Open letter to Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther

We are asking for your help. The Sullivan West School District is in a state of financial crisis. Our board has proposed a budget containing a tax increase of 19 percent, the layoff of 30 staff and the closure of two elementary schools in Narrowsburg and Fremont. Elementary children from those communities (including four- and five-year-olds) will be facing 30- to 40-mile bus rides to school. This situation has gone beyond the ability of the local citizens and school officials to avoid serious harm to our children and our communities.

How did this happen? When the merger of school districts in Delaware Valley, Jeffersonville and Narrowsburg was proposed, the State endorsed a plan that would renovate the three existing schools and build a new high school. State aid was to shield local taxpayers from most of the cost of this ambitious building plan. Educational programs for children were to improve, and tax increases were assured to be minimal. The voters who supported the plan trusted the State of New York and local officials to guide the district on a course that would lead to increased educational opportunities for the children delivered in a cost-effective manner. Those who opposed the proposal were skeptical that it was too good to be true, and that they would lose the ability to send their children to a local school. It was too good to be true.

The aid did not cover the building projects. The projects were beset by faulty planning, construction and cost overruns. The new high school has serious flaws and the project has never been completed. (Outdoor sports teams for example have to travel to Jeffersonville, as there are no fields at Lake Huntington.) Additionally, it now is disclosed that the building plan vastly overshot the space requirements of our district. Our buildings are operating only at a third of their intended capacity. Our district now is saddled with $40 million of debt that will cost us $4 million per year for 20 years – almost two generations of children. We now have buildings, but no money to operate them. The plan that promised so much is now causing taxpayers to bear double-digit increases in taxes while our schools are being shut down and our communities are being dismantled. The young children are being asked to carry the largest burden as they will be bused 60 to 80 miles for a yet undetermined number of hours each day.

We are asking you to intervene. In the short term, we would like your help to keep the local elementary schools open. It would take an additional $640,000 this year above the proposed budget to keep the neighborhood schools open. Our administration has told us that even though the district received an additional $900,000 above the Governor’s proposal in the recently passed State budget, $700,000 cannot be spent. Our administration stated that this money was earmarked to aid the BOCES building project – a project that will not happen as it was voted down on March 17. As common citizens, we don’t fully understand the workings of State aid, but we know it wasn’t your legislative intent to have budget money allocated to a project voted down two weeks before the budget was passed. If you could assist in getting that money to where it is desperately needed, perhaps we could continue to send our young children to a local school for this coming year.

We are also asking that you call for a full audit of this situation – from the days of planning for the merger to the current situation. Our citizens have lost faith in all levels of state and local government involved in this situation. They deserve a clear accounting of what went wrong. It may also help avoid this same tragedy with rural schools and communities throughout the state.

Finally, we need the State to take a leadership role in rectifying this financial mess. We don’t have the answers, but everything including debt relief, debt restructuring, procuring new sources of funding, redistricting and repurposing of schools could be part of the solution. Until the yoke of this mistake is lifted, taxpayers and children will continue to suffer for years.

We thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Submitted by Sean Sensiba, Long Eddy, NY

Dr. Punnybone

Dew Process