● Fishkill ES can continue to function/operate as is and overflow students to another school when reaching capacity. (Please note since we moved into a K-6 configuration and reduced class sizes, we have yet had to overflow Fishkill ES Kindergarten students to another location). Overflow does become an added cost to the district since it requires customizing transportation to get students from one school boundary to another. ● The two modulars have not been utilized as a classroom for the past three consecutive years. In the event that we were to utilize the modular, it would only serve as a music room. Depending on the class grade students are in, they would be required to go out once a week or twice a week for music instruction and practice. ● It has often been stated that the Merritt Boulevard area really compounded and exacerbated the problem of overcrowdedness at Fishkill ES. Although it has never made sense to many that the Edge Hill Community passes Myers ES and is part of the Vassar/Kinry boundary lines, the same could happen with the Merritt Boulevard community. Altogether there are 217 students in grades K-6 that live in this community. There is a split in the neighborhood where students attend Brinckerhoff and the others attend Fishkill ES. 1
We looked at five community areas when building this proposal for the FES boundary change (Osborne Hill, Baxtertown Rd, Round Hill, Sunrise, and Hoose Blvd), how many students were in each of these communities, and what the impact would be to transportation should we have to send two buses into each location to support grandfathering student enrollments for the next six or seven years. In addition, we had to consider how the communities would react and the impact their feedback would have with the Board of Education and to make as minimal of a change as possible which would achieve the purpose of the change with the least amount of community disruption. Hoose Blvd is actually part of Brinckerhoff, but the logic into considering this development was to allow for additional space to open up in Brinckerhoff should we still have to overflow students from Fishkill for grade K. But Hoose was averaging only 3.25 students over the past four years, and only two in the current school year for grade K so we felt that unsettling this community was not necessary as it would have a negligible impact on our outcome. 2
We then looked at Baxtertown, Osborne, and Sunrise combined which provided an average of 15.75 grade K students from the past four years. This seemed like a viable option but the past two years these three locations were only enrolling 14 students combined and it seemed risky to move ahead with these communities in the final proposal without considering something else. The Round Hill community was then looked at. This was considered a more logical community than Sunrise for three reasons. The first reason is there are more students in Round Hill (currently 54 students are in this community K- 6 vs 32 students in the Sunrise community K-6) raising our four-year average kindergarten enrollment to 17.25 from 15.75. The second reason why Round Hill is a better choice over Sunrise is its distance to Fishkill Elementary (Round Hill is 1.5 miles from Fishkill ES while Sunrise is only .8 miles). The third reason why Round Hill was a better choice is that it is easier for transportation. Under this proposal they could concentrate their resources to support this proposal with bus routes that are on the same side of route 9 as opposed to sending one route down Osborne and Baxtertown and yet another route into Sunrise, thus minimizing the resources they need to support a grandfathered enrollment scenario. 3
● Capacity : During the school year 2014- 2015, Fishkill ES’s student enrollment was 534 with grades K-5. The following year, the enrollment dropped to 449 students with grades K-6. In addition a good portion of remediation classes were held in hallways and in stairwells. This was a fire hazard and broke the law and fire code. The enrollment number exceeds the number of capacity in the cafetorium, which is 177. This means that Fishkill ES can’t ever a hold a full school assembly. I do believe that certain parents are not preoccupied with the number of people that can be in the cafetorium for events in lieu of having to attend another school. However, as a District we have to ensure that any violation of fire code puts students at risk. ● Grandfathering vs. Not-Grandfathering : The decision between one or the other to change the boundary lines for all students at once or doing it gradually is really based on choice. It is important to note that grandfathering the students presently enrolled at Fishkill ES does become an extra cost to our District. 4
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