Consultant being sought to assess district’s needs

WOODSTOCK, N.Y. >> The Onteora Board of Education has given Superintendent Victoria McLaren the goahead to review consultants and consulting firms that can evaluate options for grade levels and programs in each of the district’s five schools.

McLaren said at a board meting Tuesday night that community input will be important in determining the priority of issues to be addressed.

She said the aim is to “hire someone to ensure that we reach out in all of the appropriate ways and gather input and communicate as much as we can without leaving anyone out of the process.”

“What I’m not looking to do is bring someone in who is going to lead us to an end that we are not comfortable with,” McLaren said.

McLaren noted at Tuesday’s meeting that Onteora’s enrollment has declined significantly over the past decade but there has not been any change in the use of district schools, or the grade levels within them, in the 13 years since West Hurley Elementary School closed.

“Since the 2004-05 school year ... we have lost appropriately 850 students,” the superintendent said.

McLaren said it will be important for the board to develop a plan it can actually use, noting that, over the past 14 years, there were recommendations by two committees to expand the middle school but neither was acted on.

“I envision them (outside consultants) helping us to work through the process of laying out a timeline ... then giving us a framework for how to structure the communications,” McLaren said.

School board President Kevin Salem said the plan would be a “call to action” for district officials.

“We are looking for someone to help facilitate ... our near- and long-term issues regarding enrollment, real estate, budgetary things — just changes in the overall ... makeup of our district,” Salem said.

McLaren said any plan of action for the future would based on programs deemed necessary by the district to address students’ needs. Specific capital projects probably won’t be part of the initial discussion, she said.

“I think there is a time and place for the architect, but ... that might not be in the design and formulation of the plan,” she said. “That should be in the implementation of how do we make that [plan] happen.”

The board did not adopt a schedule for reviewing consultants.