Hornell City School District will create facilities committee
By Neal SimonThe Spectator
Jul 8, 2019 at 6:55 PM Jul 8, 2019 at 6:55 PM
Hornell BOE expected to follow recommendations of Facility Study
Editor's note: This is the second installment of a two-part series examining the results of a Hornell City School District Facility Study.
HORNELL — The Hornell City School District plans to follow through on a key recommendation in the recently published Facility Study: forming a committee to develop and monitor a long term facilities plan for the district, Superintendent Jeremy P. Palotti said.
LaBella Associates last week presented the school board with the findings of an approximately nine-month analysis of the district. The purpose of the study? To determine potential options for the city school district as its considers renovations to its facilities during the next five to ten years.
In addition to advising the district to form a facilities committee encompassing every stakeholder in the school community, the study suggests reducing the physical footprint of the district as well as the number of times students transition to new schools, creating a middle school, and moving the bus garage.
Palotti told The Spectator late last week that the Facility Study results, including its supporting data, will be a major topic of discussion when the school board meets for its summer retreat later this month.
"Once (that) discussion has occurred, a district wide facilities committee will be created that will involve administration, faculty, staff, school board members, and community members to further dig into the report and detail a long-range plan for the use and upkeep of the facilities," Palotti confirmed in an email response to questions posed by the newspaper.
The Spectator asked the superintendent if there were "any particular findings in the study that merit a great deal of emphasis?"
Palotti pointed to the study's analysis of school enrollment.
"The biggest aspect of this study as it relates to the long-term plan of the district relates to decreasing enrollment as it intersects with building utilization," Palotti said. "A key recommendation was to reduce the footprint of the district. The big questions connected with this are how to do this, when to do this, and what are the implications of doing so? This is what the board of education and (the) facilities committee will need to wrestle with."
The key findings of the LaBella study related to enrollment are
- Hornell enrollment has dropped by 165 students or about ten percent during the past five years
- Hornell enrollment is the next five years is expected to drop by another ten percent
- Enrollment declines are being experienced by nearly all school districts in the region
According to LaBella, enrollment projections were calculated using the "Cohort Survival" methodology, and live births were used to project kindergarten class sizes for the next five years.
Asked if the enrollment projection seems sound, Palotti said, "It does, however time will truly tell."
Palotti summarized Hornell's current class sizes, noting that some uncertainty remains.
"Our current enrollment, second-grade through 12th-grade next year, averages around 120 per grade level," he said. "However, our kindergarten and first-grade classes for next year range between 90-100 students. If these class sizes become the new normal, then this ten percent decrease in five years will be realized."
After that, it gets tricky, Palotti acknowledged, with some data lacking and a uptick in enrollment for Hornell's pre-kindergarten program.
"We do not have great data for our birth to 4-year-old population so it is difficult to make a determination as to if these decreased enrollment figures will be what we can expect on a continuing basis or if they will rebound," Palotti said. "For next year, we had to add a section at pre-kindergarten bringing our sections from four to five. This is the first time we have had to do this in a few years. We don't know if this is a signal that we will have a larger cohort or if people just like our program and are enrolling when they otherwise would have chosen other options for pre-kindergarten."
One potential hot issue — the likelihood of major staff reductions if enrollment declines come to a realization and school consolidation takes place as advised — appears to have been defused before it can heat up. The study notes an average of 7-8 instructional staff have left the district over the past five years, having served an average of 20 years.
Taking that into account, the study says, "Most of the staffing level changes resulting from potential enrollment declines and consolidation options to be considered can likely be accomplished through attrition."