Chester public: No Greenwood Lake students at our high school

Greenwood Lake looks for a place to educate its students until it can win state approval for its own high school,By Linda Smith Hancharick Chester — There was certainly no doubt to the Chester School Board that the 100 or so taxpayers who attended the public informational meeting last week were adamantly opposed to bringing Greenwood Lake High School students into Chester Academy. One after another, residents stepped up to the microphone to tell the board not to change the composition of Chester Academy. Keep classes small, they said. Keep the sixth grade students at the Academy, they said. Tell Greenwood Lake “no thank you,” they added. The board went to the public shortly after receiving a request from the Greenwood Lake School District to consider taking its 357 high school students on a tuition basis. Greenwood Lake sends its high school students to Tuxedo High School. That contract runs out in June 2007. As board President Mary Luciana pointed out throughout the night, this would not be a merger of districts; they would remain two separate districts. Chester and Greenwood Lake would negotiate a contract for the students to attend Chester Academy and Greenwood Lake would pay tuition for each pupil. But the Chester residents wanted no part of it. “How do we accommodate 350 extra students?” asked Joanne Valastro. “The impact of adding all these kids is my concern. I don’t see how we have the facilities to handle all these kids.” “We moved here so our daughter could go to this school district,” said Katherine DeAngelis. “We are the fourth generation of our family in Chester. It would break my heart to see these small classes get big. We like the small class size. We don’t want to see that change in any way.” Another woman said it would be trouble putting the two groups of kids together. “You are going to have Chester kids and Greenwood Lake kids. There will be fights,” she said. “We vote on a budget every year. I don’t understand why we don’t have a say in something so major?” Jim Rugnetta agreed. “We fought really hard to get this school. We have a great school for our kids and now out of left field you’re talking about giving it away to someone else,” said Rugnetta. “We moved here knowing our school district was small, not because we have 1,000 children in our school. We should have a vote. To have five people vote on this would be ridiculous. It’s absurd to even entertain it.” Luciana said it is state law that the Board of Education vote on whether to include tuition students. If it were a merger, the public would vote. Someone brought up a state study that concluded the Greenwood Lake district had the third highest number of disciplinary incidents in the state outside of New York City. Chester Superintendent Judy Waligory said there were reporting issues that showed Greenwood Lake as having more incidents than it should have. Another resident said he has noticed trouble at sporting events when opposing Greenwood Lake. Amongst the Chester residents was a Greenwood Lake district resident, Paul Striso. Striso said he was disappointed in the comments — and the tone of them. “I’m in and out of the community all the time,” said Striso. “I go to Brother Bruno’s. I have our Cub Scout camp at Chester Commons each summer. There could be a lot of advantages. Our kids don’t walk around with ‘Greenwood Lake’ written on the shirts. You wouldn’t know them. They wear the same jeans and have the same haircuts. There are some benefits with going across borders.” In Greenwood Lake, the scene was less emotional. “The public wanted more information on this,” said Greenwood Lake Superintendent John Guarracino. “They wanted to know how comparable the education would be, the percentage of kids in Chester who go to two- and four-year colleges. Our public wanted to look at that.” Guarracino said the college numbers were similar to Greenwood Lake’s numbers. It is the tuition numbers, though, that have this tiny, kindergarten through eighth grade district shopping for a new home for its high schoolers. “It costs us about $13,000 for each student going to Tuxedo,” said Guarracino. “We are not looking because of the quality of education. We are very pleased with the quality of education. We send one third of our budget to Tuxedo. It’s just too expensive.” He said that based on state estimates, sending students to Chester would cost about $9,800 per student, and that’s before negotiations. Why the big difference in cost? State aid. Because Tuxedo is considered a wealthy district, their state aid is much less than Greenwood Lake’s or Chester’s. So the cost of educating students in the Tuxedo district is higher. “The ultimate goal is to have our own high school,” said Kathy Gilson, Greenwood Lake’s Board of Education president. “In the meantime, we need a place to educate our high school students.” Gilson said the Greenwood Lake Board of Education has made a trip to Albany to try and persuade the state Education Department to give them permission to build a high school. The district even held a non-biding vote earlier this year. Eighty-seven percent of residents who came out voted in favor of building a high school. “We are at a point where we are going to take a stand. We are a strong board. The state needs to fix the inequities here.” Luciana told the crowd in Chester that this could be a positive thing for Chester students, although most disagreed. Advanced placement courses are limited as are sport programs because of such a small enrollment, she said. The two boards plan to meet in January and discuss whether they will pursue the issue any further.