Watch Out For “Plan C”
Slowly, the still-new majority of the Onteora Central School board is letting a dangerous cat out of the bag. At a recent school board meeting, it was requested that in addition to redistricting “Plan A”, which calls for the creation of a Middle School within the current Junior/Senior High School facility and the maintenance of three elementary schools Onteora-wise, a “Plan C,” rejected by our consultants, should also be looked into, whereby the district will increase the size of its planned Middle School while shrinking its elementary schools from three to two.
This would be an interesting avenue for discussion were it to be opened up to all configurations, including a seemingly logical choice to make the Bennett School the location for such a planned Middle School, adjacent to but separate from the currently centralized Junior and Senior High School campuses district students will be moving on to in time. Which would then entail elementary schools in Phoenicia and the Woodstock/West Hurley areas… drawing school age children to the region’s edges, as it were, for their early education, and then to the district’s center for the core seven years of 5-12 learning.
But we doubt such talk will ever surface because of the current political nature of the district, which seems a bit frightened by any possible decisions, or even talk, that might rattle the nerves of the Olive voting constituency at its center.
Which is a shame… to bring up an idea but hamstring it from the beginning.
And more, to follow months of intense public discussion with what feels like a whim of a detour, called for via the summoning of “economics” as a reasoning hammer, but in a fashion that feels dismissive of not only the diverse constituencies of the wide Onteora community, but also its individual neighborhoods.
Whatever lies ahead for our massive school district, the state’s second largest, geographically, is going to be difficult. Closing another school, no matter where, is going to be hard… especially if one of the choices ends up being one of our schools located in an actual community of streets and stores, and not just a roadside configuration of businesses we’ve become used to over time.
We suggest that everyone slow down on this process and start searching out new ways of re-opening it to the public via outreach into local communities outside school walls. Hold meetings in other meeting halls; attend town and civic meetings to recruit input. And stop thinking in terms of “spinning” the information via newspaper columns and direct mailings in lieu of listening to the wide community, even when that means literally putting one’s ear to the ground to do so.
What we’re working on here is a change as big as any that’s effected our communities in the half century that Onteora’s been in existence. Don’t push ideas based on majorities elected on other issues… let them gestate more naturally.
We don’t want to see Phoenicia lose its school, and all the students utilizing it forced to travel hours longer each day, because of fears of Olive’s wrath.
Our future, as seen in all our kids, and their eventual kids, depends on this issue. PS