Binghamton City School District to work toward securing funding for Roosevelt rebuild

The Binghamton City School District will work toward securing funding to rebuild Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School.

During their regularly scheduled November board meeting Tuesday night, the BCSD board came to a consensus not to close any elementary schools for the time being but four out of six board members said if a school had to be closed in the future, Woodrow Wilson would be their choice.

Board member Albert Penna said building a new school at the Theodore Roosevelt site is very important and the former BCSD principal chose Wilson if they had to look at a school to close.

"I love this district. I love our students," Penna said. "I want to do everything possible to preserve our neighborhood school concept."

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How did we get here?

The future of Woodrow Wilson, Horace Mann, Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson schools has been debated over the past several months.

A feasibility study incited by the district began in May 2021 to evaluate building conditions and capacity, enrollment trends, and transportation needs for all 10 of the district's buildings.

Details of the plan were discussed in a board work session June 7 and public input on the plan began at the district board meeting June 14, which continued with five community sessions in the following weeks after parents and community members pushed back about the lack of information and transparency regarding the study.

In July, the board decided to consider further community input, through four additional community forums, before making any decision on closing an elementary school and also raised the option of rebuilding one of the schools.

The input gathered from those additional forums were presented to the board by Superintendent Tonia Thompson during the board's regularly scheduled board meeting in October in preparation for Tuesday's decision.

Background and cost of study

In a letter sent to parents on May 18, which parents say is the first time they were informed of a potential school closure, the board said "several scenarios are being considered by the board, which may result in the rebuilding, repurposing, and/or closing of one or more school buildings."

At both the June board meeting and at each community forum, data gathered through the feasibility study was presented to parents and community members.

And in the four additional forums during the months of September and October, participants were able to visit three separate groups, each spearheaded by different members of the district, to learn more about building conditions, class sizes and the overall impact on students.

Studies to assess the conditions of all 10 buildings and enrollment, which included demographics and enrollment projections, were completed, and a transportation study is still in the works.

The total cost of the feasibility study was $336,000, with $25,000 allotted for district-wide enrollment projections, $142,000 for the facilities capacity report, $96,000 for the facilities condition report and an additional $25,000 for a transportation study.

Results show all of the elementary schools are consistently not at capacity and have seen a slow but steady decline in enrollment over the past five years.

Costs of personnel and staff redeployment for each school were included in the presentations, which used data reported by the school through a state-mandated transparency reporting process, according to Superintendent Tonia Thompson.

Officials said three of the elementary schools, MacArthur, Calvin Coolidge and Benjamin Franklin, are not at risk of closing because of recent upgrades, leaving Woodrow Wilson, Horace Mann, Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson still in consideration of closing.

In June, an option to not close a school at all, but instead institute a four-year plan to rebuild Theodore Roosevelt which would cost between $45 million and $65 million, was added.

How Binghamton parents and community members are responding

Parents, teachers, staff and community members have repeatedly spoken out against the closure of any school. Some of their concerns have included: Lack of transparency, poor communication, rushed timeline, faulty study data, unknown impacts and limited budget savings.

Also among the concerns were a potential disruption of the strong sense of individual elementary school communities, bussing issues and the removal of Roosevelt adding to the pre-existing lack of resources on the North Side.

Many parents, students, teachers, staff and community members attended Tuesday's meeting, with most of them staying for the almost three-hour-long discussion.

Mann parent Anna Raheem said she is very happy with the decision the board made, while other parents are still concerned about what transpired.

Daniel Magleby, a parent of two Jefferson students and an associate professor of political science at Binghamton University, said he continues to be disappointed in the way the process to make a decision played out.

"But I am satisfied that we're going to do the right thing and wait to see where the district goes in the next few years before we make a drastic decision like closing a school where some of the most at-risk children in our district attend," Magleby said.

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This article originally appeared on Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin: Binghamton City School District will not close any schools for now