Dan's Papers - May 6, 2008 - Closing School May Cost Taxpayers More

After having his first petition to phase out Bridgehampton High School voted down by the school board in March for lack of required financial information, Board Member Joseph Berhalter's second petition was also rejected for lacking that information. The second petition, filed on April 21, calls for phasing out the high school beginning with the 2008-2009 eighth grade class. Students would be sent to a nearby school district - Southampton, Sag Harbor or East Hampton. With a tuition average of $23,000 per student, Berhalter said the appropriation required would cost the district $660,150 the first year of the program.

Berhalter's plan only included financial information for the first year of the program. It also failed to include special education costs, which would cost significantly more than $23,000 per student. At the board's April 28 meeting, Superintendent Dr. Diane Youngblood and district parent and audit committee Kathryn DeGroot gave a presentation, during which DeGroot said that 26% of Bridgehampton school's population are special education students. The cost per student for special education is $87,812 in Southampton, $49,081 in Sag Harbor and $53,045 in East Hampton. Also, Berhalter's transportation costs did not take into account the additional expense of busing students to and from extracurricular activities.

DeGroot and Youngblood's presentation also showed that Berhalter's plan could cost the district - and taxpayers - millions of dollars once all four years of the high school are phased out.

For these reasons, the board voted 5-1 against adding the petition as a referendum to the district's May 20 ballot, with board member Joseph Conti, who signed both of Berhalter's petitions, casting the only dissenting vote. Berhalter was not at the meeting and the board's vice president, Elizabeth Kotz, said prior to the meeting that he is in Florida.

Kotz voted against the petition, saying the financial information is not strong enough, but added that over the next few months the district needs to aggressively study the possibility of closing down the high school. "We will accept the proposal as soon as it is ready to go in front of our voters," she said on March 31. "This is too rushed and not well thought out. It's not doing anyone any good as a weak proposition."

"I think everybody knows how I feel about this. A community school is the heart of a community," said Board President James Walker, who also graduated from Bridgehampton. He later said, "There are enough discrepancies in [Berhalter's] math. It's not complete enough. It doesn't give the proper information."

Citing a study by the University of Michigan, Berhalter contended that the ideal size for a high school is between 600 and 900 students. "When it falls below that, learning drops off," he said. "When it falls below 300, learning drops off even more." Bridgehampton High School currently has 49 students.

Many residents and board members argued that students benefit from the school's small size and individualized attention. "The classes that come out of this building have always been relatively small," Walker said. "And some pretty successful people come out of this building. We don't have any dropouts. At any other school, you could fall through the cracks and become a nobody."

Though he stresses his petition is about keeping the students' best interests in mind, Berhalter also suggested that closing the school would have a financial benefit to district taxpayers. "With only 40 kids in the school, it doesn't make economic sense to keep it open," he said.

However, looking at the current situation in Springs, which sends its students to East Hampton High School, Walker disagrees. Because of rising tuition costs for these students, Springs is facing a potential budget increase of nearly 12% over the current school year. On average, this could cost homeowners between $306 and $466 in additional taxes.

If their children attend school in another district, Bridgehampton parents will not be able to vote on referendums and school board elections, Walker said. "District parents will have no say in how their kids are educated or finances," he added. "Another district could very easily put the burden back on us."

There was a similar movement to close the high school 20 years ago, during the 1987-88 school year, when there was substantial racial tension in the village. After a group brought forward a similar petition signed by more than 150 people, the issue of closing the high school was added to that year's ballot and passed by only six votes, 313-307.

A group of parents and one teacher appealed the results, challenging the legality of 19 absentee ballots, which ultimately determined the outcome of the vote. After the appeal went to the state commissioner of education, who called for a revote on the issue, the movement to close the school failed.

"A nasty situation evolved," said Richard Hendrickson, one of the parents who appealed the vote. "Bridgehampton High School has always been very comforting to the majority of students who are in it because the teachers tend to be a very caring group. I believe and still do believe in the strength of the school as it was at that time. I thought it was better for children to be in that environment rather than be thrown into another environment." He said that while the issue may have had racial undertones in the '80s, race isn't really an issue these days, since the school is now evenly numbered among white, black and Hispanic students.

But the argument for closing the school was fueled by the same mode of thinking, that students fare better in a larger learning environment, said Dr. Merritt White, who also was among the group that appealed the vote in the '80s. He added, "Big is not necessarily better. There are small private colleges and gigantic universities. All have something good to offer."

He also called Berhalter "a one-man wrecking crew," adding, "He's going about this the wrong way, certainly, instead of working with the school board to bring his argument through the right channels."