BERNE — The U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps won’t start at Berne-Knox-Westerlo this coming fall. Superintendent Timothy Mundell told the school board on Monday the program would be too costly for a small school; one third of the secondary school’s 250 students would have to enroll.

Dennis Palow, a Berne town councilman and former Army First Sergeant, had pushed to have a JROTC program started at the high school. Speaking at the school board’s November meeting, Palow, who has trained recruits in ROTC programs at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Siena College, as well as JROTC at Albany High School for two years, said BKW would first have to operate the program as a National Defense Cadet Corps, and would have to fund it entirely.

The annual cost of the program would have been $66,852, including about $53,000 for Palow’s salary and the district would have had to sign a contract ranging from 10 months to a year to employ him. However, should the program go into its third year, Palow had said, the school would need to hire an officer who, as a senior Army instructor, would receive a higher salary than his. He said at that point the district should have secured federal funding to cover part of the program’s costs.

On Monday night, Mundell said that it would cost $115,000 to $125,00 for two people to staff the program.

The full-year program would count as a one-credit elective course and would not require enlisting in the military as ROTC programs do, Palow had said.

To qualify as a JROTC program, 10 percent of students enrolled in grades nine through 12, or 25 students, would have to join by the third year of its running, Palow had said.

At the board’s last regular meeting in January, secondary school Principal Mark Pitterson said that only two surveys sent to parents in December asking about the program were returned. On Monday night, the principal said that, at last count two weeks ago, six parents of seven students had reported back that they were interested in the program, while 13 parents said they were not.

Palow had been allowed to visit students at the secondary school and talk about the program. He said in December that he had collected 32 interested signatures. He could not be reached for comment before press time.

Mundell said that he had spoken with Brenda Gainey, who serves as the Chief of the Army JROTC 2nd Brigade, which covers the northeastern region of the country. Mundell and Gainey had determined that, for the program to be cost-effective at BKW, the school would need to enroll 75 students in the program, or about one-third of the 250 students enrolled in the secondary school. Mundell said that the only means of enrolling that many students would be to make enrollment mandatory or to work with other districts.

Mundell also said that transporting students either to or from other schools would ultimately mean a class period would be two hours long.

School board President Matthew Tedeschi asked Mundell about what the school could offer to those seeking a program that would teach discipline and leadership skills. Mundell replied that the district has 33 clubs and activities at the secondary school as well as 27 modified, junior-varsity, and varsity sport teams.

“I think all those situations are leadership-development opportunities,” Mundell said.

Mundell added that academic programs in history as well as physical education programs offer more hours of instruction than what would be offered in JROTC, which could serve as a substitute for history, government, and physical-education courses. An Advanced Placement, or college-level, course, for example, would offer around twice the hours of instruction of JROTC and college credit, said Mundell.

Tedeschi also asked about Palow’s comments at an earlier meeting, asserting that students in JROTC programs have higher grade-point averages and lower dropout rates. Mundell replied that the secondary school currently has a 95-percent attendance rate, 94-percent graduation rate, 2-percent discipline rate, 1.4-percent dropout rate, and 86.4-percent GPA district-wide.

“This is a moral dilemma for me,” said Mundell. “I’m the guy that’s bringing programs back to the place.”

He noted that, in recent years, JROTC programs are being expected to shoulder more of the financial burden than the federal government and that most schools in the state that have these programs have large student populations and are near military bases.

Mundell said that there is a possibility that the Board of Cooperative Educational Services could support a JROTC program or that BKW could pursue other options for students interested in the military such as the U.S. Navy’s Sea Cadets program. The board agreed to continue looking at such options for students despite not pursuing a fall JROTC.

“It’s not feasible for September,” said Mundell.

During the meeting’s public comment period, four people — two for and two against — spoke about the proposed program. Michele Hall and Ellen Doolin, both mothers of students at BKW, said that the program would provide opportunities for their sons to learn discipline and how to be better citizens.

“Not everyone is built to be a farmer and that’s OK … not everyone excels at sports … not everyone is academically centered,” said Hall.

Doolin was concerned about reports that only two parents had responded to BKW’s survey sent home about the program, saying that she had sent positive responses back with each of her three sons.

Susan Hawkes-Teeter, who had run a general education development, or GED, program at BKW as well as tutoring sessions for 23 years, balked at the cost of the program that would start out around $66,000 a year.

“That just seems like an enormous amount of money, and not in a creative way,” she said.

Both she and Richard Ronconi, a former school board member and veteran who had spoke out against the program before, said they were concerned about the school having a lack of control over the content being taught and the hiring and salary of the instructor.

Mundell said at the meeting that the Department of Defense advertises and does background checks for instructor candidates but that the district interviews and would be in charge of an instructor.

‘Volatile budget process’ and a $23K gap

Mundell reviewed BKW’s current proposed budget for the 2018-19 school year based on the state aid proposed in Governor Andrew Cuomo’s spending plan. The district’s $23 million draft budget has a $237,574 gap between projected revenues and expenses.

This current school year has a budget of $22,657,493, meaning that the school would be seeing a .29-percent increase in the proposed budget. And, while the state aid in the governor’s budget increased for BKW by $212,572, Mundell said that the aid increased at a negative rate of half a percent as compared to last year when the district saw an increase of $269,626.

BKW revenues for the upcoming year include about $10 million in state aid, $10.9 million from the tax levy — the same amount as last year — $1.5 million from reserves, and $498,000 in miscellaneous revenues or transfers, totaling $23,024,924.

The levy limit for BKW, based on a complex state formula, is at 1.98 percent this year, meaning BKW could at most increase its levy by $218,000, said Mundell.

Mundell said that, while the district could potentially save between $60,000 and $180,000 on retirement costs, state aid return on BOCES contracts, reallocating funds and sharing programs with other districts, BKW anticipates increased expenses for starting an after-school and full-day pre-kindergarten programs. The new afterschool program would cost $30,000 and an expected full-day pre-kindergarten program would cost $120,000.

Contractual salary increases are anticipated to be $252,000. Insurance costs are expected to increase by $78,000. A bus transfer would cost $50,000.

Mundell also included $75,000 for the JROTC program before it was later decided not to pursue starting the program this fall. In total, increased expenses including the line item for JROTC would be $605,000; excluding JROTC, expenses would increase by $530,000. Total expenses for the upcoming year would be $23,262,498.

In recent years, the governor’s budget has been more conservative than what the state legislature offers so schools ended up with more state aid in the end. However, when asked about the status of the school aid in the state legislature, Mundell was cautious.

“This is the most volatile budget process ever seen,” said Mundell, of the reports on the legislative process from advisors for the New York State Council of School Superintendents. Mundell also said that the aid from the governor’s officer is “rife with significant issues,” such as plans to cap expense-based aid at 2 percent in the 2019-20 school year. The superintendent urged district residents to contact their state representatives about increasing school aid.

Board member Helen Lounsbury was concerned that the public has not had an opportunity to contribute to BKW’s budget process or the district’s unfolding building project.

The board agreed to move up its regular board meeting on March 12 to 6:30 p.m. so residents could discuss the budget. Lounsbury said that she would like to see the public have an opportunity to comment on the construction project as well.

Mundell said that board members had each selected residents to be part of a committee that would meet in March to discuss the building project but that he was concerned about public input being used at this point in the building project.

“The architects are on a tight timeline … ,” he said. “If that input then doesn’t coincide well with the work that’s been done … ,”

“You’re saying it’s too late for that type of input?” asked Lounsbury.

“I’m just concerned about the meshing of that,” replied Mundell.

The superintendent said that sub-groups made up of school staff worked with the architects on planning upgrades to the district’s buildings.

The $20 million project was approved by district voters in November to support $15 million in infrastructure repairs, technology and security upgrades, and classroom renovations at the elementary school, as well as $5 million to support technology upgrades at the secondary school. About 80 percent of the project is to be funded by state aid.

Other business

The board also:

— Acknowledged Athletic Director Tom Galvin who, as the varsity girls’ basketball coach, won his 350th game last month;

— Approved the deadline of April 16 for residents to submit petitions to run for the school board. One seat, with a three year term, is open. It’s currently held by Lillian Sisson-Chrysler. She told The Enterprise she is still debating whether to see a second term as the school board work takes a lot of her time;

— Approved over 20 appointments to teaching, staff, and coaching positions, including the appointment, upon recommendation of the elementary school principal, of Mundell’s wife, Jeannette Mundell, as the after-school program supervisor. She will be paid $15 an hour for three hours a day during the spring semester.

Mundell said that a candidate to head the program, known as the Bulldog Club, had declined the appointment at the last minute and so the district searched for a replacement before selecting his wife, who is a certified teacher and works as a teaching assistant at Altamont Elementary School;

— Reviewed updates to the state’s plan under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Mundell said that the district could be affected by changes such as eighth-graders taking algebra or Earth science Regents courses, counting toward proficiency levels, as the school has 20 eighth-graders taking algebra; and

— Approved first and second readings of board policies, which included changes to the district’s lunch program. Board member Nathan Elble said that a newly created food committee decided to increase the amount a student can charge on his or her card for lunches from $5 to $10 because of the increased cost of lunches.

“It was discussed that $5 doesn’t cover the cost of two lunches now,” he said.