December 16, 2011
With 23 comments since publication
by Christine Yeres
In Tuesday’s board of ed meeting it became clear that board members’ unhappiness with the cost of BOCES’ proposed repairs had more to do with the annual cost to CCSD of membership in the Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES group—$3 million per year, $1.9 in staff development and curriculum, $1.1 in special education—than with the $1.5 million CCSD must borrow for the capital improvement projects.
The impact of that borrowing will not be felt until school year 2014-15, and then only as $47,000, then less in the out-years, but more than $3 million of next year’s budget will go to BOCES for operations.
Board members again discussed BOCES’ request two weeks before for $1.5 million, CCSD’s share in an $18 million capital project to repair BOCES’ Yorktown Heights facility. Even though board members know that CCSD and other member school districts must come up with the money that BOCES will need—whether piecemeal as buildings require emergency fixes, or for the whole project up front—board members considered voting “No” to make a point.
Board members balked at the request two weeks ago, peppering BOCES’ representative with suggestions to re-examine BOCES needs and costs and questioning the value of membership in the consortium since CCSD uses BOCES’ student services so little. [See “BOCES asks for $18 million for capital repairs; CCSD’s share is $1.5 million,” NCNOW.org, 12/9/11]
Board members again complained that the method of allocating costs—by property wealth and by school district population—is problematic, given CCSD’s relatively light use of BOCES services. They also thought it unfair that the debt service on the money CCSD would borrow for BOCES’ capital improvements would not be exempted from a 2% cap, as CCSD’s own debt service would be.
The board discussed whether to vote yes or no on funding BOCES capital project, a vote that takes place on January 13, 2011.
Karen Visser: It’s still a hard pill to swallow—$1.5 million [for repairs] when we have seven students at BOCES. I understand we use a lot of [staff and curriculum development] resources, but having to give $1.5 million versus the number of teachers we want to keep…
Alyson Kiesel: It’s a frustrating time to be asking.
Randy Katchis questioned whether BOCES needed the several separate buildings in its Yorktown Heights facility. “Can we consolidate them?” he asked. “The time we visited them and the time they came here, they had not done the heavy lifting [of budget trimming]. And I understand from John [Chow] that if we vote ‘No’ they can bill us anyway. But at this point I can’t succumb to something they haven’t justified when we’re asking our own groups to do the heavy lifting.”
Mester: And how do we know they won’t come back five years from now? They don’t seem to have managed their facilities very well.
Mester was bothered, he said, by BOCES’ method of allocating costs among the member districts: by property wealth and number of students in the school district.
Board members asked Superintendent Lyn McKay whether other school districts had voted yet on the BOCES capital projects proposal. She informed board members that most would vote in the first week of January. “We have to vote by January 13,” she said.
Vicky Tipp: On one hand, we have a mutual obligation to support BOCES. We use it for curriculum, counseling, online course development, the Walkabout program, management services. But this is about a capital project. The numbers they gave us—they have 1700 students and we send ten students from here. The way costs are allocated is a problem…. I’m not inclined to want to support this [capital] project at this point.
The route to take, said Tipp, it to go to back to the NYS legislators to talk about costs.
“The time of business-as-usual is over,” said Tipp. “At another time we might have said ‘Oh, well ... they’re going to bill us anyway, so we might as well do it,’ but that time is over. So I’m not inclined to approve it. This is not to abandon BOCES, but this shouldn’t be the end of the conversation. They have to do more and we can help them. But it’s just not acceptable to go keep going with these NYS standards that don’t make sense.”
Visser: If something fails and they have to bill us, do you think everything—the roofs, the air conditioning will all fail at the same time? For example, if the AC fails tomorrow, they’d have to fix it [and CCSD would be obliged to pay the bill for the AC alone] but that would save us money.
Katchis: But there are so many creative solutions. They could sell the property, they could lease property. Leasing would be a lot cheaper than owning. They could do all sorts of consolidations. We know it’s more expensive to maintain a multi-building facility instead of a single-building facility. They really have to look hard and deep. They should be held to the same standard as our administrative team is held to when they do their financial work. They have to do that heavy lifting.
Katchis questioned the pool repairs BOCES is proposing. “How about an Olympic size pool instead, for communities in the surrounding area? There’s demand for that.”
Mester: They have a huge administrative staff.
Katchis That’s 15 teachers [the $1.5 million BOCES is asking for would pay 15 teachers’ salaries]. We should also give BOCES the specifics to get to “Yes.” Tell them what they need to do to justify the expense, so they don’t just hear “No” from us. In the end, we’ll get a bill anyway, but let’s at least improve the process.
Tipp: As long as we keep not challenging these rules and regulations we’ll never get any kind of change. We have to begin to challenge them.
Copyright 2012 NewCastleNOW.org