BERNE — Schools need to worry more — and respond better — to children who begin school already behind.

That’s the view of Berne-Knox-Westerlo Superintendent Timothy Mundell who says the cost of poverty shows up early in children.

“We see kids entering who struggle with letters, colors, and sounds,” he says. “And this usually ties back to their economic situation.”

He reports that one clear signpost of increased economic distress among the district’s families is the rate of participation in the school’s free and reduced-price lunch program. From 2005 to 2008, he says, 18 percent of the student body participated in the program; now that number is up to 40 percent of the district’s student population of 380.

In order to qualify for free lunch or breakfast, according to federal guidelines, a family of one must have an annual income of less than $15,444. For each additional person in the household, $5,408 is added. So, a household of four must have an income of less than $31,590 to qualify.

For a reduced-price meal, a family of one must have an income of less than $21,978. For each additional person in the household, $7,696 is added. So, a household of four must have an income of less than $44,955 to qualify.

Mundell also points out that the school district employs about the same number of people as does Hannay Reels, the district’s largest private employer, based in Westerlo. He says that fact “gives us a unique understanding of the community” and its problems and needs.

Mundell was appointed superintendent at the beginning of the 2015-16 school year, after a revolving door of superintendents had left the district yearning for stability at the top. He recently moved his family to a home in East Berne from Long Island, where he had previously worked as an administrator in public schools there.

Mundell, who is originally from the Ballston Spa area, says, “This is something important to me. I grew up in a similar [largely rural] kind of place.”

How can kids catch up who enter school already behind?

“It’s a problem that can be addressed in multiple ways,” Mundell says, “to help children come to school ready to learn.” This kind of global intervention is sometimes tagged as Response to Intervention — identifying students with deficits early and then supporting them with multiple tiers.

Working together

Mundell  believes that schools cannot do it alone but have to work with local municipalities — Albany County in the case of BKW — to put together the right constellation of interventions that will make a difference.

Discussion he has had with local representatives Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara and Senator George Amedore and the Capital Region B0ard of Cooperative Educational Services has focused on ways to “incentivize partnerships between school districts and municipalities — with, for example, the county Mental Health Department.”

Funding for this kind of community intervention, he says, can come from parts of the state budget other than school aid.

Mundell is chairman of the Schoharie Council of Superintendents, a collaboration among districts “with demographics similar to ours, “ and facing the same circumstance of  many children entering the school system with emotional and cognitive liabilities. The idea is to “band together to achieve economies of scale” in addressing problems the districts have in common.

Schools, he says, can help such children by providing instruction in small groups and extra attention, through a program of Academic Intervention Services. One of their  aims is to close the gap between struggling newly enrolled children  and their peers, so that they are reading at grade level by the time they reach third grade.

The 2014-15 BKW budget called  for hiring seven teaching assistants in English and mathematics to work with children with learning deficiencies, Mundell said.  The program was subsequently redesigned and five TAs are currently providing supplemental help.

A decrease of 17 percent, the superintendent says, in the number of students reading below grade level has been achieved.

But he adds that the 141 students currently receiving Academic Intervention Services in the district “should be closer to 85.” He sees school partnerships with outside resources as the way to move toward that kind of reduction.

He says that the problems BKW faces with children unprepared to enter school and falling behind from the start are by no means unique.” At a meeting of the New York State Agricultural Society that Mundell attended recently he heard “many stories of rural poverty and families struggling to make ends meet,” which he maintains gets reflected in student performance from the get-go.

2017-18 school aid

Numbers in the governor’s budget proposal for school aid do not give BKW reason to celebrate, but Mundell says “even a little increase is always good news.”  A total of $9,985,564 in aid for the next school year represents an increase of 1.71 percent compared to the current year, and covers roughly half of district expenses.

Mundell says he will watch with interest what happens in the next few weeks at the state legislature goes to work on the budget.

“We would love to recoup some of the money lost,” he says, following the successful  2007 Campaign For Fiscal Equity lawsuit that sought to redress a claimed  imbalance in state school aid.  The Court found in a favor of CFE and the legislature started a stepped plan to increase funding but then the state faced a large budget gap and scrapped the plan.

But now, Mundell points out,  “the governor is saying high levels of funding have taken care of inequities.”  A move to end the complex Foundation Aid formula may be in the works.

Capital Projects

On another subject, Mundell said the BKW Board of Education is working with the district’s architects to define the scope of a major capital projects initiative that will be put to district voters sometime this year.

“Once the scope is defined, “ he says, “the board can drill  down to the details.”

The superintendent expressed his own view that more than mandatory infrastructure improvements should be made.

Modernization for the sake of the educational program is important to him. “As long as we are going to be taking things apart to do the infrastructure, why not put the spaces back together in a way that creates an educational setting for today’s standards?” he asked.

He sees the possibility of “softening” the current spaces that “are functional for the 1950s” but fall far short of the kind of collaborative-learning environment favored today.