Board quizzes superintendent on fate of school

School Superintendent Robert Glass told the Town Board he has no current plans to close Pound Ridge Elementary School. RECORDER FILE PHOTO

By THANE GRAUEL

Bedford Central Superintendent of Schools Robert Glass visited the Pound Ridge Town Board on Tuesday night to give an overview of the proposed district budget. 

The discussion touched on a range of concerns including how Bedford Central’s spending compares with other Westchester districts, how Pound Ridge Elementary School is ranked by online rating websites, and fears that enrollment trends could force the shutdown of PRES in coming years.

The Bedford Central Board of Education voted to adopt the superintendent’s proposed 2026-27 budget April 22. The budget totals $165,895,484, up $4,989,984, or 3.10%, from the current $160,905,500. It remains below the tax cap. It had a public hearing on Wednesday and goes before the voters on Tuesday, May 19.

“We call this budget ‘excellent student value’ because it keeps our excellent programs in play while watching the bottom line,” Glass told the Town Board. 

He discussed the programs and staffing, and the budget process, and also listed some student achievements, including ELA and math achievement for grades three through eight at the highest levels in more than 10 years.

“We’re really proud of our growth in our ELA proficiency,” he said. “In our secondary grades we continue to have really great performance on our AP exams, 88% score 3 or 4.”

He said the graduation rate, 95%, “is at the highest it’s been in some time.”

As far as impact on Pound Ridge taxpayers, “we’re only expected to see a percentage change result of 0.85%,” Glass said.

That’s a change from the current year’s budget, which had a 9.11% increase that hit Pound Ridge taxpayers hard. The upcoming budget would have taxpayers in Bedford rising 4.56%, Mount Kisco dropping 0.54%, New Castle dropping 0.66% and North Castle rising 9.44%.

Pound Ridge Elementary School is one of the district’s smaller schools, and John McCown said there had been recurring rumors the board might shut it or West Patent Elementary School down.

“How safe is PRES?” McCown, a past candidate for town supervisor, asked Glass. “I sure hope we don’t lose PRES.”

Glass said that at about 200 students, PRES is a small school, but there are no plans to close it.

“We’re not in any active negotiations about closing any schools,” Glass said. “However, it is something when we do our demographic studies we should keep an eye out, right? Are we looking at enrollment falling off the table? Are we looking at enrollment being pretty stable? Right now it looks like enrollment is pretty stable. It’s been decreasing, but slowly.”

“If anything were to come into play, we’d have a large community discussion before we’d jump in and do something,” Glass said.

Town Board member Dan Paschkes said BCSD costs amount to about $41,000 per student, and asked how that compared to other districts.

“I see them anywhere from like $35,000 to $43,000 when I look at neighboring districts,” Glass said. 

He said special education classification rates and how many English learners a district has “tend to drive costs up.”

“So that’s the only caveat I would put when you’re comparing to a neighboring district,” he said. “What’s their makeup, their exact makeup? Just because they’re neighboring doesn’t mean they have the same makeup as us.”

There was general agreement that the way the state distributes funding is unfair to the district. 

“We get cheated every year,” Paschkes noted.

“That’s something I think we have to continue to advocate,” Glass said.

Supervisor Kevin Hansan took issue with online rating websites.

“Being hyperlocal, when you look at Pound Ridge Elementary School, when you look online and you find that it’s got a greatschools.org listing of a six out of 10 and going through it you think, ‘Oh my god, it’s a 10 out of 10, how could this be a six out of 10?’” Hansan said. “And you look at other elementary schools and you see them so much higher, and you’re like, ‘Wait, wait a minute. How could this be?’”

“Whatever you can do to kind of keep your focus on that because young families do look at that and you know whether or not you can control it or not doesn’t matter,” Hansan said. “They look at Zillow and they look at that when they’re deciding on where they’re going to move.”

(The greatschools.org rating for the school on Thursday was eight out of 10; when or how often the number might fluctuate is not clear.)

Hansan said Pound Ridge Elementary is unique, and it’s the only school in Pound Ridge.

“We do have a tendency to treat it like it’s a private school, we really do,” Hansan said.

He also asked that the district install an emergency generator at the school, which in an outage would keep the plumbing operating. Without that, the building can’t be occupied, as happened one day in the winter.

“We are desperate for you guys to consider in your long-range plans putting in a generator there,” Hansan said, adding that as the largest building in town, it might be needed for an emergency shelter.

“You’re it, we don’t have anything approaching that size here,” Hansan said.

Glass said estimates for generators were obtained in a report he could send to town officials. 

Paschkes said it was possible people might be willing to donate whatever that amount was “with the understanding that PRES would be available to the community as an emergency shelter in exchange for the donation.”