GREENE – The Chenango County School Boards Association mulled over the tightening fiscal reality of New York school districts at its annual meeting where presenters focused on shared services and consolidation.
President of the Chenango County School Boards Association Vicky Gregory greeted the association’s members from district across Chenango County at the dinner, saying, “as we can all probably attest with our own experiences, schools are facing some of the biggest challenges of our time. Hopefully tonight’s speakers can inform us on what issues to expect and help enlighten us in finding solutions.”
The presenters at the Nov. 19 meeting included Douglas Land, Area 4 Director of NYS School Boards Association, Nicholas Savin, District Superintendent of Otsego-Northern Catskills BOCES, Dennis Sweeney, Assistant Director of Rural Schools Association, William Tammaro, District Superintendent of DCMO BOCES and former GMU Superintendent and consultant Doug Exley.
Tammaro and Savin started the evening’s remarks by highlighting a number of successful shared service examples.
Tammaro said for the first time this year the Gilbertsville-Mount Upton school district had saved $6,000 by ordering its yearbook purchases through BOCES, which can buy many materials at a bulk discount.
In another example, Savin said the Andes Central School and Charlotte Valley school districts had developed a distance learning program for students after each school suffered cuts in different courses.
“With this set-up we’re able to offer a lot of course work for low enrollment courses. When a school has only six, seven students in a class, it gets cost ineffective for a district. Using two-way video, distance learning can eliminate many of the expenses,” said Savin.
Tammaro also discussed BOCES current efforts to include more districts in its health insurance consortium.
“We have 23 districts included that increase our buying power and our relations with providers. In some cases, the companies were even willing to waive deductibles in order to attract our business,” he said.
Tammaro also urged districts to share other services with BOCES including cafeteria, office and records management, computer repairs, distance learning and employee relations.
