Communities & Consensus...
The Onteora School Board’s recent split-decision to begin moving the district towards a 5-8 Middle School, although well-meaning, disappoints us on a number of fronts, based not so much on the ideal of the configuration itself as its deeper ramifications, as well as the process by which this final decision was reached.
The letters that have started streaming in on this issue state the problem pretty clearly… people are afraid that the new Middle School will force the closure of another community-based elementary school in a district still reeling from the closure of West Hurley Elementary five years ago. They feel the individual sense of community that they cherished when raising families in the area has been thwarted for nominal savings on a district-wide basis.
Beneath the surface, many are saying that the very configuration of the 4-3 split vote, with all but one of the majority voters hailing from Olive, which itself tried to split off from the rest of the district a few years ago during the midst of the Large Parcel debacle, bodes trouble for the decision. They note that when breaking communities, a greater sense of communal consensus should be worked towards. Maybe it would have been better to wait on such a decision until everyone could be behind it, especially given the way so much of the public input given during the process leading up to this decision weighed in against the avenue that has now been taken?
There’s now a growing movement in Woodstock and West Hurley to find a way of setting up a separate school district. From what was expected from the Phoenicia community at the board’s meeting set for the day this editorial was going to press, June 19, a similar sentiment seems to be growing now in Phoenicia.
Trying to look at the big picture here, we’ve noticed a couple of things. First, that despite recommendations to the contrary from our state Department of Education, among other entities, a vast majority of districts around the U.S. are still running with a 6 to 8 middle school configuration that, studies imply, seems to be working just fine. Secondly, that the actual funding that could be saved by creating a larger middle school, and the slimming down of our elementary education to two community facilities, is nominal, at best.
More importantly, though, we feel that shifting away from facilities that center hamlets and villages whose kids can walk to school, to larger institutions reliant on bussing, runs counter to the paradigmatic shifts so many are now suggesting we’ll be making in the coming generation. That the decision that’s been made was based on a low point that’s rapidly changing as more families move from cities and suburbs to cogent communities where they can drive less; the numbers of kids in our schools will likely rise again, especially as places like Boiceville, Phoenicia and Woodstock gain residents via new sewer and affordable housing projects.
We have been proponents of centralized facilities between towns and counties for some time now. Highway and police departments are perfect for sharing, in our view. Pools and parks. Shopping and service centers.
But not schools and post offices and libraries and the other things that make our small communities vital, in our current view. Not when the costs of getting around are rising like they are, and people’s needs for communities beyond what they find online, or via mass media, are so acute.
But a decision has been made… so let’s make the best of it. Let’s now look long and hard at how best to implement this new 5-8 Middle School ideal. Should we put 11 and 12 year olds in the same building complex as high school juniors and seniors? Or in a separate campus. And if separate, how far from the center of the district should they be?
We move on, now, to the district’s long-awaited process of judging its facilities, and figuring out what will need repair, what will be sold, what will become what for the next 50 years… a long ways off, and sure to be a span of time as full of changes, if not more, than those occurred over the past half century.
In the meantime, our nation’s birthday is coming up… as good a time as any to consider such matters of progress and community, present worries and the future, taxes and ideals. After all, it’s out of such considerations that we became who we are today…
It’s all about, has been and will be, communities and (the ideal, at least) consensus.
PS