Officials grilled about plans for Lewisboro Elementary School

By JEFF MORRIS

Responding to questions that often seemed adversarial, Katonah-Lewisboro School District officials held an online Q&A session on Sept. 9 to provide answers about the revised plan for the former Lewisboro Elementary School.

The district has scheduled an Oct. 20 vote on whether to bond for $19.95 million to convert the building into an Early Childhood Center.

“Tonight is really about questions,” Board of Education President Barbara Williams said. “It’s really about giving the community an opportunity to ask any questions that you have about the proposal that we’re putting forward.”

Also on hand to answer questions were board Vice President Marjorie Schiff; Superintendent of Schools Raymond Blanch; Assistant Superintendent for Business Lisa Herlihy; architect Niall Washburn of H2M; and Director of Facilities Michael Lavoie.

Blanch summed up the changes made to the original proposal that was defeated in May: reducing the overall cost, from $24 million to $19.95 million; removing the portion of the building dedicated to a community center, including separating the classrooms from the gymnasium; and emphasizing continuing partnerships with partners in the community.

After further discussion among the panel members about what is included in the plan that will go before voters, questions began to come in.

Eight different people posed questions during the hour and a half session, three of whom were called on twice. 

Though the queries were civil in tone, most challenged the panel to back up the district’s rationale for the plan, and to give specific information that the questioners suggested was not being provided. In several cases, they insisted previous questions had not been answered adequately. 

Challenging tone

The tone was set at the start by a Lewisboro neighbor who challenged one of the talking points that had been offered in the initial summary. 

“The district is heavily promoting the proposed project as environmentally responsible and well managed,” he said, “but the current condition of LES tells a different story. The grass across the street from my house is approximately 2 feet tall, while the exterior lights remain on throughout the day and all night long.” 

He said solar panels have been sitting unused in the parking lot for nearly a year instead of being installed over the summer “as promised.” His question was, “If the district is currently neglecting LES, wasting electricity 24 hours a day, and failing to complete its existing solar project, why should taxpayers believe its environmental claims or trust it to responsibly maintain and operate a new facility of this scale?”

A long response

Most of the response, which after just about every question was tag-teamed by multiple officials, focused on the solar panels and the district’s Energy Performance Contract: the reasons why the panels were ordered early to save money; the timeline under which the solar installations have to be completed in order to comply with federal guidelines; the fact they were staged at LES, where there was space available, rather than stored at the individual schools, where bond project construction was taking place; and all the taxpayer dollars that would be saved in the future once the installations were complete. 

In other words, it was a long and nuanced response to what had been a pithy and combative question.

As to the rest of the question, it was also answered with a long description of how well all the other schools are maintained, with the caveat that there were no children on the Lewisboro Elementary campus, and the district is “being responsible with our tax dollars by not putting a lot of money into a building that is empty right now.” 

It was only after further remarks about all the work that was done over the summer in the other buildings before welcoming children back, that it was noted the public contract with the Town of Lewisboro specifically said the town had responsibility for maintenance of the building grounds — and that they had probably fallen behind during the transition period while they were moving their offices. 

With regard to the lights, the response was it is LED lighting, which is a good thing — but if it’s on overnight, that’s something they will check out.

How many students?

Another resident asked how the district came up with its calculation for the number of students, and how that fit with the plan to collaborate with existing preschool providers — while framing it as “so you’re not bankrupting them and so that you are not creating significant financial issues with them.”

She suggested that the existing locations be primary locations, and just having LES handle the “overflow.”

As before, officials including Blanch, Herlihy and Williams provided lengthy explanations of the reasons why other local providers did not have the capacity to handle the demand, especially with the state requirement that universal pre-K be available in 2028; the fact there is a waiting list every year, with a lottery that turns away two-thirds of families interested in pre-K; the projections based on 200 to 220 kids in kindergarten; the prospects for a continuum of services extending to younger preschoolers with the help of other providers; and the two local providers who spoke enthusiastically about partnering at the last board meeting.

None of these lengthy explanations satisfied the questioner, who returned later to ask for the specific number of 4-year-olds who were currently being served by existing providers. 

Another resident subsequently asked how many kids were being serviced today, said that question had not been answered, and wanted to know how many were entering kindergarten for the coming year. 

Blanch repeated a detailed response, saying every year there are approximately 200 to 220 kindergarten children per class, and with the lottery system “we were looking at anywhere between 120 and 135 parents interested in the four-year program with us only being able to fit 40.”

That resident followed up by saying, “Let’s pretend there’s 190 kids. I divide 19 million by 190, that’s $100,000 a kid.” 

He said the district had admitted some are going to use another option, and the district should do that “rather than spending this massive sum of money” since “the district has proved that they cannot be a landlord” after being a landlord unsuccessfully for 15 years, “and now we’re being asked to spend all this money so that you can become a landlord again? It’s crazy.”

Again, this led to a lengthy, multi-pronged response that ranged from providing context about every student, no matter their location, participating in universal pre-K funded by the state, to there being 190 students the first year, then probably going up to 200 year after year, while residents are asked for a one-time bond of $19.9 million. 

Not a landlord

Officials clarified that the district is not becoming a landlord; it is administering a pre-K program in the way that New York state does it, which is through contracting and grants. And they again explained that it is not accurate to take $19.95 million and divide it by the number of students for one year; rather, they are “making an investment for the future, for classes of pre-kindergarteners for years to come.” 

There was also the further point that the $19.95 million is actually paid down over 15 years; and if they were to monetize the 180 students, that’s 180 students at $10,000 per student, or $1.8 million of state revenue each year.

There were more questions, not all of which were confrontational, asking about hours of operation, traffic considerations, use of the building when school was not in session, per-student cost, what percentage of costs were being passed on to taxpayers, and why there was such a low response rate to the district’s survey. (The district commissioned an outside firm to conduct a survey that was sent out to 15,000 registered voters. There were 1,152 responses.) 

The complete Q&A session is posted on YouTube, as are all the school board meetings at which the plan was discussed.

An in-person Q&A session will be held Thursday, Sept. 24, at 10 a.m., at the Lewisboro Library and Tuesday, Sept. 29, at 10 a.m., at Katonah Village Library, with another virtual session via Zoom on Monday, Oct. 5, at 7 p.m., leading up to the bond vote Tuesday, Oct. 20.