Twenty-two parents and community members attended a school board budget workshop Saturday, in which Superintendent Howard Smith and district school principals addressed specifically the charged topics of school consolidation, class sizes and cuts to athletics.

Even if the Union Free School District of the Tarrytowns goes forward with Smith's recommendation to close one school building and increase class sizes, Tarrytown residents will still face a tax hike of 1.66 percent and Sleepy Hollow residents 8.26 percent.

"While I appreciate your hard work, I think you need to go further," said Sleepy Hollow trustee Bruce Campbell, addressing the school board and administration. "An eight percent tax increase is unsustainable."

Facing drastic cuts in state aid to public schools, Smith has recommended the district cut $3 million in spending from the 2009-10 school year's budget—with the majority of the savings coming from closing one school building (Tappan Hill School), increasing class sizes, and cutting the school's bus fleet from ten to five.

"It just happens that the majority of cuts this year will affect primary school children," Smith said.  "Next year will we will have a study committee to look at cutting public funding for high school sports and extracurricular activities, and I expect to see more parents of older children at board meetings."

But this year's meetings have been dominated by parents opposed to closing Tappan Hill School, reorganizing first, second and third-grade students into larger and more tightly-packed buildings.

"I am extremely conflicted," said parent David Bedell. "I have a daughter in kindergarten, whom I believe will go from the most to the least desirable school building if you go forward with school consolidation."

Bedell is not the only parent concerned that merging schools is not in the best interest of district students.

With Kindergarten and pre-kindergarten moving to John Paulding School, first-graders to Morse and third-graders to Washington Irving School, questions have surfaced about the fitness of Morse as an environment for six-year-olds.

"My daughter is a gymnast, so she's particularly agile for a young child; but she would still have trouble navigating the multi-level stair cases in Morse," said parent Gayle Millstein.

Another point of contention is Smith's proposal to increase third-graders maximum walking distance from .3 mile to .5. 

"In order to effectively reduce transportation costs, we will need to change third-graders walking distance," Smith said. "If we do not, we will be able only to go down to eight buses rather than five."

Not all parents were convinced the savings will outweigh the cost.

"I took a map and walked the distance third-graders will now be expected to walk myself," said parent Fatima Gianni.  "With all those hills it took more than 30 minutes."

"There are no sidewalks on many of the streets surrounding Washington Irving, and many people drive very fast. I certainly won't allow my son to walk there alone," David Gottschall agreed. 

Other elementary programs such as: elementary foreign language, Challenge program, elementary band/orchestra, ESL, Academic Intervention Services and special education programs, though, will receive few cuts in funding if Smith's proposed budget is adopted by the school board and ultimately passes in the voting booths in May.

"It requires a $500,000 reduction in the budget to reduce residents' tax rates by one percent," Smith said. "Even if we cut all these additional programs, we would still have to raise taxes, and then people would argue that they weren't getting anything for their money. In the past, many local parents felt they needed to enroll their children in private schools because the public schools weren't up to par. Now that's not the case; we don't want to take a step backward."

The largest savings at the middle and high school levels will come from increasing class sizes and scaling back sports.

"If this were a normal year, I would be calling for an increase in spending to accommodate for the increased number of students entering the school," said Sleepy Hollow High School principal Carol Conklin. "Instead, I need to cut costs."

Although Smith's proposed budget does not call for elimination of any sports teams—only elimination of assistant-coach positions and reductions in numbers of tournaments and scrimmages—the contingency budget, adopted only if the proposed budget fails, would cut boys ice hockey and girls swimming.

The will be a budget hearing Thursday, March 18 at 8:00 pm in the John Paulding School auditorium.

The final budget vote will be held on May 18. 

You can view the proposed TUFSD budget here.