy Street school as part of their review of how consolidation would affect students, staff, and district facilities.
Seymour Smith currently serves an estimated 225 students in grades 2 through 5. Roberts said the building has around four vacant classrooms, along with several rooms now occupied by teaching assistants or used as “pull-out” classrooms for special education services that do not require the space throughout the school day. With careful scheduling, she said, those rooms could be made available for other classes.
“It’s about maximizing the schedule to the space that’s available,” Roberts said.
The 25-member committee, which includes three residents from each town the district serves, was formed Feb. 3 to evaluate the educational impact of school consolidation, including the potential shuttering of Cold Spring. School officials have said consolidation may be necessary because of declining student enrollment and growing uncertainty surrounding the future scope of state funding.
During the tour, Roberts also said the Seymour Smith gym can hold two physical education sections at once, and that the library could add lower shelving to accommodate books from the Cold Spring library.
For some committee members, the tour appeared to ease concerns about whether Seymour Smith could absorb Cold Spring students.
“This tour today makes it perfectly apparent that bringing Cold Spring here is not really going to be that disruptive to anyone other than maybe some numbers, in terms of employees,” said Joan Taylor, a committee member from Ancram.
Several committee members also said they preferred having the district’s elementary school located more centrally within the school district, rather than at one end of it, in Stanford.
“Pine Plains is the town center of the [school] district. It’s the community center,” said Sean Devine, a committee member from Pine Plains.
But the discussion also reflected the tensions surrounding any possible closure of Cold Spring, including questions about building conditions, tax impacts and what would happen to the Stanford building if students were moved elsewhere.
Brooke Brown, a Stanford committee member who is running for a seat on the Board of Education, urged the board to factor building conditions into its discussions. Kyle Odell, another committee member from Stanford, raised concerns about the costs of maintaining an unused Cold Spring building in the event of consolidation, including insurance and energy expenses.
Odell also said he would prefer to pay higher taxes to keep Cold Spring open.
Pine Plains Town Supervisor Brian Walsh, who also sits on the committee, said many residents in the district could not afford a tax increase.
“The problem is, you have elderly people who live in this area that cannot afford that higher tax,” Walsh said. “You got some younger people that don’t make a bunch of money that can barely afford what they got now.”
Julie Shaw, legal counsel for the district, said the district would consider renting the Cold Spring property to a for-profit organization, which she said would shift costs to the tenant.
“I do think that is the intention of the district to try to actually maximize the space in order to create new revenue strings based on the building,” Shaw said. “Perhaps Cold Spring would be a very good place to be able to utilize that.”
The committee’s next meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, May 14.
I think careful consideration has to be made as to who uses the “flexible” classroom space. That requires the older students who can adjust more easily to changes. After teaching within the district for 30 years, I know how important it is, especially at the younger grades, to have everything accessible, especially with how quickly the dynamics in a room can change. Having limited space for your supplies/materials for those times is a concern. We had Art on a cart for a while and Library on a cart going from room to room – and obviously it’s not ideal.
We’ve squeezed kids in in the past – not an ideal situation.
Another concern is, we can get the kids in there, but is it the safest building for those kids?
In the past, there was a policy to keep the younger kids on the first floor for safety issues – in the case of emergency having little legs coming down three flights of stairs along with older kids can create a dangerous situation.
Again, I point to the fact that these are children not just numbers.