Hamilton International Scholars Program (HISP)

Last Thursday, Dr. Alston wrote Education Matters: Hamilton International Scholars Program (Proposal)

At the next Hamilton Board of Education meeting, March 10, 2016, I will present a proposal for the Hamilton Central School District to host tuition paying students from across the world. The title of this program is the Hamilton International Scholars Program (HISP). The Board of Education will seek input concerning HISP. ... The meeting will be held in the auditorium of the Hamilton Central School and begin at 6 PM...

And he says that the "model we are proposing" is seen at Great Work Stories: Newcomb School - YouTube

Published on Aug 28, 2013
How do you expand a shrinking public school in the middle of nowhere? When Skip Hults became superintendent of Newcomb Central School in the heart of Adirondack Park, he inherited a tradition of excellence, a talented faculty, a supportive community, and 55 kids to fill 350 seats. It was a case of grow or die. But how do you grow a school?

Yesterday Radio Free Hamilton reported Dr. Alston's announcement at HCS considers plan to attract foreign students Thursday, again with the August 2013 video. Hults started his program in 2006; it's still going on. It happens that in December 2013, I wrote about this as a possibility for HCS at HamiltonCentralOptions: International Students

No single proposal will solve any district's problems; we're looking for proposals which have helped other districts with low enrollment, both in and out of New York State. One is quite simple: it turns out that students from a variety of nations would like to spend a year or two of high school in the United States...

and among other links, I gave Rural Leader Buoys School With Foreign Students - Education Week

Recruiting tuition-paying international students has saved the school by bolstering its finances and population, and it's changed its culture by exposing Newcomb students to diverse heritages and languages. It's also redefined the meaning of "family" to the many residents who have hosted visiting international students.
"I believe this has the potential to become a rural norm," Hults says. "It's a win-win."

A few days later I wrote HamiltonCentralOptions: Appealing to International Students

I posted on the possibility that appealing to international students could have financial, academic, and cultural benefits for the school (and quite possibly for schools nearby, as one case where we might share benefits as well as costs). I'd like to say a little more about that.
One interesting question: why would students from China want to come to American schools?...

The following month I reported on a meeting where it was discussed, at HamiltonCentralOptions: 2014-15 Budget Process --- Join In!

Astrid brought this up at the meeting and Diana replied that HCS did indeed go through the "accreditation" process with Homeland Security so we are "SEVIS-certified"; indeed we are on page 108 of last June's official list at DHS and we can accept foreign students with "F" visas, although not "M" visas. See ...
And Clinton High School went through this in 2004 but may have dropped it, their website doesn't mention it....

That April, after another meeting, I wrote HamiltonCentralOptions: Pretty Good News from April 8 "Community Leaders/Fiscal" Meeting

Astonishingly, this could happen next year and could add another $70K--$100K to the budget. (The tuition may be less than the average cost of educating an HCS student, but is far more than the marginal cost; it's mostly "profit".) ...

Update: notes from other attendees: Susan Marafino adds

I mentioned that [Carolyn Hsu] would be a good person to be involved with the potential exchange student program...

All that is from late 2013 and early 2014, when Newcomb was in the news. There had of course been earlier reports and videos, including this Newcom February 2010 "welcome" video in Russian, showing a bit about how hard they were trying: A Newcomb Welcome.mpg - YouTube

A video introducing the Newcomb Central School community to our friends from Russia....

Then there was the Channel One report in 2011: Channel One News: Newcomb High School - YouTube

Oct 26, 2011
This New York school welcomes int'l students that enhance education.

Nowadays, the Newcomb School top page links to a USA Today story from the same period (February 2014): Public schools recruiting international high schoolers

Perhaps more significant for Newcomb: Students like Ipek have attracted more local kids, drawn by the prospect of a more comprehensive, global education. As a result, the school has doubled in size since 2007 to 109 students. Only 18 of those are international — the rest are local students who heard about the program and moved into the district to be part of it. They also were attracted by a partnership with local colleges that helps them earn credits before they graduate.

That partnership aspect continues today: Paul Smith's, Newcomb team up | Paul Smith's College

Paul Smith's College is partnering with Newcomb Central School this fall on a new advanced studies program....

Of course HCS does have rather an advantage in the local-colleges department.

2014-15 Budget Process --- Join In!

As the Budget Calendar mentioned, our January 21 BoE meeting (which will supposedly be on Youtube eventually (see below) was largely about the budget, starting with the NYS proposed aid in the 2014-15 EXECUTIVE BUDGET PROPOSAL which had just come out a couple of hours before. It was not happy reading; Aaron commented that he had expected our Gap Elimination Adjustment to come down fairly substantially which would have led to a relatively straightforward budget process. Instead, it came down by 6%, remaining still above $500K, leaving us with a back-of-the-envelope $250K deficit. It's a big problem for many schools... as North Country Public Radio quoted What does Cuomo's budget mean for schools in the North Country?

"...it seems odd that the governor touts increasing aid to education on the one hand and fails to say that he’s taking it out of the pockets of educators with the other hand"

Of course it's not just the GEA; our insurance costs jumped sharply, more than in quite some time; apparently this is a consequence of Obamacare. (It's a surprise to me; I had thought NY to be one of the very few states where our existing mandates would make the ACA look good, except for the "narrow networks" phenomenon which may provide nasty surprises for New Yorkers who spend time in other states and expect to have non-emergency care while they're away.)

And there are mandates for equipment for simultaneous test-taking, and there's an individual property which was reassessed a couple of years ago from $1.3M to $1.7M and the appeal is almost certainly going to result in a settlement back down to $1.2M with our school on the hook for some excess taxes. Ouch.

The applicable tax cap is Whichever Is Less of 2% and the official CPI which is 1.46%, plus a local growth factor of almost exactly 1%, so income is not rising to match outgo unless we vote to override the tax cap.So...

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Please Come To The 5:30PM Jan 29th High School Library Meeting

Bring Ideas

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Ideas? Of course there is always sharing; the actual merger plan did not save money (long-run) because the diseconomy of scale from added transportation cancelled the economy of scale from cutting staff, but sharing doesn't have to involve large-scale transportation costs. Diana discussed doing more (mainly administrative) sharing among the 4 local schools through BOCES, and we can do more athletic sharing (girls' basketball with Madison). This will not save a lot, but every little bit helps.

Shared Admin can go pretty far, there is such a thing as a Shared Superintendent possibility; it's not obvious that this is applicable to our situation. In general, if we consult the New York State Professional Staffing Ratios" (large PDF) (we're on page 244), we might find that some other small schools do it with reduced staff and maybe we can do what they do...or maybe we can do New Things; telepresence robotics is taking off, after all, and getting lots cheaper than being there.

Smart Schools Equipment for telepresence, for distance learning (below), and to satisfy the mandate Diana mentioned for simultaneous test-taking is not just getting cheaper: it may be covered by the "smart schools allocation" at the bottom of the "BUDGET PROPOSAL", which for HCS is $409,770. It's likely that the "allocation" is intended to encourage long-term shift towards options like the Khan Academy, or simply lessons like our own Youtube channel to be used locally or shared. In the long run that's important, but it's possible that some replacement of people cost with machine cost will actually be feasible even in the fairly short term. (It's also possible that the geek writing this is overly optimistic.)

Natural Gas was discussed; my understanding of Diana's remarks is that it will save each year but that this coming year the savings is roughly cancelled by the installation cost. Ken Bausch points out by email that if if that understanding is correct, then it's a normal capital cost which should be funded by a bond issue, just as we do to amortize bus cost; in fact it's far more obvious in the case of the one-time-only natural gas cost. If indeed that's how it goes, and if the link above was correct in projecting $160,000/year savings, then we're more than halfway home right there. If.

Distance Learning is a current topic for Madison; Ferdinand sends a link to MCS bringing new instruction via distance learning through BOCES and in the long run this may be a major winner, but probably not a big issue for the next few budgets. Well, it might be.

Alumni/Community Fundraising was discussed; Amy Hurta as Treasurer reported that she had learned the day before that the Sports Boosters, like the Emerald Foundation, is in fact a tax-exempt 401(c)3 organization listed with the IRS, "and always has been." Send Money! Andrew Coddington says the Emerald Foundation is always looking for alumni donations and tries to keep an alumni list, so Send Names/Addresses! (And Money!) And there's also HCS alumni site which isn't very active--but links to a facebook page.

Sponsorship Stephanie McClintick (via email) brings up the possibility of local company sponsorship of teams and other activities, which is a common development elsewhere; the Albany Times-Union reported a year ago on Schools look to sponsors to help pay for programs - Times Union

Cuts force districts to find alternative funding

which is certainly a familiar story; from this past fall we can add This student planner brought to you by… | The New York World

New York City middle and high school students will be receiving free planners next school year courtesy of corporate sponsors, under a new city Department of Education plan.

There is an organization to support this kind of thing: Sponsorship and Advertising | School Administrators Association of New York State

The Corporate Sponsorship Program helps SAANYS to achieve its mission of continuing to provide programs and services to the school leaders of New York State - leading to greater opportunities for the students within their care. Participating in the program provides companies with many opportunities to interact with school leaders from all over the state.

Of course, there can be problems, and caution is advised; from Utah we hear High school sponsorship contracts raise concerns, but also benefit programs | Deseret News

In this piece, Amy Donaldson examines the regulatory environment surrounding these deals and how local coaches have gotten into legal trouble with respect to such contracts.

It could happen here.

Foreign Students I've written before about the possibility of tuition-paying international students and about some of the reasons why HCS might appeal to some. Astrid brought this up at the meeting and Diana replied that HCS did indeed go through the "accreditation" process with Homeland Security so we are "SEVIS-certified"; indeed we are on page 108 of last June's official list at DHS and we can accept foreign students with "F" visas, although not "M" visas. See SEVP Certification Basics and maybe Everything you need to know about Foreign Students (F-1) studying in Public Schools

• Secondary school attendance is limited to twelve months.
• F-1 secondary school students are required to pay the school the full cost of education by repaying the school system for the full, unsubsidized, per capita cost of providing the education to him or her.
• F-1 students are prohibited from attending public elementary schools or publicly-funded adult education programs.

And Clinton High School went through this in 2004 but may have dropped it, their website doesn't mention it. The idea went nowhere at HCS, beyond conversations with a company which actually offered to provide students and pay $2,000/year to HCS for their education. Not a good offer, in fact much less than is required by the second requirement above. Is the idea hopeless? I don't think so, not at all. Consider the town of Millinocket, Maine, reported in Millinocket using China program money to keep schools going in 2014 — Bangor Daily News...

Seven Chinese students attended Stearns this year, each paying about $24,000 tuition. ...
Millinocket is among several Maine municipalities hoping to offset shrinking school revenues with Chinese students but had recruiting difficulties. An informal poll of state public high schools’ Chinese student enrollments taken in February showed the most students, 12, at Orono High School. Some private schools had close to 100.

What does Millinocket have that we don't? Connections with Chinese high schools, apparently. Hmm... but we do have potential connections through Colgate faculty/students/admin, including the China Study Group. USA Today reported last July on U.S. summer camps increasingly popular overseas

U.S. summer camps are increasingly popular in countries such as China, where rising middle class can send their children to experience American life -- and possibly set the stage for going to college in the USA

The article featured Colgate rather prominently. At the wrong level for our purposes, but still -- it's worth exploring. Do we have such connections? (Carolyn?) Do we have people, preferably parents of current HCS students, who'd be hosts? (Astrid?) Of course this doesn't have to be China, but China is prominent in the F-1 high-school student visa discussions.

That's all I can think of right now. Diana wanted to emphasize that ideas need to be considered in the context of our layers of regulations, mandates, subsidies... When Ferdinand talked about transportation costs, working with local transport to save some of the $90,000/year we give to BOCES, she replied that transportation is among our highest aid-ratio costs so that much of the money we give BOCES comes back to us, and even if we found a cheaper transportation solution it's likely that the budget cost would be higher. We can't count on specific aid ratios for long-term planning, but for right now, let's talk about the next few years' budgets, with focus on next year.

Update: I didn't mention Activism, or at least Letter-Writing; note that the state's disappointing Budget Proposal is not a Final Budget. There will be a post about this, Reasonably Soon Now.

Update2:The BoE meeting is now a (long) video at ▶ Hamilton CSD BOE Meeting 1.21.14

...apologies, the next one will have better sound.

Below is the order [of] events and the times in which each Agenda Item appears:
0-10min: Items 1.0-3.6, Call to order, Preliminary Action, Consent Agenda (Business Operations)
10-11 min: Item 4, Consent Agenda (Old Business)
11-17 min: Item 5, Community Participation Part 1
17-21 min: Items 6-6.4, New Business
21-35 min: Item 6.5, Budget Sports
35-55 min: Item 7, Information and Correspondence
55-1:41 min: Item 8, Community Participation Part 2.

Hooray for open government!

Update 3 Yes, the sound is terrible. If you have LOTS of energy then

• (a) download the video from youtube, lots of e.g. Firefox extensions for that;
• (b) split off the sound track, probably in iMovie or whatever basic video handler you have;
• (c) download Audacity (free) from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
• (d) follow, e.g. http://www.podtopia.net/gettingstarted/removenoise.shtml

No problem. Well, umm, assuming you have several hours...make it a day, this is a long video and there will probably be synchronization issues when you put it back together so you may have to do it one clip at a time. And the result will not be perfect. No, I'm not gonna try, but I'll post the result if somebody else does.

International Students

No single proposal will solve any district's problems; we're looking for proposals which have helped other districts with low enrollment, both in and out of New York State. One is quite simple: it turns out that students from a variety of nations would like to spend a year or two of high school in the United States. As the New York State School Boards Association (nyssba.org) put it a a couple of years ago, FRN12 Issue Brief: F-1 Visa (pdf)

There exists a serious educational issue for small rural schools in New York State. Currently, many such schools face the prospect of closing due to declining enrollment and insufficient state aid. The resulting impact on their communities would be devastating, given the vital nature of these schools as leading employers, as well as community, cultural and emergency centers. Just as importantly, many of these schools have no viable options for educating their children should their schools close. Geography makes transportation to surrounding districts too burdensome on small children.
One exciting way to keep these essential small schools in operation is to allow international students to spend their secondary education as students at these schools. There is an abundance of international students willing to pay tuition, which avoids any cost to local or state taxpayers. The cultural advantages to New York State students are significant as well...

That was written in support of Schumer's proposed "F-1 Visa" reform bill, which would have made it easier for the students to stay longer, and I believe that bill died in committee; not sure. Even so, the system works well enough to help a great many international students attend quite a few U.S. schools. Let's start in rural South Dakota, Spring 2012: Public schools sell empty classroom seats abroad | Reuters

Superintendent Grant Vander Vorst has an improbable plan to save his little school on the prairie - by turning it into a magnet for wealthy foreign students. This year, 11 students from China, Thailand, Germany and elsewhere account for nearly 20% of high school enrollment, bringing cash and a welcome splash of diversity to an isolated patch of the Great Plains.
Grant-Deuel is not alone. Across the United States, public high schools in struggling small towns are putting their empty classroom seats up for sale.
In Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, and Lake Placid, New York, in Lavaca, Arkansas, and Millinocket, Maine, administrators are aggressively recruiting international students.
They're wooing well-off families in China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia and dozens of other countries, seeking teenagers who speak decent English, have a sense of adventure - and are willing to pay as much as $30,000 for a year in an American public school.
The end goal for foreign students: Admission to a U.S. college.

As the Huffington Post put it in 2011: Public Schools Recruit Tuition-Paying International Students To Boost Revenue

It's a growing trend: Other schools are doing the same in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, Virginia and Washington, according to a student recruitment agency in San Francisco.
Next fall, Millinocket Superintendent Ken Smith hopes to have at least 60 Chinese students – each paying $13,000 in tuition and another $11,000 for room and board – at Stearns High School. Stearns at one time had close to 700 high school students, but enrollment has fallen over the years to under 200 this year.
The first-year batch is now being signed up, Smith said, with plans for more international students in the years ahead. Local students will benefit by being exposed to those from abroad, and Chinese students will gain from being immersed in the local culture, he said.
When Smith went on a recruiting trip to the cities of Shanghai, Beijing and Fuzhou last fall, students there had never heard of Maine. But they knew they wanted to come to America to enhance their chances of going to an American college or university.
"They didn't know where Maine was, but they knew where Harvard was," Smith said. "They all want to go to Harvard."

From Education Week last February, we see tiny Newcomb, NY: Education Week: Rural Leader Buoys School With Foreign Students

In its high school grades, the school has about 40 students; 18 are from other countries. That's a significant number, given that the town has only about 200 families.
"We've gotten to the point where we're turning students away," Hults says.
Over the years, Hults has learned the differences between various types of visas, and he says the type of visa the district now requires enables it to receive tuition and accept host-family living expenses.
Newcomb has earned a good reputation among international students, and it sells itself with its location in the heart of a 6-million-acre park and its strong academics, Hults says.
Hults also has established relationships with more than 10 agencies that help find foreign students who want to come to his district.
The district requires students to have a conversational level of English-speaking proficiency to ensure they can succeed. Any lesser ability would negatively affect the classroom experience for local students, Hults says.
"If it weren't benefiting our students, I wouldn't do this program," Hults explains. "It truly does benefit our students. It has opened their eyes. It has given them broad exposure to the world, and for the kids who come here, they remain a part of our community. I think they will forever."

I think it's important to emphasize that kind of thing, rather than just the federal certification requirement and the agencies to "recruit" foreign students and the opportunity for our Superintendent to travel to China or Germany or wherever. International Student Program Adds Zest to School Life | Adirondack Foundation

Each international student pays tuition, which covers the costs of academics, including English-as-a-Second-Language support. Each lives with a local family that has at least one child at Keene Central School. A small stipend from the program fee helps the host family with expenses.
The impact that this program is having on this school of 160 students, K-12, is profound. High school students speak of the value of having a different perspective in the classroom, especially classes like American History and Government. “I wish we had this program sooner,” said one senior.

Actually it might be a very good thing if M-ECS, MCS, and SVCS had such programs too, sharing costs, appealing to different though overlapping groups of international students, and so forth. Mainly, though, it seems to me that Colgate's proximity is likely to make this work out well, not only because of the option of taking a Colgate course or two as a junior or senior, but because some Colgate students studying country X or its language might benefit from interacting with kids from that country, and the benefit might be mutual. I'm imagining a grant application to pay some such students for practical and emotional support...


Or then again, maybe not. But we should be considering it.

Notes on Mid-York and NextDoor

  Yesterday (Thursday December 4) the Mid-York Weekly came out, with an advertisement version of the ABCs of HCS. There were also letters to the editor: our continuing commenter Wanda Berry; Alice & Peter Klepeis; Charlie Naef; Susanne Farrington; Stanley Roe.  In no particular order:

  Charlie, as former mayor, notes (as I have various times on this blog and elsewhere) that it would be possible to vote "yes" now and still vote against the merger later, concluding that "I haven't made up my mind how I would vote next February, but I don't want a determined minority to deny me and others that choice before we see a final proposal." I don't know who is in the minority here, I really just don't know -- but in fact we have seen the final proposal. The final proposal is to merge and have a single Board of Education which will then decide where all the students will go, how much in local taxes they'll ask for from all members of the combined community, and so forth. (We've also seen a "merger plan" which will very likely be followed for the first year or so, which doesn't save money because there doesn't seem to be any way to do that while complying with state mandates.) If there's some detail that Charlie wants to wait for, something which the DoE would provide but only after our December 10th vote, then now is the time to say so. His letter is the first time I've seen anyone suggesting that some such detail might exist, and I have no idea what that detail might be. (I would be happy to put up guest posts from him or from other merger supporters explaining this.)

  Alicia & Peter, like Stanley and like Susanne, are concerned with transportation both in terms of cost and in terms of quality of life. Well, yes -- if Morrisville and Hamilton were in walking distance, we'd have merged. :-) And if transportation were cheaper, so that the merger proposal represented an actual opportunity to save on costs and therefore improve district financial stability and long-run student opportunities, then I personally would still be regretfully supporting the merger, despite the quality-of-life and community damage and loss of real estate value and blah blah blah. But transportation is a big cost, in financial and in human terms, much bigger than I thought at the beginning -- so I'm with them on this.

  And back we go to Wanda, who says that HCS was "too small a social pool" for her daughters, and I sympathize...but I don't think this would help much. My three adult sons seem to have formed life-long friendships at HCS, friendships based on year after year of shared experiences of classes and athletics and music and theatre, experiences linked by walking (e.g., to after-school music lessons), by bikes, by (short) car rides to bring groups together. A week ago, walking back from PriceChopper, I was offered "a ride and an update" which included the information that my daughter-in-law, graduate of a high school in Athens, will soon be visiting his daughter on the west coast; HCS friendships don't just last, they spread. (They did attend one another's weddings, in Greece and in Hamilton.) Would my kids be better off if we'd been merged with Morrisville? Maybe, but I don't think so. As Carolyn Hsu (I think) was noting at ABCs of HCS (A), research indicates that the merged district "would be more likely to segregate internally into cliques." We get enough of that already.

  Wanda also objects to the thought that Hamilton and Morrisville-Eaton voters have made different choices, calling it "exceptionalism". She wants centralization, so that everybody has to make the same choices. Well, sure: people who want to make everybody makes the same choices should generally vote for centralization. I am not that confident that my choices are right for everybody else -- and I'm not that confident that my views will prevail in a more centralized district, where (from the CAC experience) about half the voters would apparently want the high school inside Hamilton and the other half would want it 3.5 miles north of Morrisville and one side has to win and the other side has to lose and in the end it depends on turnout. I don't like win/lose, even when it's me winning and the other guys losing. And I really, really, really don't care that the merged district would include the geographical center of the state. I'm sorry, I just don't care. People who care a lot about that should certainly consider voting for the merger.

  On nextdoor.com, Wanda comments on the Ellen Larson letter that also appeared here, saying "Perhaps our main difference is that I am less frightened of democracy." I was a bit distressed; the two-district system that Ellen supports is exactly as democratic as the one-district system she opposes, so this comes off as a piece of gratuitous nastiness. Ellen is probably opposed to motherhood and apple pie, as well. Well, perhaps it's a typo: perhaps Wanda meant to say "Perhaps our main difference is that I am less frightened of centralization." That would be true. Centralization is good and bad, and it's an issue that pervades almost everything we do. It was the center, so to speak, of one of my first blog posts, years ago. My ideal school system might have no administrators on-site because all those functions can be centralized right out of the building...even some teaching functions can be centralized. But most can't, or at least shouldn't be. If we centralize in the sense of this merger, then the new school board will do its democratic best, but it will no longer be possible for different communities to make different choices...and we won't be saving money, either. So I'm agin it, personally....and Wanda's not. (Would it be better to say Professor Wanda Berry and of course Professor Charles Naef, and similarly refer to my co-bloggers Professor Carolyn Hsu and Professor Heather Roller along with Dr. Ellen Larson on the other side? I don't think so, indeed Carolyn is the only one with relevant qualifications, but then my own PhuD is surely more irrelevant than any of theirs; I've never understood people very well. Let it be noted that many of us, with and without academic credentials, are thinking hard, and each of us has a vote. Hooray for democracy! (No, I'm not being sarcastic. May we collectively do the right thing.))

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.

Colgate Maroon-News article about Merger

On October 31, Colgate's Maroon-News published an article about the merger by Julia Queller.  The link to the original is here.

Hamilton Central and Morrisville-Eaton School Districts Consider Merger

By Julia QuellerAssistant Editor

The school districts of Hamilton and Morrisville-Eaton are currently undergoing a study to determine whether they should merge into one district.

The process began about two years ago in response to Hamilton school district’s financial concerns. Due to New York’s Gap Elimination Adjustment deductions, Hamilton school district has lost 2.6 million dollars over the last four years. This prompted a discussion of remedial options, one of which included a state-funded merger feasibility study.

The study’s consultants have put forth various recommendations for the building configuration of the potential merged district. For the purposes of accumulating data, the consultants proposed a plan in which students from both Morrisville-Eaton and Hamilton attend elementary school in their hometowns, all students attend middle school in Morrisville and all students attend high school in Hamilton.

According to Susan Marafino, a Hamilton resident who serves on the Community Advisory Committee, deciding on a building configuration was a contentious issue between the Hamilton and Morrisville-Eaton residents because representatives from both communities wanted the high school to be located in their hometown. Marafino stressed that there is a misconception among residents that the proposed configuration is definitive, when in fact it is not binding.

“People think that because we came up with that scenario that this is what it would be if we were to be merged,”Marafino said. “It’s just one possible scenario. It’s data that the community can use about whether to merge or not.”

In actuality, the existing school boards would be dissolved and a new school board comprised of elected officials who might not equally represent both Hamilton and Morrisville-Eaton would make all of the decisions about a merged district.

If the two districts were to merge, class size would more than slightly double to reach about 100 students each. Personnel would be reassigned to the appropriate location based on what grade they teach.

“I would not anticipate that there would be a number of lost positions,” Hamilton Central School District Superintendent Dr. Susan Bowers said. “We would imagine that most people, if not all, of our staff would be employed. We do imagine that there will be a couple people who will want to retire.”

The distance between the two furthest schools in the potential new district is 12-13 miles, which would require students to spend more time on the bus. The consultants set the maximum amount of time that they would allow students to be on the bus at one and a half hours a day each way.

“So that’s three hours a day for the unlucky children who have to be in the furthest region of getting shuttled around,”Marafino said. “The quality of life piece for the child and the family, that is a really concerning issue for many of us on the committee and many of us in the community.”

Further, Marafino noted that transportation costs continue to increase each year; the amplified transportation costs would negate the benefits of the potential savings that would come from the merger, she said.

According to Bowers, the district, if it merges, besides the state aid that it gets on an annual basis, would receive an additional 20 million dollars in incentive aid for the first 14 to 15 years.

“There’s no guarantee on that incentive aid so it’s a pretty big gamble to consider doing something based on that promise,” Marafino said.

She added that Hamilton has less debt than Morrisville-Eaton, so if the two districts were to combine, Hamilton’s debt burden would increase.

A series of four votes establishes whether the process continues. The Hamilton Board of Education first underwent an advisory vote, which will be followed in December by a straw vote in which the two communities vote individually on whether they wish to continue the process. If both communities approve the merger study, it will continue; if one or both reject it, the study ends. Next, the Board would vote again, and if its members vote yes, they would send a binding referendum to the communities. If both communities vote yes on the binding referendum, which is scheduled for February, the new district would form July 1, 2014.

According to Marafino, the majority of the Hamilton representatives of the Community Advisory Committee wrote a letter to the Board discouraging the use of a straw vote because if the two communities do not vote the same way, the outcome might be divisive.

“[Morrisville-Eaton] is a community we want to work with and we have to work with to continue to come up with creative solutions,” Marafino said.

The Hamilton and Morrisville-Eaton school districts are already working together to mitigate financial problems by sharing services.

According to Bowers, the two school districts, which have always been rivals in sports, have combined many varsity teams. Additionally, the two districts now share special education services.

“We’ve been doing just about anything we could think of to save money,” Bowers said. “The Hamilton Emerald Foundation helps support us through the years. Colgate has stepped up and given us additional funding to help up through these difficult times for a limited period of time. So we’re looking at any options that will help us supplement our program so that it can be retained.”

Marafino noted that historically Hamilton voters have been willing to increase their taxes in order to help maintain the school district’s programs such as Advanced Placement courses, three languages and a strong music program. While Hamilton’s taxes have increased 10.4 percent in the past four years, Morrsiville-Eaton voters have made different decisions and have cut many of their programs, according to Marafino.

Bowers said she considers the issue to be urgent because, at the beginning of the merger study, the Hamilton Teachers Association was comprised of 75 members, and now only has 59 members – a cut of 20 percent.

If the merger does not occur, Bowers will continue to explore other options such as regional high schools and finding other sources of funding.

Bowers does not have any indication as to whether the merger will happen.

“It’s not something that we have control over. It’s really both the Hamilton and Morrisville-Eaton voters who have the opportunity to make that decision,” Bowers said.

Bowers will soon be approaching different community groups to provide them with information gained from the merger study so that they can come to their own conclusions based on the data about whether they approve of the option.

“When you make the choice to do the study you have to go all the way through to the end of it,” Marafino said. “It’s more common than not now with any of these merger studies, especially in less populated areas, that districts go through the studies and then decide not to do the merger. But you’d still have the data that you can then use for other solutions.”