Presentation by Diana Bowers, Superintendent of HCS, at Colgate University

Diana Bowers, Superintendent of HCS, gave a talk entitled "On the Potential Merger Between HCS and Morrisville-Eaton," held at Colgate University on 11/13.  This summary of the talk and Q&A was written by Heather Roller and edited by Astrid Helfant. If you attended this meeting as well, please post comments or additions.

Dr. Bowers used her same power point slides as in last week's PTO meeting. Of note was that Dr. Bowers brought up several points of contention from that community meeting, without any prodding from yesterday's Colgate University audience. 

For example: Dr. Bowers volunteered that sometimes state incentive money (used to promote mergers) came with increased GEA (Gap Elimination Adjustment - whereby the state takes back school aid in order to balance the state budget). What this means is that the state might give money with one hand while taking it away with the other.  She provided the example of a recent merger between the Canisteo and Greenwood Central School Districts in Steuben County, New York, in which the state gave incentive money but then required a higher GEA.

Also, Dr. Bowers acknowledged that the location of the high school was the major bone of contention during the Community Advisory Committee meetings between Hamilton and Morrisville. And although she continued to stress that the short timeline for the newly merged board would mean that they would surely stick to the recommended school configurations (the "high school will be here"), Dr. Bowers did say that it might only be kept that way for the first year or so.  Several members of the audience hammered this point home -- that it would be up to the new board, yet to be elected, with a possible Morrisville majority.  One person said he was doubtful that future boards (a few years down the line) would preserve the vision of the original districts; they might only look for short-term gains, and someone would have to lose out:  "If we were the bigger district, this would be a much more optimistic moment."  Dr. Bowers then acknowledged that elementary schools in Earlville and Oriskany Falls have closed, despite original plans to keep them open.  (For a review of recent merger outcomes in the state, see https://sites.google.com/site/hamiltoncentraloptions/home/school-mergers-in-ny-state)

The issue of transportation came up mostly in the Q&A.  One person put it this way: we would be transferring our money from one pot (teachers/staff) to another pot (transportation), and that is something she does not support -- longer times on buses, more pollution, etc.

The issue of teacher layoffs also came up.  Dr. Bowers indicated that the SES Study Team's suggestions for reducing staff would not be the ones she would follow, if she were superintendent. There was a lot of talk about what she would do if she became the superintendent of the new district. It was pointed out that this was uncertain. Dr. Bowers tried to be reassuring by stating that the current superintendent at MECS shares a similar philosophy when it comes to which teacher positions should be cut and which programs should be expanded once districts are merged.  She noted that the three men who conducted the SES study would not be applying for the new superintendent position of the merged school district! As evident from their report, these retired superintendents acted like businessmen, not like educators with the best in mind for our students.

Another issue had to do with the data on the slides, which mainly covered the bleak years of 2006-2010.  A good question was raised as to whether we are "riding out a cycle here," and whether things are going to improve (or already have improved, but we just don't have the data yet).

Dr. Bowers mentioned past conversations with Colgate administrators (Joanne Borfitz, David Hale, Jeff Herbst) about how Colgate could help support the school district. One way in which Colgate has been able to support is through the additional $300,000 (on top of its yearly contribution of $200,000), which is being used to pay off debt. This amount was strategic in the sense that once Colgate completes its 3-year commitment to this extra amount, this debt will have been paid off and HCS won't necessarily notice the subsequent reduction in Colgate's support back down to $200,000 per year. 

In general, however, Dr. Bowers seemed pessimistic about audience proposals for more local partnerships in lieu of the merger as "we've been doing out-of-the-box thinking for the past 5 years."  One such proposal was for HCS to offer fewer than its current 9 AP classes as students could simply take these at Colgate. Dr. Bowers countered this with the fact that the school had changed its schedule a few years back so as to enable high school students to take more Colgate classes. However, she had received feedback from HCS students who said that they prefer to take such advanced classes in house. Astrid Helfant argued in favor of maintaining AP classes at the high school, as the students get an incredible amount of guidance from their teacher due to the daily classes and lab sessions every other day (in the case of AP science classes) as opposed to the 14-week semester at Colgate during which classes meet 2-3 times per week with a once per week lab session for science.

Another audience member noted the "nightmare scenario" of not getting the promised incentive money and having lost control over school:  "It's so surprising that you would be doing this on the grounds of state promises," he said, that you acknowledge have been broken in the past.  Dr. Bowers' response, in a nutshell, was that she does not want us to blame her later for not at least considering the merger option, despite these reasonable concerns.  And if we vote the merger down on Dec. 10th, we should still engage in a conversation about how to deal with HCS's very real financial constraints.

Related to this was the issue of dependence on state aid.  Dr. Bowers acknowledged that we would be far more dependent on state aid as a merged district.  She thought that HCS debt was "about the same" as Morrisville's; several audience members tried to set the record straight on this, but we didn't come up with the actual numbers (that Morrisville has about 70% more school debt than we do) until she had moved on to other topics.