Boquet Valley School District opts for renovations over new building

$30M renovation plan aims to revitalize aging Elizabethtown school

By Tim Rowland

Thwarted by voters and stingy state funding formulas from building a modern $66 million school on the fringe of a county park, Boquet Valley Central School District will, if all goes according to plan, spend less than half that much shoring up an aging building in Elizabethtown.

Compared with new construction, the patches are relatively short-term, meaning the next generation of Boquet taxpayers will face the same set of thorny issues in an increasingly difficult Adirondack education environment.

The plan was moved forward Thursday by the citizen-driven Boquet Valley Facilities Planning Committee, and will go to the school board next month for consideration. For the committee, it was unsatisfying work, since it primarily involved cutting spending to the bone in hopes of settling on improvements that voters will accept.

The Boquet Valley district is the product of a merger between Westport and Elizabethtown school systems seven years ago, but both schools had remained open, with Westport serving elementary children, while older students attended Elizabethtown. 

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What the new plan includes

Capital Region BOCES Facilitator Joe Dragone, who was called in as a neutral voice to guide the committee, told about 40 people in attendance that the new plan calls for adding 14 new classrooms for roughly 160 elementary students, while retrofitting the “guts” of the existing building, which are currently on the brink of giving out.

“These are the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, health and safety things that are absolutely necessary,” Dragone said. Many of these systems date to the 1990s and are so outdated it is no longer possible to get parts.

“The building can’t continue to function with its current mechanics,” Dragone said. The improvements also call for replacement of frayed carpets and battered floor tiles, but due to funding realities the committee was discouraged from adding any frills. “There are no luxuries,” Dragone added.

The plan costs roughly $30 million, more or less equally divided between new construction and renovation. It’s hard at this point to know how this will shake out, as the state won’t say how much it will pay for until presented with a plan. Taxpayers saved money on the merger, but the new school would have raised school taxes 25%, eliminating that benefit. The new plan, which if approved by the board, will also need voter approval, but comes with a more modest tax hike, probably in single digits, Dragone said.

To keep costs down, the elementary-school space will not have its own cafeteria or auditorium. One resident said it was “crazy” for first-graders to have to walk a long, circuitous route just to eat, but Dragone said money for anything more than classrooms did not exist.

The plan also kicked the can on a permanent solution for a bus garage and athletic fields, both of which would have been included had the new building been constructed at Essex County’s Thrall Dam park in Lewis.

Committee member Tom Bisselle of New Russia said he was still disappointed that voters rejected that plan, but in the new proposal were able to make the best of a difficult situation. The committee had 16 members with “different values, expectations and visions,” he said, but limited money meant limited options.

The challenges of renovating an aging building

It was immediately clear that renovating the Westport school, built in 1933, was out of the question, because it would cost nearly as much as building new. The Elizabethtown school was built in 1951, but came with its own problems, including crumbling foundations and leaking windows. Fixing these basic issues, along with replacing boilers, ventilation units and such, quickly ate up what the district had to spend.

The Boquet Valley district covers 250 square miles and its total student population stands at 360, according to state figures, down from about 420 prior to the merger. The state encourages the merger of small districts through financial carrots and sticks, and the school board believed the cost of a new school would be largely covered by state funding.

But administrators felt the rug had been pulled from underneath them when the state said its matching funds would cover only 40% of construction. That left taxpayers on the hook for the lion’s share of construction, making rejection of the plan all but a formality.

Following a merger, the New York Department of Education will pay 90% of rehabilitation costs on approved items, as determined by a state formula. But state formulas, driven by student population, are seldom kind to rural Adirondackers.

Dragone said the clock is also ticking, because the 90% match is good for 10 years after the merger. The plan is expected to go before voters in 2026, with construction beginning in 2027 and lasting through 2030.

Top photo: The Boquet Valley Central School Facilities Planning Committee makes tough choices at a Thursday meeting. Photo by Tim Rowland