Lessons From Our Neighbors
At Arlington High School, the classrooms were cropping up everywhere. On the stage of the auditorium, in the art studio, in what once had been home to a thriving music program. After lunch, the cafeteria doubled as a gymnasium because the gym was divided up to house four classrooms. Class sizes, once 20 to 25 students, topped 30. There was gridlock in the hallways. Tempers flared. Teachers were unhappy. Administrators were over-stretched. Everyone was on edge.
It took three years before the Arlington Central School District in mid-Dutchess County managed to relieve the over-crowding by completing a major expansion of its high school, at a cost of $38 million. Two years later, faced with similar disruptions at jam-packed middle and elementary schools, the district board asked voters to approve a $44 million bond to build two new schools. The new buildings, which opened last fall, have solved the crowding in younger grades with room to spare. But back at the high school, classrooms are once again brimming to capacity, and the district is once again reviewing its options for expansion.
This portrait from Arlington is a familiar one to many school districts that have been forced to absorb rapidly rising enrollments caused by widespread housing development that swept through much of Dutchess County and the mid-Hudson Valley in the 1990s.
With the development wave quickly moving north, school boards in the smaller, rural districts serving Columbia and northern Dutchess towns are faced with similar and, probably, much more severe challenges. How well these elected boards manage to predict and regulate the impact of growth will determine whether their schools can maintain their current educational standards and at what cost to district taxpayers.
In the Pine Plains Central School District, which includes nine northern Dutchess and southern Columbia towns, developers are seeking approvals to build more than 1,300 new houses. Judging by comparable trends in Arlington and elsewhere, if 1,000 homes were built over a five-year period, they would add 1,350 new students to the district, nearly doubling the current enrollment of 1,400.
Beyond the stress and overcrowding in the classrooms, the financial cost of accommodating such a large influx of new students would, in five years time, increase the current annual school levy to existing tax payers by 75%, according to a preliminary analysis by this columnist.
Pine Plains school taxes for the coming year are budgeted at $13 million. Research indicates that the addition of another 1,000 homes would, in five years time, create an additional deficit of $11.5 million, or a gap of $11,500 between the cost of educating kids from each new house and the tax revenues that each house contributes to the school district. The higher costs would be shared by all taxpayers in the district, including the new residents, but the vast majority—more than 80%, according to U.S. Census data-- would fall on today’s property owners.
Taxpayers will also suffer from the rising cost of educating the current student body, a bill which experts expect will continue to increase at 8% annually. Faced with the dual burden of cost inflation and 1,350 new students, the average homeowner today would see his school taxes more than double in five years, the preliminary research indicates.
Asked to comment on these estimates, Superintendent of Schools Linda Kaumeyer replied, “The Pine Plains Central School District cannot endorse any (research) model that is not commissioned by the Pine Plains Board of Education.”
Ms. Kaumeyer added that the board is looking to launch demographic studies and other research that will help the district estimate the potential costs and disruptions posed by the new subdivisions.
Could the burden of 1,000 new homes prove less damaging to the schools and the taxpayers who support them? Possibly. The developers who aim to build 975 homes on the 2,000-acre Carvel estate in Pine Plains claim that the houses will be sold to upscale weekenders whose children will not be attending local schools. But several experienced realtors are skeptical, suggesting there is little demand for the Carvel plan from weekenders. Instead, they see plenty of appetite for mid-priced, full-time homes from suburban New York families looking for cheaper housing, quieter surroundings and solid public schools-- the same package that has drawn thousands of similar families to Arlington and other nearby districts over the past 15 years.
What else can local school boards do to prepare for the possibility, if not the probability, that the housing market may deliver a huge and expensive crop of new students in the coming years?
“One of the things we can do is become an informed partner in the subdivision review process,” said Susan von Reusner, a member of the Red Hook School Board, which has taken an active and formal role in advising town planning boards in the district how to quantify and cope with the costs of rapid growth.
Among other steps, Red Hook officials have explored zoning policies that would delay excessive development until the school district and the town can provide the facilities and public services needed to absorb the increased population. Similar approaches to “phasing in” development, which have worked successfully in Maryland, Massachusetts and other states, will be the topic of a future column.
It took three years before the Arlington Central School District in mid-Dutchess County managed to relieve the over-crowding by completing a major expansion of its high school, at a cost of $38 million. Two years later, faced with similar disruptions at jam-packed middle and elementary schools, the district board asked voters to approve a $44 million bond to build two new schools. The new buildings, which opened last fall, have solved the crowding in younger grades with room to spare. But back at the high school, classrooms are once again brimming to capacity, and the district is once again reviewing its options for expansion.
This portrait from Arlington is a familiar one to many school districts that have been forced to absorb rapidly rising enrollments caused by widespread housing development that swept through much of Dutchess County and the mid-Hudson Valley in the 1990s.
With the development wave quickly moving north, school boards in the smaller, rural districts serving Columbia and northern Dutchess towns are faced with similar and, probably, much more severe challenges. How well these elected boards manage to predict and regulate the impact of growth will determine whether their schools can maintain their current educational standards and at what cost to district taxpayers.
In the Pine Plains Central School District, which includes nine northern Dutchess and southern Columbia towns, developers are seeking approvals to build more than 1,300 new houses. Judging by comparable trends in Arlington and elsewhere, if 1,000 homes were built over a five-year period, they would add 1,350 new students to the district, nearly doubling the current enrollment of 1,400.
Beyond the stress and overcrowding in the classrooms, the financial cost of accommodating such a large influx of new students would, in five years time, increase the current annual school levy to existing tax payers by 75%, according to a preliminary analysis by this columnist.
Pine Plains school taxes for the coming year are budgeted at $13 million. Research indicates that the addition of another 1,000 homes would, in five years time, create an additional deficit of $11.5 million, or a gap of $11,500 between the cost of educating kids from each new house and the tax revenues that each house contributes to the school district. The higher costs would be shared by all taxpayers in the district, including the new residents, but the vast majority—more than 80%, according to U.S. Census data-- would fall on today’s property owners.
Taxpayers will also suffer from the rising cost of educating the current student body, a bill which experts expect will continue to increase at 8% annually. Faced with the dual burden of cost inflation and 1,350 new students, the average homeowner today would see his school taxes more than double in five years, the preliminary research indicates.
Asked to comment on these estimates, Superintendent of Schools Linda Kaumeyer replied, “The Pine Plains Central School District cannot endorse any (research) model that is not commissioned by the Pine Plains Board of Education.”
Ms. Kaumeyer added that the board is looking to launch demographic studies and other research that will help the district estimate the potential costs and disruptions posed by the new subdivisions.
Could the burden of 1,000 new homes prove less damaging to the schools and the taxpayers who support them? Possibly. The developers who aim to build 975 homes on the 2,000-acre Carvel estate in Pine Plains claim that the houses will be sold to upscale weekenders whose children will not be attending local schools. But several experienced realtors are skeptical, suggesting there is little demand for the Carvel plan from weekenders. Instead, they see plenty of appetite for mid-priced, full-time homes from suburban New York families looking for cheaper housing, quieter surroundings and solid public schools-- the same package that has drawn thousands of similar families to Arlington and other nearby districts over the past 15 years.
What else can local school boards do to prepare for the possibility, if not the probability, that the housing market may deliver a huge and expensive crop of new students in the coming years?
“One of the things we can do is become an informed partner in the subdivision review process,” said Susan von Reusner, a member of the Red Hook School Board, which has taken an active and formal role in advising town planning boards in the district how to quantify and cope with the costs of rapid growth.
Among other steps, Red Hook officials have explored zoning policies that would delay excessive development until the school district and the town can provide the facilities and public services needed to absorb the increased population. Similar approaches to “phasing in” development, which have worked successfully in Maryland, Massachusetts and other states, will be the topic of a future column.
posted by James Sheldon at 11:07 AM
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