Pine Plains school district enlists community members to study future of Cold Spring school

PINE PLAINS — Superintendent Brian Timm explained again why he thinks Cold Spring Early Learning Center should close at a meeting of a newly-formed committee that now has to decide if he’s right.

The Building Utilization Advisory Committee met for the first time on Thursday, March 12, after the Pine Plains Board of Education elected to officially organize the advisory committee at a February meeting. Timm walked members of the committee through the facts and figures he had presented to Town Boards within the school district and the Board of Education itself in previous months.

Timm described a school district contending with declining enrollment, increasing employee healthcare costs and a potential loss in up to $4 million in state funding.

Committee members responded to Timm’s presentation by requesting more data on staffing district-wide, budgetary impacts and the district’s current and projected building utilization.

The district enrolled 791 students this year, down from a peak of nearly 1,500 students in 2002. Despite those declines, instructional staff counts have remained flat — dropping by just three positions over the past six years even as enrollment fell by more than 100 students.

Timm said those figures relate directly to the budget, where payroll and benefits comprise 77% of the district’s expenses. He told committee members that healthcare costs alone are expected to rise more than 10% every year indefinitely — an added burden of more than $1 million annually.

And revenue is threatened, too, Timm said. He said more than 400 of the school districts across New York State are grandfathered into receiving more state aid than entitled to. That’s due to a provision known as “hold harmless” that Timm said Governor Kathy Hochul has previously sought to eliminate. Under hold harmless, the state is barred from ever reducing a school district’s state aid, even if demographic shifts mean the communities no longer qualify for the same level of funding.

Losing hold harmless could cost Pine Plains up to $4 million in lost revenue, Timm said.

“To lose $4 million in one year — or even $2 million in one year — that is extremely, extremely impactful,” Timm said.

Committee members asked Timm to bring several additional datasets to subsequent meetings. He confirmed that additional information on non-instructional staffing figures — including transportation, custodial and kitchen staff and costs — would be included in the next presentation. Timm said he would present a detailed building analysis that examines whether Cold Spring’s population can be absorbed by Seymour Smith Intermediate Learning Center in Pine Plains.

The committee also touched on the district’s longer-term goals for campus buildings, suggesting Seymour Smith may close eventually and all the district’s students may be consolidated into Stissing Mountain Jr./Sr. High School in Pine Plains. Timm said he’s not opposed to developing a long-term plan, but it would have to be in conjunction with a short-term recommendation for action within the next one to two years.

Timm set a September deadline for the committee to deliver a short-term recommendation to the Board of Education — in time to inform next year’s budget process.

“I think we need a short-term plan before we do next year’s budget,” Timm said. “Otherwise we’re going to be in a pretty tough spot.”

The committee’s next meeting date will be Thursday, March 26.