GUILDERLAND — As one citizen expressed incredulity that the school district’s budget is expected to increase 20 percent in the next five years, another urged administrators, “Let’s stop calling it a capacity crisis when we’re talking about a financial crisis.”

The comments closed a two-hour-and-20-minute session during which school leaders presented data from a consultant’s report on building use, and citizens had a chance to ask questions and state concerns. A dozen people spoke from a group of about 30.

In June, consultant Paul Seversky presented a report that concluded with six “scenarios”: One maintained the status quo and the other five proposed saving money by closing an elementary school — four would have closed Altamont Elementary and one would have shut Lynnwood. Seversky calculated this would save $1.2 million to $2 million annually. This year’s budget is $92 million.

Seversky’s report said that pupil capacity at the five elementary schools is under-used by about 14 percent; the middle school is under-used by about 25 percent; and the high school is also under-used by about 25 percent.

Months of village protests followed and, in August, the school board, in a split vote, decided to set aside Seversky’s recommendations. The plan now is to hold a “brainstorming” session on Nov. 6 and then to appoint a task force to make recommendations to the board in a year’s time.

“Here’s the $64,000 question,” Superintendent Marie Wiles said Monday night. “When all is said and done…do we have a building capacity problem?”

If the answer is yes, she said, “We have to figure out what steps to take next.”

She said she would have been happier with a report that recommended all five elementary schools be closed because that would have engendered a broader conversation, rather than predominantly Altamont interest.

“We’ve started a conversation,” she said. “It’s just not a broad-based conversation.”

Wiles conceded in response to one question, “There are elements of the study that were disappointing.” She went on, “However, there is information here to guide our conversation.”

The challenges

Wiles opened an hour-long overview by delineating three challenges she said Guilderland faces: declining enrollment, excess capacity, and diminishing resources.

Assistant Superintendent for Business Neil Sanders said, in the past decade, enrollment had decreased by 13 percent from 5,645 in 2004-05 to 4,908 in 2014-15. Sanders noted that 415 graduates left Guilderland last June while only 339 kindergartners entered this fall. He also said figures from the 1950s when the district first centralized and in the early decades were not readily available.

Sanders cited figures from the Capital District Regional Planning Commission that showed “very slow growth” for Guilderland’s population from 30,011 in 1990 to a projected 38,403 in 2050.

On the problem of excess capacity, Sanders said that classrooms, which would otherwise be empty, are used for small-group instruction, meeting space, or storage, or they are rented out to the Board of Cooperative Educational Service for special-needs students or to the Early Childhood Education Center for preschoolers. He also said that entire hallways of lockers are cordoned off at the middle school because of decreased enrollment.

The third problem, diminished resources, said Sanders, was due to reduced state aid — Guilderland will receive $1.2 million less this year than it did six years ago — and to a tax-levy limit. The district has stayed under the levy limit since it was enacted three years ago and has faced budget gaps ranging from $1.8 million to $3.1 million.

Consequently, Guilderland has cut 228 posts, which accounts for 45 percent of the teaching assistants, 22 percent of the administrative or supervisory staff, 20 percent of the support staff, and 18 percent of the teachers.

Making a rough estimate, Sanders projected a $1.4 million budget gap for next year.

Wiles said the study was undertaken to see if the district really had too much space. She displayed a chart listing each school with its enrollment set against benchmarks determined by the State Education Department, by the district’s contracts, and finally by the class-size guidelines used in developing the annual budget.

Wiles stressed that there are no plans to change those current class-size guidelines of 18 to 23 for kindergarten through second grade, 21 to 25 for third through fifth grades, 24 to 26 for sixth through eighth grades, and 26 to 27 for nine through 12th grades. She also called them “the envy” of other school districts that, due to budget problems, have increased class sizes.

The chart showed in red the school enrollments that fell under the guidelines, that is, that weren’t filled to capacity — Altamont, Pine Bush, and Westmere elementary schools, and Farnsworth Middle School.

Wiles said she recommended Paul Seversky to the board, which approved, because he had “extensive experience” gathering and organizing such data and analyzing it; he had spent 40 years in public education; and he could be hired through the Madison-Oneida BOCES. The cost of his study was $18,890, which, after the reimbursement in BOCES aid from the state, came to a total cost of $8,330 for the district.

Wiles noted that the first formal mention of the need for a study was in March 2011; she went through the timeline of developing the study, and also went over an extensive list of all the data that was collected from the district for the study.

Wiles also clarified errors in the study — a misunderstanding about the house system at Farnsworth and about the role of school librarians; all the elementary library media specialists “have very rigorous and full days,” she said as they serve as the “hub of how we handle information with teachers.” There were also errors in reporting the 2008 enrollment for Altamont Elementary, in a listing in Seversky’s class-size chart, and in the average cost of a bus run.

Response

Towards the close of the hour-and-20 minutes of comments, Peter Brabant, the principal of Altamont Elementary School, thanked the panel of administrators — the superintendent and three assistant superintendents — for their “openness” in answering questions during the televised session.

“It’s just gutsy to put yourself out there,” he said, concluding, “It’s not an us against them; it’s an us for us.”

Asked about using excess space for pre-kindergarten programs, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction Demian Singleton noted that kindergarten is not yet mandated by the state and said talk of state-required pre-kindergarten is “a tad premature and politically driven.”

He also said that state budget excess funds would likely go to the “Big 5,” meaning the city districts of Buffalo, New York City, Rochester, Syracuse, and Yonkers.

Altamont’s mayor, James Gaughan, asked what reductions the district would make so that residents could get the breaks promised by the state government.

Sanders responded that, to qualify, school districts have to show savings of 1 percent through sharing, and that Guilderland is working on that through BOCES, for example, being part of a consortium for health insurance.

Asked if Guilderland would still have a problem if it were at 100 percent capacity, Sanders responded, “If we had more students, we’d have more expenses but more aid.”

He likened it to a family whose children had grown and gone, and their bedrooms sat empty, costing money to heat and maintain. Wiles expanded on that comparison, saying it was fine to keep a big empty house if the family could afford it — the extra rooms could be used at Christmas gatherings, for example — but, if it meant cutting back in other essential areas, keeping the spare rooms had to be looked at.

Asked if Guilderland had a marketing plan, Wiles said, the district doesn’t have a marketing or branding plan like a business but that people use Guilderland’s website and rankings in local publications to gauge the schools. She said there might be merit in looking at how people are attracted to the district.

David Glass, of Altamont, noted that the chart on population showed, in another 20 years, enrollment would be up to the current level and asked if the district had fluctuated by 20 percent before. This echoed concerns raised last week by another Altamont resident, Nicholas Fahrenkopf, who asserted that the time span used by Seversky was too small.

“How big a deal is this 20-percent fluctuation between highs and lows?” asked Glass. “Have we seen that before?”

“We’ve closed buildings and opened them again,” responded Wiles.

The Guilderland and Fort Hunter elementary schools were closed in the 1970s. When the echo boom and suburban development caused increased enrollment, Guilderland Elementary, which had been rented to a Hebrew school, was re-opened. Fort Hunter had been sold; Pine Bush Elementary was built nearby.

 Wiles said accounts of discussions in the 1970s were similar to current discussions. “If you changed the typeface, it could be today,” she said.

Glass asked about going over the state-set levy limit, which requires a supermajority, or 60 percent vote, to pass rather than a simple majority, or 50 percent vote.

Wiles responded that, while budgets in recent years have passed by a supermajority — this year’s $92 million school budget passed with 65.8 percent of the vote — that has not always been the case at Guilderland.

“That is a gamble,” she said. “A lot of this rides on what happens to school funding.” The challenge, she said, is to close a $1.5 million or $2 million budget gap without hurting the programs. “That’s what we’re balancing here,” said Wiles. She asked: Does having the extra space change what Guilderland will be about? “It’s our responsibility to ask the question,” said Wiles.

Brabant, the principal of Altamont Elementary School, asked about redistricting.

“Redistricting doesn’t create more students,” said Wiles. “It just moves them around.”

She noted that the “flex zone” created on 20 streets between Guilderland and Westmere elementary schools, where the district looks on a family-by-family basis at which building can best meet needs, has helped ease pressures. Wiles said that flex zones could be considered as well between Guilderland and Pine Bush or between Lynnwood and Altamont.

Asked which school is worth the most, Sanders said it was too preliminary for administrators, without community and board guidance, to look for answers to that question.

Wiles said the district is “totally open” to see “who’s out there” that might want to rent rooms from the district.

Singleton was asked what configurations might work best educationally. He responded that the Princeton model, where students are grouped by grade level rather than geographically had pros — a tighter community — and cons — additional transitions. He also said, with such a spread-out district, transportation would be a challenge.

Singleton said that housing kindergarten through sixth grades at the elementary schools was “a very viable option” but he didn’t know if there was space to accommodate all the sixth-graders. On paper, he said, it would be easier to move the fifth-graders back to the middle school, perhaps creating a separate house just for fifth grade.

Asked if she were aware of the number of districts that had closed schools after having Seversky do a study, Wiles said, “When a school district does a study like this, it’s probably because they feel they have the extra space.”

She also said what she was interested in was gathering data “to look at it with a fresh set of eyes.”

Wiles concluded, “I don’t think anyone is wanting to close a school. We are interested in preserving the quality of the program, K through 12.” Seversky was hired “to give us a starting place in the conversation,” she said.

Donald Csaposs of McKownville suggested that the brainstorming session on Nov. 6 should not focus just on building capacity and use but, rather, the “conversation should be much broader in nature.”

Wiles agreed. “It isn’t just building capacity,” she said. “It’s district capacity…to provide a quality program to our kids when resources are tight…It has to be a bigger picture…To me, the problem is…How do we preserve the quality of program if our resources are whittled away year in and year out?”

“In the end,” asked Mayor Gaughan, “who is going to do this…It’s a huge effort. Who are going to be the worker bees?”

Jean Guyon, who had spoken to the board earlier this month about alternative revenue sources, urged that the district make use of its residents who are willing to spend many hours working “for a good solution to this problem.”

Wiles likened the process to creating the annual school budget, in which every administrator in the district participates, she said. “The administrative team will do their part, filtered through the district office, vetted by the board,” she said. “It’s really our work.”

She went on, “We can get 100 ideas…We have to figure out which…have the most ability to solve the problem in a way that is acceptable…What’s at stake is important enough to do the work…But we want to work smart.”